eurekami
The Attic
7th grade reading
Name
Date
Score/ 6
The Attic
The attic door had been painted shut for as long as Daniel could remember. His mother said there was nothing up there but dust and old suitcases. So when the decorators scraped away the paint on the first Saturday of the summer holidays, Daniel was the first one up the narrow stairs.
The air was thick and warm and smelt of mothballs. Thin blades of light slid through gaps in the roof tiles and lay across the floorboards like fallen swords. In the far corner, beneath a sheet greyed with age, something waited.
Daniel crossed the room slowly. Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken. He reached out, hesitated, then pulled the sheet away in one quick movement.
It was a desk – small, battered, and covered in carvings. Initials. Dates. A crooked drawing of a sailing boat. And there, in the corner, carved more deeply than all the rest, were three letters he knew better than his own name: D.A.M.
Daniel Adebayo Mensah. His grandfather. The grandfather who had died two years before Daniel was born, and whom his mother never spoke about.
He ran his fingers over the letters. Downstairs, someone switched on a radio, and a burst of music floated up through the floor. Daniel did not move. For the first time, the silence in the attic did not feel empty. It felt like someone waiting to tell him a story.
Question 1
Read "The Attic". "Thin blades of light…lay across the floorboards like fallen swords." What effect does this simile create?
- A. It makes the attic feel dramatic and slightly threatening.
- B. It tells us there are weapons in the attic.
- C. It makes the attic feel cheerful.
- D. It shows the attic is brightly lit.
Question 2
Read "The Attic". "Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken." Which technique is used?
- A. personification
- B. onomatopoeia only
- C. hyperbole
- D. alliteration
Question 3
Read "The Attic". What mood does the writer create in paragraphs 2 and 3?
- A. light-hearted and comic
- B. bored and dull
- C. angry
- D. mysterious and tense
Question 4
Read "The Attic". What can we infer about Daniel's mother's feelings towards his grandfather?
- A. She never met him.
- B. The subject is painful or difficult for her.
- C. She is excited to talk about him.
- D. She hid the desk because it was valuable.
Question 5
Read "The Attic". Why does the writer reveal the initials D.A.M. before explaining who they belong to?
- A. to create a moment of suspense before the discovery
- B. to show Daniel cannot read
- C. because the reader already knows
- D. to change the setting
Question 6
Read "The Attic". How has Daniel's feeling about the attic changed by the end?
- A. He wants to leave it immediately.
- B. It now feels full of connection rather than empty.
- C. He is now afraid of it.
- D. He thinks it is boring.
Free from eurekami.com/english/reading