The Sky Is Gray

Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.

Reading Check

1. How does the author describe the environment around James while he waits for the bus?

2. What are James’s first attempts at treatment for the pain in his tooth?

3. What does Auntie advise James’s mother to do when he refuses to kill the birds?

4. How do the people around James react to his interaction with the little girl on the bus?

5. What does the well-dressed young man with a book identify as “the trouble with the black people in this country today” (Part 7)?

6. How does the young man with a book respond to the preacher who tells him to listen to his heart?

7. What does James think about the well-dressed man with the book?

8. Why does James hesitate to stand close to his mother in the cold?

Multiple Choice

1. While they wait for the bus, what does James intuit his mother is worried about?

A) She worries that she didn’t leave enough firewood back home for her family.

B) She worries that someone in her family will have to go out in the rain.