A Year Down Yonder
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40 free A Year Down Yonder trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Richard Peck's A Year Down Yonder sends fifteen-year-old Mary Alice to spend a school year in a small Illinois town with a grandmother who is feared by the sheriff, the banker and every prankster for miles. Grandma Dowdel rarely explains herself, and much of the fun is working out, a chapter late, why she did what she did. This quiz covers the whole book, from Mary Alice's arrival through Vittles and Vengeance, A Minute in the Morning, Away in a Manger, Hearts and Flour, A Dangerous Man and the closing chapters. The questions ask who did what to whom, who the neighbors and classmates are, what the hard times of the late 1930s meant for the family, and a little about the author and the other Grandma Dowdel books. Every question is multiple choice and comes with a short explanation, so the quiz suits a class reading the novel, a book club, or anyone checking what they remember before a test. Play it on screen or print it out.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does Grandma Dowdel pour over the prankster she trips with a wire outside her house in A Year Down Yonder?
Warm glue
Warm glue is her weapon: she cooks it on the stove, strings a wire across the yard and waits in the dark for the gang to arrive.
Q 02In A Year Down Yonder, what drops from Grandma Dowdel's attic onto the model posing for her artist boarder?
A snake
A snake that Grandma keeps in the attic to scare birds out of the roof lands on Maxine Patch, who bolts through town wearing nothing else.
Q 03In A Year Down Yonder, what does Mary Alice find in the manger instead of a doll during the Christmas play?
A live baby
A live baby is lying there, and Grandma Dowdel can tell at a glance which local family the foundling belongs to.
Q 04What does Grandma Dowdel ram into a neighbor's tree to shake down pecans for her pies in A Year Down Yonder?
A tractor
A tractor does the job: the owner had said she could have any pecans that had fallen, so Grandma makes sure plenty of them fall.
Q 05How does Grandma Dowdel deal with the bully who follows Mary Alice home demanding a dollar in A Year Down Yonder?
Unties her horse
Grandma unties her horse and makes her boots vanish, leaving the bully a five-mile walk home barefoot.
Q 06Which American children's book prize did A Year Down Yonder win after its prequel was named a runner-up?
The Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal went to the sequel in 2001; the first book about Grandma Dowdel had stopped one step short with an honor citation.
Q 07In A Year Down Yonder, what does Grandma Dowdel spread on the paws of Mary Alice's cat to make it stay?
Butter
Butter is the trick: Grandma rubs it on all four paws, and by the time the cat has licked them clean the cobhouse feels like home.
Q 08Which animals does Grandma Dowdel trap on winter nights to earn extra money in A Year Down Yonder?
Foxes
Foxes: she sells the pelts, and sews fur cuffs onto Mary Alice's old plaid coat so that it feels new for the Christmas play.
Q 09Which classmate does Mary Alice marry in Grandma Dowdel's house at the end of A Year Down Yonder?
Royce McNabb
Royce McNabb, the new boy from the year she spent downstate, had three days of army leave for the wedding, and Grandma gave the bride away.
Q 10Which disaster sends Mary Alice running home from school to check on Grandma Dowdel in A Year Down Yonder?
A tornado
A tornado is bearing down, and while her classmates shelter in the school basement she runs home, where the two ride it out in the cellar.
Q 11Which earlier Richard Peck book first sent Mary Alice and her sibling on summer visits to Grandma Dowdel?
A Long Way from Chicago
A Long Way from Chicago came first, a novel in stories that follows the children's visits to Grandma each summer from 1929 to 1935.
Q 12Which New Deal program sends Mary Alice's older sibling out west to plant trees in A Year Down Yonder?
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps job means Mary Alice must face Grandma without the ally who shared every earlier visit.
Q 13What is the name of the cat Mary Alice carries on the train to Grandma Dowdel's in A Year Down Yonder?
Bootsie
Q 21Which holiday does Grandma Dowdel's town mark with a moment of silence at eleven o'clock in A Year Down Yonder?
Armistice Day
Armistice Day brings the town to a halt at the hour the guns fell silent in 1918, and Grandma Dowdel takes the silence very seriously.
