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Kingsolver Barbara Quizzes, Trivia and Puzzles
Kingsolver Barbara Quizzes, Trivia

Barbara Kingsolver Trivia

Barbara Kingsolver Trivia Quizzes

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Barbara Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky until her family moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo when she was seven. The time spent there provided background material for her best-known novel, 'The Poisonwood Bible'. The 20 years she spent living in Arizona likewise gave her the setting for her first novel, 'The Bean Trees'.
10 Barbara Kingsolver quizzes and 100 Barbara Kingsolver trivia questions.
1.
  Meet the Prices: Rachel    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Poisonwood Bible' is about the Prices, an American missionary family living in the Congo, and is told from the viewpoints of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Rachel is the oldest of the Price girls.
Average, 10 Qns, Kankurette, Mar 08 22
Average
Kankurette gold member
Mar 08 22
73 plays
2.
  Meet the Prices: Leah    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Poisonwood Bible' is about the Prices, an American missionary family living in the Congo, and is told from the viewpoints of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Leah and her sister Adah are twins, and Leah is the older twin.
Tough, 10 Qns, Kankurette, Feb 17 22
Tough
Kankurette gold member
Feb 17 22
73 plays
3.
  Meet the Prices: Ruth May    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Poisonwood Bible' is about the Prices, an American missionary family living in the Congo, and is told from the viewpoints of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Ruth May is the youngest of the Price sisters.
Tough, 10 Qns, Kankurette, Jan 19 22
Tough
Kankurette gold member
Jan 19 22
86 plays
4.
  "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This quiz is for anyone who has read "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver. This should be a simple quiz on the novel that happens to be my favorite book.
Average, 10 Qns, ftrdoc05, Sep 29 06
Average
ftrdoc05
478 plays
5.
  Meet the Prices: Adah    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Poisonwood Bible' is about the Prices, an American missionary family living in the Congo, and is told from the viewpoints of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Adah and her sister Leah are twins; Adah is the younger twin.
Tough, 10 Qns, Kankurette, Jan 30 22
Tough
Kankurette gold member
Jan 30 22
72 plays
6.
  Poisonwood Trivia    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This is a fun quiz on a book I just loved, "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver.
Average, 10 Qns, jkkkbdelorge, Apr 16 08
Average
jkkkbdelorge
308 plays
7.
  The Poisonwood Bible Test   popular trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This is an amazing book by Barbara Kingsolver. Even Oprah thinks so:)
Average, 10 Qns, regenbogen, Aug 20 22
Average
regenbogen
Aug 20 22
352 plays
8.
  "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors, and "Animal Dreams" is one of her best! Contains spoilers!
Average, 10 Qns, ldubose, Apr 03 17
Average
ldubose gold member
185 plays
9.
  The Poisonwood Bible Test Your Knowledge    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
I have not seen any quizzes from this beautiful book, so I decided to make one.
Average, 10 Qns, goldenmelody, Dec 14 07
Average
goldenmelody
359 plays
10.
  "Poisonwood Bible"    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This is an outstanding book by Barbara Kingsolver.
Average, 10 Qns, accer, Jul 20 09
Average
accer
536 plays
trivia question Quick Question
What childhood game did Ruth May teach the African children?

From Quiz "Poisonwood Trivia"




Related Topics
  Contemporary Literature and Fiction [Literature] (23 quizzes)


Barbara Kingsolver Trivia Questions

1. What type of word play device does Rachel use throughout the novel?

From Quiz
Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Malapropisms

A malapropism occurs when a character confuses one word for another, similar-sounding word with a different meaning to humorous effect. It gets its name from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play 'The Rivals', who often gets her words mixed up (such as 'pineapple' for 'pinnacle' and 'perpendiculars' for 'particulars'). Rachel also gets her words mixed up throughout the book; examples include 'Cape Carniveral' for 'Cape Canaveral', 'congregations' for 'conjugations', 'philanderist' for 'philanthropist' and 'piccadillies' for 'peccadilloes'. Incidentally, Rachel also uses more slang than any of her sisters. (Adah is the one who loves palindromes.)

