Guest Author - Lane Graciano
1. C) The title alludes to a student breaking school rules by using the wrong set of stairs. Miss Brodie’s girls wouldn’t call her “teach,” and Miss Johnson’s posse (which became Michelle Pfeiffer’s class in Dangerous Minds) wouldn’t bother greeting her. The Master and the Margarita is not set in a school.
2. B) The narrator of Wolff’s unnamed prep school participates in a prestigious annual literary competition. Its prize is a private audience with a visiting author: Rand, Frost, Hemingway.
3. B) Jude studies hard, but a series of ill-judged actions keep him from rising above his circumstances. Austen’s Emma is a privileged bachelorette, and Flaubert’s is an adulterous wife. Adam Bede is a carpenter who has no scholarly aspirations.
4. A) Gene’s friendship with Finny is marked by rivalry and tragedy until he achieves his sought-after peace of mind. Lee Flora is an outsider at the elite Ault School in Sittenfield’s Prep; and the other two novels center on the title characters, not the students.
5. C) Nicholas soon discovers the cruelty of his employer toward the lads at Dotheboys. Coolidge High is the school in Up the Down Staircase, Christminster is the university of Jude Fawley’s dreams, and Gravesend is the academy attended by Owen Meany in John Irving’s well-known novel.
6. A) The “No Trespassers” warning provokes the narrator to action which ultimately leads to murder. The Blackboard Jungle is a 1955 book that was later filmed, and A Good School is a 1978 novel by Richard Yates. “Carpe diem” is the motto that became a catchphrase in the movie Dead Poets Society.
7. D) The victim was a brooding loner whose closest friend was Carlin, a girl who dated the most popular boy. Chalk is one of the houses at Haddan, but the school’s team doesn’t play Quidditch. The murder at the Sports Pavilion occurs in Agatha Christie’s Cat Among Pigeons, and the Xavier Institute is the setting of X-Men comics.
8. B) Stalky, Beetle and M’Turk raise irrepressible hell in Kipling’s coming-of-age stories. Henry and Bunny are two of the six classics students in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Natasha and Flan are members of The Basic Eight of Daniel Handler’s satire, and Flashman the bully is Tom’s antagonist in Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
9. C) Picoult explores the aftermath of a 19-minute shooting rampage. The first two books are also hers, but the last one, which revolves around a similar on-campus tragedy, was written by Lionel Shriver.
10. D) Miss Timmins’ is a school that harks back to the days of the British Raj. The clones of Never Let Me Go live at Hailsham; The Chocolate War is fought at Trinity High School; and crochety Olive Kitteridge taught in Crosby, Maine.