Q 22Which annual event at the Abernathy farm in A Year Down Yonder raises money for a wounded veteran's care?
A turkey shoot
A turkey shoot it is, though no bird is harmed: the men and boys fire air rifles at paper targets to see who is the best shot.
Q 23What is the name of the stew of whatever is on hand that Grandma Dowdel sells in A Year Down Yonder?
Burgoo
Burgoo is meant to cost a dime a mug, but Grandma charges the banker far more and takes nothing from the poor and hungry.
Bootsie is banished to the cobhouse out back, where the city pet turns into an independent country cat and raises a kitten.
Q 14Which brand of radio does Mary Alice bring from home and listen to in bed each night in A Year Down Yonder?
Philco
Philco made her prized set: alone upstairs in a dark house full of bumps and scuttling, she plays it to take her mind off her fears.
Q 15In A Year Down Yonder, which second job has the school principal taken on because times are so hard?
Janitor
Janitor is his other role: Mary Alice is mortified when Grandma seems to be enrolling her with the man sweeping the school basement.
Q 16Which classmate demands a dollar from Mary Alice on her first day at school in A Year Down Yonder?
Mildred Burdick
Mildred Burdick assumes any city girl must be rich; Mary Alice snaps back that a rich girl would never have been sent away.
Q 17Which holiday is at the center of Vittles and Vengeance, the second chapter of A Year Down Yonder?
Halloween
Halloween goes on for weeks in Grandma Dowdel's town and is her favorite holiday, because she relishes its mischief and pranks.
Q 18Which boy turns up bald and bandaged at the school party in the Vittles and Vengeance chapter of A Year Down Yonder?
Augie Fluke
Augie Fluke is the principal's son, and his father works out the truth when Grandma serves pie with the very knife the boy dropped.
Q 19Whose pecan tree does Grandma Dowdel raid for her pies in A Year Down Yonder?
Old Man Nyquist
Old Man Nyquist sleeps through the raid, and he is no more grateful months later when Grandma frees him from under his own bed.
Q 20Which backyard buildings do autumn pranksters attack in Grandma Dowdel's town in A Year Down Yonder?
Privies
Privies are fair game every year, but the boys keep forgetting that Grandma Dowdel enjoys the holiday's mischief as much as they do.
Q 24In A Year Down Yonder, what does Grandma Dowdel cut into tiny stars to make Mary Alice's Christmas halo?
Tin
Tin, snipped into stars, makes the halo; Grandma had acted as if the play meant nothing to her, yet the piece plainly took her a long time.
Q 25Which relative turns up as a Christmas surprise for Mary Alice after the school play in A Year Down Yonder?
Her brother
Her brother arrives from out west on a ticket Grandma bought with her trapping money, which is where most of those earnings went.
Q 26What does the banker's wife beg Grandma Dowdel to bake for the ladies' February tea in A Year Down Yonder?
Cherry tarts
Cherry tarts are the tradition at the Washington's Birthday tea, and Grandma agrees on one condition: the ladies must hold it at her house.
Q 27Which women's society holds its Washington's Birthday tea at Grandma Dowdel's in A Year Down Yonder?
Daughters of the American Revolution
Daughters of the American Revolution members boast of their ancestry, which Grandma punctures by seating an ancient guest who knows the leader's real origins.
Q 28In A Year Down Yonder, which neighbor learns at the tea that the banker's wife is her long-lost sister?
Effie Wilcox
Effie Wilcox is thrilled; the banker's wife, who had boasted of her fine ancestry, bursts into tears and refuses to speak to her.
Q 29Which family trait does Aunt Mae cite to expose the banker's wife's humble birth at the tea in A Year Down Yonder?
Mismatched eyes
Mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, run in a poor local clan, and the old lady recalls two of its girls being sent to separate foster homes.
Q 30Which best-dressed girl in Mary Alice's school claims the handsome newcomer as hers in A Year Down Yonder?
Carleen Lovejoy
Carleen Lovejoy, the richest girl in the class, has silk stockings and a satin angel gown, but she ends Valentine's Day with a single card.