Out of the Dust
Name: ___________________________________________________ Date: ______________________
WINTER 1936
Section 8: State Tests Again through Outlined by Dust
1. What would be enough for Billie Jo to hear now from her mother about the state tests?
2. Why doesn’t Billie Jo make cranberry sauce for Christmas dinner the year her mother dies?
3. Why did the county agent shoot Joe De La Flor’s cows?
4. What will Joe De La Flor gather to feed his remaining cows in the spring?
5. Why doesn’t Billie Jo go to school in First Rain?
6. What could Haydon P. Nye see when he first came to
7. What did Billie Jo see Jim Martin doing at the
8. What two things does Billie Jo notice that she and her father both do the same?
9. How does Billie Jo figure her father “gets the sound of him” instead of talking?
10. What did Billie Jo’s mother do to “fit” Billie Jo’s father?
Section 8 Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues
Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the words in bold mean.
1. Dust piles up like snow across the prairie….
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2. …dunes leaning against fences, mountains of dust pushing over barns.
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3. He gathers thistle to feed what’s left of his cattle, his bone-thin cattle….
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4. I place a wet cloth over my nose to keep from breathing dust and wipe the grime tracings from around
my mouth, and shiver, thinking of Ma.
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5. …Mr. Kincannon hires my father to pull his Olds out of the muck on Route 64.
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6. My father stares at me while I sit across from him at the table, while I wash dishes in the basin, my
back to him, the picked and festered bits of my hands in agony.
Part II: Determining the Meaning: Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions.
___35. prairie A. a moist sticky mixture, especially of mud and filth
___36. dunes B. irritated; generating pus
___37. thistle C. large area of flat or rolling grassland
___38. grime D. hills or ridges of wind-blown sand (or dust)
___39. muck E. weedy plants with prickly leaves and purple flowers
___40. festered F. black dirt or soot clinging to a surface