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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn August 1975, Lewis Blake, a Tuscarora boy who lives on the Tuscarora Reservation in western New York, is about to start seventh grade as the only Native kid in his junior high's smart section. After a lonely sixth grade in which his white classmates acted like he wasn't there, he has his long braid cut off, hoping that looking more like everyone else will finally help him make a friend. On the first day of school he meets George Haddonfield, a big new kid from the nearby air force base who has just moved from Guam, and the two hit it off over the Beatles, Paul McCartney's band Wings, and Wacky Packages stickers. George's family welcomes Lewis into their neat, modern house in the base housing area, but Lewis lives with his ma and his music-loving uncle Albert, a Vietnam veteran, in a run-down house with a hand pump outside and a kitchen whose roof has caved in. Ashamed for George to see it, Lewis keeps inventing reasons his friend can't come over. Later, a bully who sneers at the reservation kids in the free-lunch line makes Lewis his target, and keeping a best friend from such a different world turns out to be harder than Lewis ever expected.
Free Battle of the Books questions for If I Ever Get Out of Here
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 If I Ever Get Out of Here. 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 friend's dad lend an album showing nine people in brown suits against a brick wall?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
Driving Lewis home after supper, Mr. Haddonfield hands him Band on the Run in a plastic bag and says Lewis is the only person George has really wanted to know since they arrived. George later can't believe it, since his dad never lends records.
- First half
In what book does a Toronto record store have giant neon records spinning on a neon turntable?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
After walking maybe twenty city blocks, Lewis, George and Mr. Haddonfield reach Sam the Record Man, the store Lewis knew from Canadian commercials. Lewis puts back an import he wanted for Albert, since it costs almost three times as much as a regular album and it seems lame to buy a gift with money Albert lent him.
- First half
In what book is loneliness compared to a pulled tooth's hole that never heals over?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
After New Year's, George and Stacey become a couple, and more and more of George's time is filled with her. Lewis says loneliness is like the feverish tea-bag day after a tooth is pulled, all the time, and the scar tissue never grows around the hole.
- Second half
In what book do women with strollers scramble when a flaming ball heads into the crowd?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
Lewis brings George and his dad to a Fireball game at the National Picnic, where men from their midteens to their sixties kick a burning ball between goalposts wrapped in oil-soaked rags. When the ball makes its way into the audience, the crowd parts in the firelight, and Lewis notes you've never seen women with strollers move so fast.
- Second half
In what book is a carbon-copy receipt for three concert tickets kept in a jewelry box?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
George shows Lewis a Twin Fair receipt for three Queen tickets at Maple Leaf Gardens on February 1, 1977, his Christmas present from his dad. When Lewis asks about the third ticket, George answers, "Yours, of course, bozo."
- Near the end
In what book does a mother judge a friend's dad "Not bad for a crhee-rhoo-rhitt"?
✓ Answer
If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
Mr. Haddonfield follows the plow convoy to drop Lewis home and hands Ma several bags of groceries, then refuses her cash. Ma sums him up with an old word for grackles that, even before Lewis was born, had come to mean white people.
