Trivia Quiz: Summer in Literature

It is summer, and for those that love to read, the perfect time for a trivia quiz all about summer and summer themes found in Literature.

If you would like to play the quiz, the rules are simple: get out paper and pen or pencil. Number your paper 1-11, then proceed to the Questions segment of this page. Read each individual question and choose an answer from among the group of possibilities provided for each. Select and mark your choice of answer on the paper and proceed to next question. Answers are found below the Questions segment.

Scoring: The first 10 correctly answered questions are worth 10 points each. The correctly answered BONUS QUESTION (#11) is worth 100 points - making for a possible 200 points final score.

As always, good luck on the quiz and have fun!

1. Fifty years after publication of Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury released the sequel. What was the title of this long-awaited book?

a. Summer Wine

b. Embrace The Summer

c. Farewell Summer

d. Summer Hangover

2. Herman Raucher wrote what highly-acclaimed coming of age novel?

a. Summer-Time Blues

b. Summer of ‘42

c. Summer House

d. How I Spent My Summer Vacation

3. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck uses his magic to turn Nick Bottom’s head into what?

a. the head of an ass

b. the head of a turtle

c. the head of an owl

d. a battering ram

4. The novelette, Summer by Edith Wharton (published in 1917) is often attributed as one of the first American works of fiction to deal with what subject matter?

a. a young man’s sensual awakening

b. a young woman’s sensual awakening

c. a school marm’s sensual awakening

d. a drunk awakening to discover he got a tattoo of a fluffy kitten

5. John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra chronicled what?

a. a young boy’s discovery of a dead body in Sierra foothills

b. a young white man rescued by a beautiful Apache woman

c. a 93-year old released convict seeing his children for the first time in 62 years

d. the author’s first summer in the Sierra

6. In the Stephen King collection, Different Seasons, what story is known as the Summer story?

a. The Body

b. Apt Pupil

c. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

d. How Carrie White Saved Christmas

7. In his poem, Summer Stars, Carl Sandburg urges what to bend low again?

a. the night

b. the wind

c. the eternal seasons

d. his gouty knees

8. In the Bible, Proverbs 30:25, who is said to prepare their meat in the summer?

a. lions

b. eagles

c. ants

d. men with honey barbecue sauce

9. The short story, The Summer People was written by what master of horror?

a. Shirley Jackson

b. Fritz Lieber

c. Richard Matheson

d. Dr. Seuss

10. In The Berenstain Bears: Too Much Vacation by Jan and Stan Berenstain, what does the Bear family do after spending the most miserable vacation of their lives together in a rundown cabin?

a. They go home and look at snapshots

b. They head off to a comfortable resort

c. They seek family therapy

d. They go hunting and triumphantly return home with Sarah Palin strapped over the hood of the family car

11. *Bonus Question* - In Tennessee Williams’ one-act play, Suddenly, Last Summer, Violet Venable does not want to accept what truth about her son, Sebastian?

a. He can’t read

b. His AM/FM radio only picks up AM stations

c. He was cannibalized by a pack of hungry street urchins

d. That at 34-years of age, he still can’t figure out how to double-knot his shoe laces

e. He prepared a casserole using a budget-variety of caviar instead of the name brand stuff

f. That he uploads toilet tissue so it feeds backward from the underside instead of forward and over

Scroll down to find the Answers

1. c. Farewell Summer

2. b. Summer of ‘42

3. a. the head of an ass

4. b. a young woman’s sensual awakening

5. d. the author’s first summer in the Sierra

6. b. Apt Pupil

7. a. the night

8. c. ants

9. a. Shirley Jackson

10. a. They go home and look at snapshots

11. c. He was cannibalized by a pack of hungry street urchins

This Hub ©July 30, 2014 by Beth Perry