American Girl: The "Kit" Series Quiz

Answer: Car salesman

Kit's dad owned a store where they sold cars. Even though business was bad during the depression, he stayed hopeful, and even paid his few employees out of his own pocket for as long as he could.

Similarly explained in the book, during the Great Depression, people got nervous about losing their money, so they stopped going to the doctor as frequently, so the doctors didn't have as much money. The doctors then couldn't pay the butcher, so the butcher got poorer too. So then the butcher couldn't afford to buy a car, so the car salesmen got poorer... and so on and so on.

Answer: Vicks Vapo Rub

Kit's mother had a brainstorm; the Kittridges had a rather large house. People were losing their houses because they couldn't afford to live in them anymore - why couldn't the Kittridge family take in boarders? Boarders would be people who paid to live in the Kittridge house. The first boarders to come were Mrs. Howard and her son, nine-year-old Sterling, who was constantly sick.

Answer: Thanksgiving

It was Thanksgiving, and thanks to a fight they had gotten in at school, Kit, Ruthie and Sterling couldn't go to the school play, and instead had to deliver food to the soup kitchen. At the soup kitchen, they found Kit's dad, who was going there for food.

Answer: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart was a pilot. She was very famous in Kit's time, and a role model for women. Kit even got an aviator doll that was made to look like Amelia!

Answer: Inky

Inky was a Scottish terrier. He was a small, stinky black dog that needed walking every afternoon, and that barked way too much. Kit had to walk him for her uncle, but at least got paid to do it.

Answer: Laundry

Kit had to do many chores now that they had boarders. Boarders meant more people, which meant more food to cook, more dirt to sweep up, and more laundry to wash.

Aunt Millie wasn't really Kit's aunt - she was a woman who took in Kit's dad after his parents died. So Kit, along with her brother and parents, called her "aunt".

Answer: A chicken feed sack

People in Kit's time had to be creative, so they made clothes out of the cloth chicken feed sacks that they bought their chicken feed in. Kit, however, was ashamed of her aunt's penny-pinching ways.

Answer: They jumped into a moving train

It was - and still is - illegal to jump into a boxcar in America. It is unfair to the people working the train and unhealthy for you to ride in a boxcar. However, it was free, and that's why the homeless people in Kit's time did it - because it was the best way to get from town to town, and from state to state.

Answer: False

Sterling's father was in Chicago, and he and his mother never heard from him. Sterling stuck a letter in the mailbox with $20 in it, pretending it was from his father, so that his mother wouldn't worry about her husband too much.

Answer: False

He still didn't have a job, but it didn't stop him from searching. The family was continuing to take in boarders and scrimping and saving as much as they could. The Great Depression didn't end until 1941, at the start of World War 2.