2. Who teaches Methuselah the parrot the word 'damn'?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: Orleanna

Nathan hears Methuselah say 'damn' (as it turns out, he's learned far worse from Brother Fowles!) and scolds the three older girls for teaching an animal to swear, assuming it was one of them. Rachel apologises and all three girls are given the Verse (Numbers 29:34) as punishment. However, Leah reveals that it was Orleanna who used the word, and the girls are covering for their mother; she said it repeatedly when she found out that the cake mix the family had brought to the Congo had dried out in the heat. She was planning to make a cake for Rachel's sixteenth birthday, but the cake mix was too hard to use.

3. What type of word play does Adah use throughout the book?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: Palindromes

Adah has the most colourful and poetic voice of the four sisters, and loves playing with words. She reads books back to front and often thinks in palindromes, which are words or phrases that are spelled the same forwards and backwards (such as 'poor Dan is in a droop'). During church services, she mentally sings palindromic phrases to hymns such as 'Amazing Grace'. She also prefers to spell her name without the letter H. Both she and Leah are gifted, but their father does not believe in further education for girls.

4. What game does Ruth May play with the local children?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Mother, May I?

Although Ruth May makes comments about Africans that come across as racist (such as calling them the Tribes of Ham), she is also the first of the Price children to mix with local children. She teaches them to play 'Mother, May I?' (rendered as 'ma-da-meh-yi'). Leah is jealous that the children are willing to play with Ruth May, especially as they pick the game up quickly, while she has trouble communicating with them. However, she does befriend one boy, Pascal, who teaches her Kikongo words.

5. To what country does Nathan Price take his wife and daughters?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Congo

Nathan is a Baptist missionary. He believes that it is his calling to save the souls of Africa.

6. How did the Price family get around the limit of 44 lbs of luggage per passenger when they took their flight to the Congo?

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: hid their extra items on their bodies

The Southern Baptist Mission League hinted to them that the passengers themselves were not weighed. The girls all wore many layers of clothing and underwear and their coats over top. In their pockets and tucked in their waistbands, they brought tools and food and other goods. It made a very uncomfortable flight for them.

7. What is the name of the eldest child of the Price family?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Rachel

Rachel is the oldest, Leah and Adah are next (they are twins), and Ruth May is the youngest.

8. Which daughter suffers from hemiplegia?

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: Adah

According to wikipedia.com, hemiplegia is "a condition where a vertical half of a patient's body is weak or paralyzed." Adah is born with this condition and it is assumed that she will never be able to speak. Adah does not receive special attention in Africa because of her disease, much unlike in America.

9. Codi Noline, medical school drop-out and former convenience store clerk, returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona, ostensibly to teach what?

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: High school biology

Codi really returns because her father, Doc Homer, has Alzheimer's and "his mind had begun to roam in alarming new pastures."

10. Where is the family in the book originally from?

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: Georgia

The father begged and begged the church council until they finally let them go. He's not well thought of!

11. The Prices invite Anatole, the local teacher (and, as we find out later, Leah's future husband) to dinner and Anatole gets into an argument with Nathan Price. What item of Orleanna's does Nathan destroy after Anatole leaves?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Platter

Anatole helps interpret Nathan's sermons for the village congregation. Nathan invites him to dinner, seeing him as an ally, and Orleanna serves dinner on a fine china platter painted with blue flowers that had been left behind by a previous inhabitant. The mood turns sour when Anatole warns Nathan that Tata Ndu, the village chief, disapproves of villagers going to church and sees it as a moral decline. He also tries to explain the role of Tata Kuduvundu, the local witch doctor, who Nathan dismisses as a 'nut'. Orleanna sends the girls away to wash up, but Rachel stays behind to watch the argument. Nathan sends Anatole away and Orleanna nervously makes a joke, and Nathan responds by screaming at her to shut up and smashing the platter. He accuses Orleanna of being too fond of the platter and implies that she was flirting with Anatole by serving him food on it.

