Name:_______________________________________
Period:______
Directions: Read the following passages, then choose the best TEXT EVIDENCE to support the provided claim. Each piece
of TEXT EVIDENCE should be followed by an IN-TEXT PARENTHETICAL CITATION.
Example: Excerpt taken from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, page 20
Sixty seconds. That's how long we're required to stand on our metal circles before the sound of a gong releases us. Step
off before the minute is up, and land mines blow your legs off. Sixty seconds to take in the ring of tributes all equidistant
from the Cornucopia, a giant golden horn shaped like a cone with a curved tail, the mouth of which is at least twenty
feet high, spilling over with the things that will give us life here in the arena.
Claim: The tributes have to wait 60 seconds before they can leave their metal circles and run to the Cornucopia.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: “Sixty seconds. That’s how long we’re required to stand on our
metal circles before the sound of the gong releases us” (Collins 20).
1. Excerpt from The Giver by Lois Lowry, page 36
Days went by, and weeks. Jonas learned the names of colors’ and now he began to see them all, in his ordinary life. But
they didn’t last. There would be a glimpse of green – the landscaped lawn around the Central Plaza, a bush on the
riverbank. The bright orange of pumpkins being trucked in from the agricultural fields beyond the community boundary
– seen in an instant, the flash of brilliant color, but gone again, returning to their flat and hueless shade.
The Giver told him it would be a very long time before he had the colors to keep.
“But I want them!” Jonas said angrily. “It isn’t fair that nothing has color!”
Claim: Jonas is angry that he cannot see in colors.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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2. Excerpt from The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, page 3
I had a long walk home and no company, but I usually lone it anyway, for no reason except that I like to watch movies
undisturbed so I can get into them and live them with the actors. When I see a movie with someone it's kind of
uncomfortable, like having someone read your book over your shoulder. I'm different that way. I mean, my second
oldest brother, Soda, who is sixteen-going-on-seventeen, never cracks a book at all, and my oldest brother, Darrel, who
we call Darry, works too long and hard to be interested in a story or drawing a picture, so I'm not like them. And nobody
in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did.
So I loned it.
Claim: Ponyboy (the speaker) likes to watch movies by himself.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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3. Excerpt from The Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, page 7
Brian shook his head. . . .
“It’s not as complicated as it looks. Good plane like this almost flies itself.” The pilot shrugged. “Makes my job easy.” He
took Brian’s left arm. “Here, put your hands on the controls, your feet on the rudder pedals, and I’ll show you what I
mean.” Brian shook his head.
“I’d better not.”
“Sure. Try it. . . .”
Brian reached out and took the wheel in a grip so tight his knuckles were white. He pushed his feet down on the pedals.
The plane slewed suddenly to the right
Claim: Brian is nervous about flying the plane.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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4. Excerpt from Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, page 12
They say Maniac Magee was born in a dump. They say his stomach was a cereal box and his heart a sofa spring. They say
he kept an eight-inch cockroach on a leash and that rats stood guard over him while he slept. They say.
Maniac Magee was not born in a dump. He was born in a house, a pretty ordinary house, right across the river from
here, in Bridgeport. And he had regular parents, a mother and a father. But not for long. One day his parents left him
with a sitter and took the P & W high-speed trolley into the city. On the way back home, they were on board when the P
& W had its famous crash, when the motorman was drunk and took the high trestle over the river at sixty miles an hour,
and the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water.
And just like that, Maniac was an orphan. He was three years old.
Claim: Maniac’s parents were killed when he was a child.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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5. Excerpt from Freak The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, page 3
So maybe he wasn't really all that fierce in day care, except I'm pretty sure he did hit a kid with his crutch once, whacked
the little brat pretty good. And for some reason little Kicker never got around to kicking little Freak.
Maybe it was those crutches kept me from lashing out at him, man those crutches were cool. I wanted a pair for myself.
And when little Freak showed up one day with these shiny braces strapped to his crooked legs, metal tubes right up to
his hips, why those were even more cool than crutches.
Claim: Max (the speaker) likes Freak’s crutches.
Text evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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6. Excerpt taken from The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, page 14
The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling, and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were
black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.
Earlier, kids had been playing hopscotch there, on the street that looked like oil-stained pages. When I arrived, I could
still hear the echoes. The feet tapping the road. The children-voices laughing, and the smiles like salt, but decaying fast.
Then, bombs.
This time everything was too late. The sirens. The cuckoo shrieks in the radio. All too late.
Within minutes, mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed
till it was dried on the road.
Claim: Bombs destroyed the small village.
Textl evidence with correct in-text parenthetical citation: ________________________________________________
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Bonus: Write one metaphor (comparison without “like” or “as”) or one simile (comparison using “like” or “as”) from the
passage:
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