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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTwelve-year-old Esperanza Ortega lives a charmed life on El Rancho de las Rosas in Aguascalientes, Mexico, where her family owns vast land, a rose garden, and a grand adobe home. She expects to spend her birthday celebrating the grape harvest and dreaming about her future Quinceañera. Then her father is killed by bandits, and everything unravels fast. Her scheming uncles, who now own the land, pressure her mother to sell the house and accept a marriage proposal. When the uncles burn down the ranch to force Mama's hand, Esperanza and her mother secretly flee with their servants to California, arriving at a company farm labor camp in the San Joaquin Valley with almost nothing to their names.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Esperanza Rising
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Esperanza Rising. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a girl cut the first cluster of grapes at harvest with a curved knife?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
The honor of cutting the first grapes usually went to the eldest son of a wealthy rancher, but because Esperanza is an only child and her father's pride, she is given the curved knife each year. It opens the novel's harvest scene on the family ranch.
- First half
In what book does a mother whisper, "Now we are peasants, too"?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza scolds Mama for confiding their personal business to a poor woman on the train. Mama gently replies that their station has changed, which is one of the first direct lessons Esperanza gets about her new life.
- First half
In what book does a girl fail so badly at sweeping onion skins that women laugh and call her Cinderella?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza has never held a broom in her life, and the dried onion skins scatter everywhere on the camp platform. Marta points and laughs, "¡La Cenicienta!" as the trucks unload workers nearby, and Esperanza runs home in humiliation.
- Second half
In what book is a grandmother's unfinished zigzag blanket kept growing through long months of illness?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza picks up Abuelita's crocheting while her mother is bedridden and keeps adding rows in mismatched yarn donated by neighbors. The blanket becomes a symbol of hope that eventually stretches between two trees in the yard.
- Second half
In what book do yarn dolls in every color line up along two girls' pillows in a farm camp cabin?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
After Esperanza teaches Isabel the trick of braiding monas from scrap yarn, a new one is born almost every day. The growing row of colorful dolls becomes Isabel's steady joy during the lonely winter of Mama's illness.
- Near the end
In what book is a swimming pool for a new camp open to Mexicans only on Friday afternoons before cleaning?
✓ Answer
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
When Esperanza learns that Mexicans can only use the new pool the day before it is cleaned, she is outraged. The injustice fuels her explosive argument with Miguel about whether life in America is really better.
