Source: Fiction texts quiz

Read the extract from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ by J. K. Rowling.

‘As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy grey and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows, defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch pitch, bundled up in a long mole-skin overcoat, rabbit-fur gloves and enormous beaver skin boots. 

            The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship.

            Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse – people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him, holding a mattress.’

How often was the ground covered in frost?

Read the extract from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ by J. K. Rowling.

‘As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy grey and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows, defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch pitch, bundled up in a long mole-skin overcoat, rabbit-fur gloves and enormous beaver skin boots. 

            The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship.

            Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse – people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him, holding a mattress.’

Can you find and copy the simile used to describe the lake?

Read the extract from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ by J. K. Rowling.

‘As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy grey and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows, defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch pitch, bundled up in a long mole-skin overcoat, rabbit-fur gloves and enormous beaver skin boots. 

            The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship.

            Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse – people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him, holding a mattress.’

Why hadn’t anyone seen Harry before the Quidditch match?

Read the extract from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ by J. K. Rowling.

‘As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy grey and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows, defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch pitch, bundled up in a long mole-skin overcoat, rabbit-fur gloves and enormous beaver skin boots. 

            The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship.

            Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse – people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him, holding a mattress.’

Why do you think Harry was described as their ‘secret weapon’?

Read the extract from ‘The Hobbit’ by J. R. R. Tolkien.

‘It was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valley below. Some caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches, some (like the little hobbit) got behind a tree to shelter from the onslaught of the rocks. Soon, the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and pine-roots far below.’

Can you identify any alliteration?

Find and copy an example of alliteration.

Read the extract from ‘The Hobbit’ by J. R. R. Tolkien.

‘It was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valley below. Some caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches, some (like the little hobbit) got behind a tree to shelter from the onslaught of the rocks. Soon, the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and pine-roots far below.’

What imagery does the word ‘swung’ create?

Read the extract from ‘The Hobbit’ by J. R. R. Tolkien.

‘It was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valley below. Some caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches, some (like the little hobbit) got behind a tree to shelter from the onslaught of the rocks. Soon, the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and pine-roots far below.’

What do you think the writer means when he says ‘the onslaught of rocks’?

Read the extract from ‘The Railway Children’ by E. Nesbit

‘Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at Father’s going away, and at Mother’s being so unhappy. It made a deep impression, but the impression did not last long.

They soon got used to being without father, though they did not forget him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing very little of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her upstairs room writing, writing, writing. She used to come down at tea-time and read aloud the stories she had written. They were lovely stories.’

What do you think the word ‘sorrow’ means?

Read the sentence below taken from ‘The Railway Children’ by E. Nesbit. 

‘The soft round dough that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom.’

What language technique has been used?

Read the extract from ‘The Railway Children’ by E. Nesbit.

‘Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen on a baking day, and seen the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if you were at the time still young enough to be interested in everything you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round dough that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And you will remember that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty in which case, naturally, there would be a little black mark.’

What word could we replace ‘naturally’ with?