A Long Way Home Study Guide

In the selection from A Long Way Home, what does the narrator remember about his original hometown? Choose two options.

• the language spoken there

• the name of the state

• the railway station

• the mountains

In the selection from A Long Way Home, how does the narrator use Google Earth to search for his original home?

• He focuses on every train station in India to find the one he remembers.

• He starts at Kolkata and searches the train lines working outward.

• He traces the rivers of India from the sea inland.

In the selection from A Long Way Home, why does the narrator’s girlfriend sometimes close his laptop and put it away?

• She wants him to give up his search.

• She believes that he is becoming too absorbed.

• She fears that he will never succeed in finding his home.

In the selection from A Long Way Home, what are the narrator’s reasons for looking for his long-lost home? Choose two options.

• to question his elders

• to understand his past

• to reclaim his inheritance

• to reconnect with his family

What is the first landmark found by the narrator of the selection from A Long Way Home that makes him believe that he may have found his destination?

• a school

• a windmill

• a water tower

Concept Vocabulary: Which of the following situations best illustrates the word quest?

• Alex has trouble understanding the author’s ideas.

• Bonita will ride her horse in the annual competition.

• Damon has been looking for the perfect winter hike for years now.

Concept Vocabulary: If you do a thorough cleaning of your room, which of the following is most likely to be true? Base your answer on the meaning of thorough.

• You determine where the dirt is and focus on cleaning that part.

• You divide your room into quadrants and clean a bit of each.

• You are careful to dust and vacuum every inch of the room.

Concept Vocabulary: If a runner relentlessly trains for a race, which of the following is most likely to be true? Base your answer on the meaning of relentlessly.

• She does not accept help from a trainer.

• She runs faster each day that she trains.

• She exercises intensely and constantly.

Read the following paragraph from the selection from A Long Way Home.

Still, even with the possibility of some winding, irregular paths out of Howrah, there was also a limit to how far I could have been transported in the time frame. I’d spent, I thought, a long time on the train—somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours. If I made some calculations, I could narrow the search field, ruling out places too far away.

Why can the narrator now “narrow the search field”?

• He recognizes one of the irregular paths out of Howrah Station.

• He feels confident that faraway places do not connect to Howrah Station.

• He guesses that his home was less than fifteen hours from Howrah Station.

In the selection from A Long Way Home, what is especially difficult about the narrator’s search?

• The search covers a huge area.

• The search is in a foreign country.

• The narrator remembers no landmarks.