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AD2 Reading Task - DEC 2020

Pixie came from an illustrious artistic family but lacked their talent for drawing. From a young age, she was taught proper techniques but could only produce crude drawings, unlike her gifted sister Celeste. Pixie felt ashamed of her appearance and inability to meet the high artistic standards expected of her family name. She struggled to find acceptance at home and school for her lack of imagination and interest in scientific details rather than artistic expression.

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333 views1 page

AD2 Reading Task - DEC 2020

Pixie came from an illustrious artistic family but lacked their talent for drawing. From a young age, she was taught proper techniques but could only produce crude drawings, unlike her gifted sister Celeste. Pixie felt ashamed of her appearance and inability to meet the high artistic standards expected of her family name. She struggled to find acceptance at home and school for her lack of imagination and interest in scientific details rather than artistic expression.

Uploaded by

joel zapana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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AD2 - READING TASK – DECEMBER 2020

You are going to read an extract from a novel about a little girl called Pixie. For questions 1-5, choose the
answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Never too old to rock


Her father had been a big handsome man with a fine head of hair, a
1. As a child, Pixie was told to...
paintbrush in his hand, paint threading along the canvas making a bird
look like an angel. He was the famous James Harley Savage, son of A. enjoy doing drawings.
Harley Talbot Savage, brother of Norman Backhouse Savage. It was an B. use colours in her drawings.
illustrious family. C. learn how to draw properly.
From when she was old enough to hold a pencil, the little girl Pixie Harley D. draw in an ordinary way.
Savage had been taught about vanishing points in pictures, and was
made to work out at the start where the horizon was going to be, and how
to make things at the front bigger than things at the back. No matter how 2. Pixie didn’t inherit her family’s...
young, she had never been allowed to scribble with a pencil or crayon.
A. excellent ability to draw.
Nor had she been allowed to do stick people like every other child, or
B. patience to learn how to draw.
square houses with symmetrical windows and a carefully curving path to
C. willingness to study art.
the front door with a round tree on one side. It was unacceptable to do
D. imagination to invent things.
drawings like that.
Her father’s hands skimmed across the paper and out of the end of his
pencil came a bird, a twig for it to perch on, behind it a branch. ‘See?’ he 3. How can we describe Pixie’s
said. ‘Like that.’
mother attitude towards her
It was a gifted family, but it seemed that the gift had passed Pixie by, even
daughter?
after so many patient lessons, from the end of her pencil came only hard
ugly lines, and a bird that looked like a surprised fish. A. sympathetic
She was ashamed of her own big muscly legs and her round face. But the B. cruel
shame of showing this ugly bird to her father and the rest of her family C. impatient
was unendurable. D. hopeless
She heard the silence and saw the ring of shocked faces among her
family.
‘Oh, but you are very artistic and terribly creative,’ her mother said quickly, 4. In class, Pixie showed interest
with something like fear in her voice. in...
There was a moment’s silence. ‘In your own way, of course.’ Someone
A. the artistic elements of other’s
cleared their throat.
drawings.
‘And you never know, these things blossom later on sometimes.’
B. the equipment they had in the
At school they had known she was a Savage, and hoped for wonders.
classroom.
Her teacher, Miss McGovern, was even willing to see them when there
C. impressing her teacher with
were none. It had taken a long time, but finally she had come to expect
her drawings.
no more wonders.
D. scientific facts of things that
‘Use your imaginations, girls,’ Miss McGovern would say, but what Pixie
surrounded her.
drew was never what she meant by imagination. Pixie was more into the
veins of the leaf, how photosynthesis worked and why they turned brown
or orange in the autumn.
5. We understand, from the last
‘You make a plant look like a machine,’ Miss McGovern accused. paragraph that Pixie
Pixie’s sister, Celeste, had always been a proper Savage. Celeste had
known about things at the back of a picture being smaller than things at A. was as pretty as when she
the front without even having to be told. She had a way of being dreamy, was a baby.
slightly untidy but lovely, even in her old pink pyjamas, thinking interesting B. was more beautiful when she
thoughts behind her lovely green eyes. Celeste’s birds made her father was little.
laugh with surprise and pleasure in a way Pixie’s never did. Celeste had C. had a difficult relationship with
a knack for other things, too; she was always catching Pixie in moments her mother.
when she would rather have been alone. Celeste’s reflection would join D. wanted to have a more
Pixie’s frowning into the mirror. ‘That lipstick, Pix,’ she would say in her ordinary appearance.
sophisticated way, ‘it makes you look like a clown.’ She was not the older
sister, but acted as though she was, not showing Pixie the respect she
might have received from a less critical younger sister.
‘Why did you call me Pixie?’, she asked her mother once, when puberty
was making her look into mirrors. ‘You were such a beautiful baby,’ her
mother said, and smiled into the air at the memory of that beautiful baby,
not at the face of her plain daughter.

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