Study Questions

1. Where do Rachel, Lucy, and Esperanza get the high-heeled shoes?

2. What does Mr. Benny say about their shoes?

3. What does the bum man offer Rachel?

4. Why do the girls hide the shoes when they come home?

5.Why does Esperanza want to eat in the canteen?

6. How does Esperanza convince her mother to write the permission note?

7. What does Nenny do for lunch?

8. Why doesn’t Sister Superior let Esperanza have lunches in the canteen?

9. Why does Sister Superior assume Esperanza lives in the ugly three-flats?

10. Was the canteen what Esperanza expected?

Answers

1. They get the shoes from the mother of the Family of Little Feet.

2. Mr. Benny says those shoes are dangerous.

3. The bum man offers Rachel $1.00 for a kiss.

4. The girls hide the shoes because they are “tired of being beautiful” and aren’t ready to handle it.

5. Esperanza wants to eat in the canteen because she thinks the kids who eat there are “special.”

6. For three days in a row, she tells her mother that she is too skinny and that her mother will appreciate her more if she’s not home for lunch every day.

7. Nenny goes to her friend Gloria’s, where they watch cartoons.

8. Sister Superior says Esperanza lives too close to school to have to stay for lunch.

9. Sister Superior assumes that because Esperanza is Chicana, she is poor and lives in the worst conditions.

10. No, the canteen has nothing special about it.