12. When the three older girls are told to work on their hope chests, what does Leah make for hers?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: A tablecloth

The Price girls are given embroidery equipment for Christmas and Orleanna suggests they start making items for hope chests in their free time. Rachel works on several items, such as monogrammed guest towels and crocheted collars, Leah works on a cross-stitch tablecloth, and Adah mocks the whole project by outlining handkerchiefs in black and making other weird items. As Leah says later in the novel, the hope chests turn out to be representative of the girls' love lives: Rachel has several failed marriages, Leah stays married to the same man and has children with him, and Adah never marries at all. Ruth May, the only one who did not have a hope chest, never lives long enough to be married.

13. Adah is slower than Leah due to her disability, and takes a long time coming back from the forest. What does Tata Ndu, the village chief, claim has happened to her?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: She was eaten by a lion.

Orleanna sends Leah and Adah into the forest to fetch water. She often comes home alone due to being slower than Leah, but is used to walking alone; unknown to Orleanna, she has been following Methuselah, the parrot left behind by a previous tenant. Adah feels she is being followed and arrives home late; while this is going on, Tata Ndu reports to the Price family that Adah had been eaten by a lion, seeing blood and assuming it was hers, but it turns out to be a bushbuck. At this point, Adah reveals herself. Nathan punishes both twins by making them write out the chapter on Cain and Abel.

14. What does Ruth May call her pet mongoose?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Stuart Little

Ruth May loves animals and keeps the mongoose as a pet after it keeps visiting the Prices' house, and later bonds with her. Leah tells her to call it Rikki-Tikki-Tavi after the Rudyard Kipling character, but Ruth May calls it Stuart Little instead. She also has a pet chameleon called Leon, who the Prices find one day on Leah's bed. Methuselah is a talking African grey parrot who used to belong to Brother Fowles, a Catholic priest who later visits the Prices, and Saint Matthew is Leah's toy sock monkey.

15. What are the names of the four Price daughters from oldest to youngest?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May

The ironic thing about Rachel and Leah is that Rachel is the oldest, unlike the biblical story of Jacob.

16. What meal was prepared for the Price family when they first arrived in their village?

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: Goat roasted over open flame

They made the goat into some kind of stew and it was so spicy hot, the girls wanted to spit it right out. Their mom threatened them with a thrashing if they dared to be that impolite. They were surprised as their mother had never laid a finger on them in their lives.

17. In Adah's chapter where she talks about Ruth May's death, which famous poet does she take a line from?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Emily Dickinson

She starts her chapter with the line, "Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me." This is a famous first line of one of Emily Dickinson's poems.

18. Who lived with the Price family and earned some money for preparing meals and other household chores?

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: Mama Tataba

Mama Mwanza's legs was burned when her house caught on fire so she uses her hands like most people use their feet. Mama Nguza is described as having a big goiter under her chin. And Tata Zinsana (not Mama) is described as missing all of his fingers.

19. Codi's sister, Hallie, until recently answered the Extension Service's Garden Hotline. However, she packs up her truck and heads off to... what?

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: A war zone

Hallie heads to Nicaragua in the mid-80s to teach sustainable farming. Not the safest place, but Hallie is over-the-moon happy to to be "fighting" for a cause.

20. What is the name of the post that the family is stationed to in the Congo?

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: Kilanga

This is the site "Father" wanted. Everyone else in the family thinks he's nuts!

21. To which kind of animal do the villagers compare Rachel?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Termite

The villagers' nickname for Rachel is 'Mvula', which is a pale white termite that comes out after the rain. Rachel is very pale and has white-blonde hair, of which she is very proud, but which also attracts a lot of attention from the villagers. They believe that Rachel is so pale because she stays inside too much and is frightened of everything. Mama Tataba, a local woman who initially helps the Prices with cooking and housework, also calls them 'fufu nsala'. Orleanna discovers that 'fufu' in this context is not manioc porridge, but a rat that hides from sunlight. In other words, Mama Tataba thinks the Prices are cowards, and resents the girls for being ungrateful; she makes a nut butter from groundnuts, but Rachel complains because she wants smooth Jiffy peanut butter.

