question: CHAPTER XV.

BERT COMES BACK.

One raw March evening, when the wind was roaring among the gray branches of the maples like a lion in wrath, some one knocked on the door.

"Come in!" shouted Anson, who was giving baby her regular ride on his boots.

"Come in!" added Flaxen.

Gearheart walked in slowly, closed the door behind his back, and stood devouring the cheerful scene. He was poorly dressed and wore a wide, limp hat; they did not know him till he bared his head.

"Bert!" yelled Anson, tossing the baby to his shoulder and leaping toward his chum, tramping and shaking and clapping like a madman, scaring the child.

"My gosh-all-hemlock! I'm glad to see ye! Gimme that paw again. Come to the fire. This is Flaxie" (as though he had not had his eyes on her face all the time). "Be'n sick?"

Bert's hollow cough prompted this question.

"Yes. Had some kind of a fever down in Arizony. Oh, I'm all right now," he added in reply to an anxious look from Flaxen.

"An' this is----"

"Baby--Elsie," she replied, putting a finishing touch to the little one's dress, mother-like.

"Where's he?" he asked a little later.

Anson replied with a little gesture, which silenced Bert at the same time that it explained. And when Flaxen was busy a few moments later, Anson said:

"Gone up the spout."

At the table they grew quite gay, talking over old times, and Bert's pale face grew rosier, catching a reflection of the happy faces opposite.
1. Who had a baby?
2. Who was not dressed well?
3. Was he wearing a something on his head?
4. What?
5. Did they recognize him at first?
6. At what point did they know it was him?
7. What was the baby's name?
8. And what was she wearing?
9. Was Bert's face tanned?
10. Was the mood as they spoke at the table happy?
11. Did more than one person say, "Come in" at the beginning?
12. Who said it?
13. Was the story set in the month of May?
14. What month?
15. Did Gearheart leave the door open?
16. What was Gearheart's first name?
17. Had Bert been ill?
18. How?
19. In what state?
20. Did Anson frighten the baby when he saw Bert?
****
answer: 1. Anson
2. Gearheart
3. yes
4. wide, limp hat
5. no
6. when he bared his head
7. Elsie
8. dress
9. unknown
10. yes
11. yes
12. Anson and Flaxen
13. no
14. March
15. no
16. Bert
17. "Yes
18. Had some kind of a fever
19. Arizony
20. yes

question: Edda, a Little Valkyrie's First Day of School

Written and illustrated by Adam Auerbach.

32 pp. Christy Ottaviano/Holt. $15.50.

Edda's home is in Asgard, "a land full of magic and adventure." But Edda, the littlest Valkyrie, doesn't have quite enough to do, until her father flies her "all the way to Earth for the first day of school."

The contrast between home and school is hard to get used to (in one, she can ride reindeer; in the other she gazes guinea pig through glass at the classroom). In his first picture book, Auerbach mixes the two worlds perfectly. Children are likely to appreciate the joke.

Planet Kindergarten

By Sue Ganz-Schmitt. Illustrated by Shane Prigmore.

32 pp. Chronicle. $14.99.

After careful preparations and a successful blastoff, a boy finds himself in a very unfamiliar environment. "We're aliens from many galaxies on Planet Kindergarten," he reflects as he sees his very varied classmates for the first time.

Prigmore, who designs for the movie industry, uses black backgrounds and bright colors to give this space adventure visual excitement and humor.

The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade

By Justin Roberts. Illustrated by Christian Robinson.

42 pp. Putnam. $18.99.

It makes sense that the author of the long, rhyming lines in "The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade" is a children's music performer. The story is about the power of one small person to fight prejudice.

Sally, whom no one ever seems to notice, is "paying super extra special attention" to the "terrible stuff" happening around her. When she decides to take action, she's not alone for long.

And Two Boys Booed

By Judith Viorst.

32 pp. Margaret Ferguson/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $16.59.

Ever felt quietly confident one minute, and a shaking mess the next? In Viorst's story about determination, a little boy wakes up thinking about singing his song in the class talent show.
1. What book is written by Justin Roberts?
****
answer: 1. The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade

question: (CNN) -- A teenage mother and her young daughter, snatched off a Cleveland street, were found shot to death in a garage early Sunday, Cleveland, Ohio, police said.

Thomas Lorde, the estranged boyfriend of 19-year-old Latasha Jackson and the father of 1-year-old Chaniya Wynn, was found next to them, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, police said Sunday.

Cleveland police issued an Amber Alert on Saturday after witnesses reported seeing Jackson and Chaniya abducted while walking on East 72nd Avenue in Cleveland.

Jackson's 14-year-old brother was walking with the pair when he said Lorde approached.

"He walked up on us and ... he pulled out the gun. He pointed it at me," the brother told CNN affiliate WEWS. "He told me to run."

The brother, who CNN is not identifying because of his age, ran home and called 911.

"I was scared for my niece and my sister," he said. "She (Jackson) was silent. She was scared. She didn't know what to do."

The alert named Lorde, 25, as the kidnapping suspect, warning that he was a "violent sexual predator with felony warrants out of New York," and armed and dangerous.

The alert was lifted Sunday after police found the bodies of the three "in a closed garage of an unoccupied structure in the 7000 block of Union Avenue," a police statement said.

"All three were found unresponsive with gunshot wounds and pronounced dead on the scene," the statement said.

No other details of the investigation were made public.
1. who was found somewhere?
2. how were they found?
3. did they survive?
4. where were they found?
5. where?
6. was there an Amber Alert?
7. who issued it?
8. when?
9. why?
10. where were they spotted?
11. how old was the young mother?
12. how many years old?
13. what was her name?
14. who was her daughter?
15. how old?
16. who was the suspect?
17. who is he?
18. of who?
19. why was the Amber Alert cancelled?
20. on what day?
****
answer:
1. A mother and daughter
2. shot
3. No
4. in a garage
5. Cleveland, Ohio
6. yes
7. Cleveland police
8. Saturday
9. witnesses reported seeing Jackson and Chaniya abducted
10. East 72nd Avenue
11. teenage
12. 19
13. Latasha
14. Chaniya
15. One
16. Lorde
17. estranged boyfriend
18. Latasha Jackson
19. police found the bodies
20. Sunday