The Library Card (Jerry Spinelli)
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40 free The Library Card (Jerry Spinelli) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card is really four stories in one book. Mongoose, Brenda, Sonseray and April Mendez have little in common until the same mysterious card turns up in each of their lives and points them toward a library. This quiz covers all four stories: who the characters are, what trouble each one is in, what they find among the shelves, and how their lives change. A final group of questions looks at Spinelli himself and the other books he wrote in the same years. It is written for students reading the book in class, for teachers who want a quick comprehension check, and for anyone revisiting a Spinelli favorite. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01In The Library Card, what color is the mysterious card that changes four young lives?
Blue
Blue is the color of the card that mysteriously appears in the life of each young person. It steers all four of them toward books.
Q 02In The Library Card, what does television-starved Brenda put in her mouth to pick up a signal?
A rabbit-ears antenna
A rabbit-ears antenna goes into her mouth after the family set is unplugged for a week. It is one of the desperate, comic moments before Brenda starts catching up on her life.
Q 03In The Library Card, what kind of vehicle does a teenage runaway hijack with April Mendez aboard?
A bookmobile
A bookmobile is the target, and April Mendez comes across it while out on a hike. The angry, confused teenager behind the hijacking ends up as her friend.
Q 04In The Library Card, which crop grows on the farm that April Mendez's family moves to?
Mushrooms
Mushrooms are the crop, and the move leaves April Mendez feeling isolated in the country. She is a city girl who loves books, which matters once a stranger crosses her path.
Q 05In The Library Card, where does the homeless boy Sonseray live while drifting from town to town?
In a car
In a car is where Sonseray lives, with no steady home and no lasting friends. Taking out a book finally gives him a refuge from loneliness.
Q 06In The Library Card, which friend pressures Mongoose into shoplifting and skipping school?
Weasel
Weasel is the best friend leading Mongoose toward serious delinquency, and their crimes keep getting bigger. The card that keeps reappearing is what pulls Mongoose another way.
Q 07In The Library Card, which insect does Mongoose paint on the front of a building as his symbol?
A cicada
A cicada is the strange bug Mongoose wants to know more about, and the question takes him into a library for the first time in his life.
Q 08Which earlier novel won Jerry Spinelli, author of The Library Card, the Newbery Medal?
Maniac Magee
Maniac Magee won the Newbery Medal in 1991. Publishers Weekly identified Spinelli by that single title when it reviewed The Library Card six years later.
Q 09In The Library Card, which week-long event cuts television addict Brenda off from her shows?
The Great TV Turn-Off
The Great TV Turn-Off leaves Brenda utterly lost for a week. Her struggle is played for broad comedy until the card leads her somewhere she never expected.
Q 10In The Library Card, what does Brenda find on the library shelves that tells of her early childhood?
Her own biography
Her own biography turns up in the library's biography section, and Brenda is fascinated by it. A message addressed to her guides her to the book.
Q 11In The Library Card, what is the title of the book a librarian hands to Mongoose on his first visit?
I Wonder
I Wonder is the book she gives him, and it holds far more than the bug he came to look up. Mongoose discovers a world of startling facts he never knew existed.
Q 12In Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card, what do Mongoose and his twelve-year-old best friend shoplift?
Candy
Candy is what the two boys shoplift, and from there their crimes grow to vandalism and graffiti. Mongoose leaves the mischief behind once books get hold of him.
Q 13In The Library Card, what does Mongoose's best friend do with the card when the two boys find it?
Tosses it away
Q 21In The Library Card, which ever-present smell is April Mendez escaping when she goes on a hike?
Horse manure
Horse manure is what the family's crop grows in, so the smell hangs over her whole home. The hike she takes to get away from it leads to a strange meeting.
Q 22In The Library Card, what is the name of the hijacker who becomes April Mendez's friend?
Nanette
Nanette is the strange girl behind the attempted hijacking, and a shared interest in the card is what turns her and April into friends.
Q 23In The Library Card, how do April Mendez and the hijacker keep in touch before becoming friends?
By writing letters
By writing letters, the two keep up an uneasy correspondence that the card sets off. It eventually brings the city girl and the angry teenager together.
He tosses it away, yet the card keeps reappearing. Mongoose is the one who finally carries it into a library.
Q 14In The Library Card, what does Mongoose's best friend plan to do after dropping out of school?
Live on the streets
Live on the streets is the plan, and it shows how far the friendship could drag Mongoose. He has to make a choice about where his own loyalties lie.
Q 15In The Library Card, how does television addict Brenda make her way to the library?
By sleepwalking
By sleepwalking is how she arrives, and what she reads there sets off a frantic search for the life she has lost to the screen.
Q 16In The Library Card, the pages about Brenda's life go empty right after which moment?
She first turns on a TV
She first turns on a TV, and from that point the words abruptly end. Brenda becomes fiercely determined to fill in the rest herself.
Q 17In The Library Card, which library event brings the lonely, homeless Sonseray some comfort?
Story time
Story time is where Sonseray finds solace, and the woman who runs it has a surprise waiting for him.
Q 18In The Library Card, what kind of book helps Sonseray recapture memories of his dead mother?
A romance novel
A romance novel written for adults is what brings her back to him. Her death years earlier left a hole in his life that he had never managed to fill.
Q 19In The Library Card, which relative does Sonseray move from town to town with?
His uncle
His uncle is the one Sonseray travels with, a homeless drifter. The man punishes the boy by holding back details about his late mother.
Q 20In The Library Card, where is April Mendez desperate to return after moving to the country?
New York City
New York City is the home she misses, and adjusting to a place so far from it is her battle. A chance meeting on the road brings her an unlikely friend.
Q 24In Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card, what is unusual about the face of the card each child finds?
It is completely blank
It is completely blank. Publishers Weekly found the device contrived but effective for showing how young people deal with hard circumstances.
Q 25Which publisher of The Library Card also issued a teachers' discussion guide to the book?
Scholastic
Scholastic brought the book out in 1997, and reviewers pitched it at readers of about eight to fourteen. Spinelli wrote for all four of these houses in the 1990s.
Q 26Which Jerry Spinelli novel about a town's pigeon shoot came out the same year as The Library Card?
Wringer
Wringer follows Palmer, a boy who dreads turning ten because he will be expected to finish off wounded birds. It was named a Newbery Honor book.
Q 27Which Jerry Spinelli novel was adapted into a Disney+ film starring Grace VanderWaal?
Stargirl
Stargirl reached Disney+ in 2020, twenty years after the novel first appeared. Critics praised its message of nonconformity, and it became a bestseller.
Q 28Which book is Jerry Spinelli's memoir of growing up, published the year after The Library Card?
Knots in My Yo-Yo String
Knots in My Yo-Yo String carries the subtitle The Autobiography of a Kid. It has been described as a montage of sharply focused memories.
Q 29Which first children's book by Jerry Spinelli was originally written as a novel for adults?
Space Station Seventh Grade
Space Station Seventh Grade was his fifth novel, after earlier ones written for adults were all rejected. One of his children pilfering a snack he was saving inspired it.
Q 30In The Library Card, what is the real first name of the boy known as Mongoose?
Jamie
Jamie is the name behind the nickname, and his is the first of the four stories. The card imposes itself on him before it reaches anyone else.