22. Which political figure, who is later assassinated in the book, does Leah see give a speech in Leopoldville?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is mentioned several times in the earlier part of the book; Nathan dismisses him as an uneducated postal worker and a Communist, but Anatole admires him and Leah is impressed on hearing him speak, saying Lumumba made her want to believe in every word. She and Nathan fly out to Leopoldville when the Congo becomes independent, and watch the various speeches, along with the Underdowns, Belgian Mission League representatives who later leave the country. Lumumba is assassinated on the same day that Ruth May is killed by a snake; Eeben Axelroot tells Rachel beforehand that Lumumba is going to be killed, though Rachel is too ignorant to really understand.

23. According to Adah, when did she stop believing in G-d?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: After being punished at Sunday School

Although Adah almost never speaks, she asked her Sunday School teacher at the age of five whether G-d would really condemn children to eternal suffering just for being born in the wrong place and not being baptised. Her teacher punished her by making her kneel on grains of rice while praying for Adah's soul. When Adah got up from the floor, she realised that she no longer believed in G-d. She also points out that in Kikongo, the inflection of a word can change its meaning; in church, they call G-d 'Tata Nzolo', meaning 'Most Beloved Father', but 'nzolo' can also be a type of miniature potato or a grub used for bait. One major conflict in Kilanga is the conflict between Christianity, as preached by Nathan Price, and the local folk religion, which is polytheistic. Nelson worries that the Prices have brought rain upon the village by angering the local gods, and by the fact that Leah and Adah are twins (or 'báza'), as it is customary for mothers to abandon their twin babies in the forest.

24. Ruth May breaks her arm falling out of a tree, and Eeben Axelroot flies her and Nathan Price to a hospital. What items does she notice in his plane?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Diamonds

Eeben Axelroot's plane is full of sacks of food, but it also contains sacks of rocks which turn out to be diamonds. While Ruth May is visiting the hospital, Nathan and the doctor, a Belgian, get into an argument about Patrice Lumumba and Congolese politics. Nathan dismisses Lumumba as an uneducated postal worker. While Nathan is getting his hair cut, Axelroot gets Ruth May alone and warns her not to say anything about the diamonds, or her mother will get sick and die.

25. What is the name of the parish's parrot?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Methuselah

Nathan highly dislikes the bird because it is loud and irreverent. He tries to let it go, but it stays nearby, so the Prices still consider it to be their pet.

26. What was wrong with the garden that the Reverend and Leah first made?

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: they didn't plant in hills

Mama Tataba told them to plant in hills or it wouldn't grow. They ignored her as they thought they knew more about gardening than she knew about Africa. When the rainy season began and the seeds were all washed out, they realized she was right and replanted doing it the African way.

27. What is the true meaning of the pronunciation of the word "Bangala" that Nathan uses to describe Jesus to the Congolese people?

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: poisonwood tree

The word "Bangala" has two meanings, but the way Nathan uses it, it means poisonwood tree. The second meaning is something precious and dear, which is the way he means to pronounce it.

28. In which war was Nathan Price wounded?

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: World War II

Nathan is a wounded hero from WWII but he does not like to talk about his war experiences.

29. What is the name of J.T. and Emelina's youngest child?

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: Nicholas

Codi read somewhere that the brain organizes information in sets no longer than four; she wonders if that is why everyone calls Nicolas "the baby." John Tucker, named after Emelina's late brother (who was named after a car!), is the oldest of J.T. and Emelina's five boys. Mason is the next youngest child. Viola is actually John Tucker's, Mason's and Nicholas's grandmother!

30. What carried off and killed many in the Congo?

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: ants

You have to admit, being killed by ants is an unusual way to go!

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