Middle Grades Language Arts Study Guide

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering literary characters, novels, grammar rules, speech excerpts, figurative language, and foreign expressions from the KAAC Middle Grades Language Arts curriculum.

Tom Sawyer

The protagonist created by Mark Twain who lives in St. Petersburg, Missouri, with his Aunt Polly and cleverly tricks his friends into whitewashing a fence.

Injun Joe

The villain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer who murders Doc Robinson in a graveyard, frames Muff Potter, plots revenge against the Widow Douglas, and eventually dies trapped in McDougal's cave.

Grangerfords and Shepherdsons

Two noble, aristocratic Southern families in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn who carry on a deadly, bloody feud despite maintaining mutual respect.

Duke and Dauphin

A pair of con men in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn who orchestrate schemes like the Royal Nonesuch and impersonate the brothers of the deceased Peter Wilks to steal his estate.

Simon Legree

The cruel plantation owner in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin who purchases Uncle Tom and ultimately orders him beaten to death.

Eliza Harris

Mrs. Shelby's intelligent and courageous maid in Uncle Tom's Cabin who makes a daring escape across the frozen Ohio River to save her young son Harry from being sold.

Pequod

The whaling ship departing New Bedford, Massachusetts, commanded by the monomaniacal Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Ishmael

The schoolteacher narrator and sole surviving crew member of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, known for the opening line 'Call me Ishmael.'

Hester Prynne

The protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter who is condemned by Puritan authorities to wear a cloth scarlet 'A' on her chest for committing adultery.

Henry Fleming

The youthful Union soldier in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage who flees from his first battlefield engagement and later receives an accidental head wound from a deserter.

Hank Morgan

The 19th-century munitions worker known as 'The Boss' who suffers a head injury, wakes up in sixth-century Camelot, and introduces modern technologies in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Natty Bumppo

The frontiersman hero of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, raised among Delaware Indians and known by epithets including Hawkeye, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, and the Trapper.

Chingachgook

Natty Bumppo's closest companion and Mohican foster brother throughout The Leatherstocking Tales, whose death occurs in The Pioneers.

The Collective

A totalitarian group in Donna Barba Higuera's The Last Cuentista that takes control of an evacuation starship, erases passenger memories, and enforces absolute biological and cultural sameness.

Cuentista

The Spanish word for 'storyteller,' identifying the role Petra Peña inherits as the keeper of ancestral Earth stories in The Last Cuentista.

Halmoni

Lily Reeves's Korean grandmother (Ae-Cha) in When You Trap a Tiger, who is dying of brain cancer and previously stole Korean stories from the mythical tiger.

Jordan Banks

The seventh-grade protagonist of Jerry Craft's New Kid who loves illustrating his life in sketchbooks and navigates attending Riverdale Academy Day School (RAD).

Las Casitas

The row of three houses in South Florida where eleven-year-old Merci Suárez resides alongside her extended Cuban-American family in Merci Suárez Changes Gears.

Virgil Salinas

The shy eleven-year-old protagonist of Erin Entrada Kelly's Hello, Universe, nicknamed 'Turtle' by his family, who is trapped in an abandoned well while attempting to rescue his guinea pig Gulliver.

The Protectorate

A fearful settlement also called the City of Sorrows in Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon, whose ruling Elders sacrifice the community's youngest infant every year on the Day of Sacrifice.

Josh Bell

The dreadlocked, basketball-playing seventh-grade narrator of Kwame Alexander's novel-in-verse The Crossover, who goes by the court nickname 'Filthy McNasty.'

Ulysses

The squirrel in Kate DiCamillo's Flora and Ulysses who develops super-strength, flight, and poetry-typing abilities after being rescued from a vacuum cleaner.

Ivan

The artistic silverback gorilla in Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan who lives 27 years in captivity at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall before painting signs to find a sanctuary for baby elephant Ruby.

Gettysburg Address

President Abraham Lincoln's dedication speech delivered in November 1863 at a military cemetery, asserting a 'new birth of freedom' in fewer than 300 words.

Day of Infamy Speech

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's address to Congress on December 8, 1941, requesting a declaration of war following the Empire of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Tessie Hutchinson

The villager selected by the annual lottery in Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery,' who protests the unfairness of the drawing before being stoned to death by her neighbors.

Peyton Farquhar

The Southern planter in Ambrose Bierce's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' who imagines an elaborate escape through the wilderness during the moments before his execution by hanging.

Pecos Bill

The legendary southwestern cowboy raised by coyotes who rode a twister, dug the Rio Grande, and lassoed with a rattlesnake named Shake.

John Henry

The folk hero and African American steel driver for the C&O Railroad who raced against a steam drill inside Big Bend Mountain, winning the contest before dying of exhaustion.

Paul Bunyan

The giant folklore lumberjack of the northern timberlands, accompanied by his companion Babe the Blue Ox and his camp clerk Johnny Inkslinger.

Declarative Sentence

A sentence that makes a statement of fact or opinion and concludes with a period.

Imperative Sentence

A sentence that expresses a direct command or request, typically having an understood second-person pronoun 'you' as its subject.

Interrogative Sentence

A sentence that asks a question and concludes with a question mark.

Exclamatory Sentence

A sentence that conveys strong or sudden emotion and concludes with an exclamation point.

Compound-Complex Sentence

A sentence structure containing two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

Participial Phrase

A verbal phrase beginning with a present or past participle that functions as an adjective modifying a noun or pronoun.

Gerund Phrase

A verbal phrase built around an -ing verb form that functions as a noun, taking positions such as subject, direct object, or object of a preposition.

Misplaced Modifier

A modifying word, phrase, or clause separated from the word it is intended to modify, creating an illogical or humorous sentence that is repaired by moving the modifier.

Dangling Modifier

A modifying word or phrase that lacks any sensible or logical noun/pronoun in the sentence to modify, requiring the addition of missing words to fix.

Predicate Nominative

A noun, pronoun, or noun clause following a linking verb that completes the predicate and renames or identifies the subject.

Predicate Adjective

An adjective located in the predicate following a linking verb that describes or modifies the subject of the sentence.

Transitive Verb

An action verb that transfers its action toward a direct object.

Intransitive Verb

A verb that does not take a direct object, including all linking verbs and action verbs whose action is not received by an object.

Subjunctive Mood

A verb mood used to express a recommendation, demand, necessity, wish, or condition contrary to fact.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words placed in close proximity to one another.

Consonance

The repetition of identical consonant sounds accompanied by differing vowel sounds in close proximity.

Assonance

The repetition of identical vowel sounds followed and preceded by differing consonant sounds within neighboring words.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed poetry composed in regular iambic pentameter lines.

Free Verse

Poetry that lacks a regular meter, rhythm, or fixed rhyme scheme.

Dramatic Irony

A literary device wherein the audience or reader possesses crucial knowledge that the characters in the work do not yet know.

Situational Irony

An incongruity between what is reasonably expected to happen and what actually occurs.

In medias res

A Latin literary term meaning 'in the middle of the action,' describing a narrative that opens in the midst of plot events.

Ad hominem

A Latin phrase meaning 'to the man,' identifying a rhetorical fallacy that attacks the opponent's personal character rather than their argument.

Status quo

A Latin expression referring to the existing state of affairs or current social condition.

Carte blanche

A French phrase meaning 'blank card,' denoting complete freedom or unconditional authority to act as one pleases.

Joie de vivre

A French expression translating to 'joy of life,' characterizing an exuberant, carefree enjoyment of living.