Meet Junior
What condition was Junior born with that caused doctors to operate on his skull as a baby?
Answer: Water on the brain — too much cerebral spinal fluid (a form of hydrocephalus).
What reservation does Junior live on?
Answer: The Spokane Indian Reservation.
Why did Junior end up wearing thick, lopsided black glasses starting at age three?
Answer: Indian Health Service only funded glasses once a year and only offered one ugly, thick, black plastic style.
Junior says words are two things that make him draw instead. Name one.
Answer: Unpredictable, or limited (either answer counts).
According to Junior, why does he draw cartoons instead of relying only on words?
Answer: Because a picture can be understood by anyone, no matter what language they speak.
How many teeth did Junior have, and how many more is that than a typical person?
Answer: 42 teeth — ten more than the usual 32.
What does Junior's mom call him when she talks to him gently?
Answer: “Junior, sweetheart.”
Why did the dentist give Junior only half the usual Novocain when pulling his ten extra teeth?
Answer: The white dentist believed Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did.
What does Junior compare his cartoons to at the end of Chapter 1?
Answer: “Tiny little lifeboats” in a world of broken dams and floods.
What does Junior believe is his best chance to escape the reservation?
Answer: Becoming a successful, well-known artist.
What two nicknames do bullies give Junior because of the size of his head?
Answer: Orbit and Globe.
What could Junior's mom have become if given the chance, and what talent does she show now?
Answer: She could have been a teacher; she reads constantly and can recite whole pages from memory.
What is the “Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club”?
Answer: Junior's name for the fact that he gets beaten up at least once a month for being seen as different.
What single word does Junior repeat three times in a row to show he has no way to save Oscar?
Answer: “Nothing.”
Describe the “ugly circle” of poverty that Junior describes.
Answer: You believe you're poor because you're stupid and ugly, and stupid and ugly because you're Indian — so you believe you're destined to be poor.
What two conditions affect Junior's eyes, and what problem does that cause him?
Answer: He is nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, which gives him headaches and lopsided glasses.
What could Junior's dad have become, and what instruments does he play?
Answer: A musician — he plays guitar, piano, and an old saxophone.
What happened to Oscar, and why couldn't the family take him to the vet?
Answer: Oscar got violently sick (vomiting, diarrhea, seizures); the family had no money for vet care.
Junior calls his parents “the twin suns around which I orbit.” What literary device is this?
Answer: A metaphor.
How does Junior feel about blaming his parents for the family's poverty, and why?
Answer: He can't fully blame them — he loves them deeply, and they themselves came from generations of poverty and never got a real chance at their own dreams.
What two speech differences does Junior have, and why does he say they are especially dangerous for a 14-year-old on the rez?
Answer: A stutter and a lisp — kids his age get mocked and beaten up for it instead of finding it cute the way people do with little kids.
Junior mentions two best friends in these chapters — one human, one animal. Name them.
Answer: Rowdy (his human best friend) and Oscar (his dog).
What did Junior's father ultimately do for Oscar, and why?
Answer: He shot Oscar with his rifle to end his suffering, since they could not afford to save him.
Junior writes the equation Poverty = empty refrigerator + empty stomach. What point is he making with it?
Answer: He sets up that simple definition only to reject it — hunger, he says, is NOT actually the worst thing about being poor.
What is the significance of the chapter's final line about a bullet costing two cents?
Answer: It captures the bitter irony that ending Oscar's suffering was cheap, while saving his life was something the family couldn't afford at all.