Question

10 The next morning, Anna woke up before dawn. Her father was already reading the newspaper and sipping coffee from a ceramic mug. Anna settled into a chair opposite him and pulled a section of the newspaper toward her. MEN WALK ON THE MOON, the headline blared.

11 Anna sighed wistfully and peered at the grainy images in the newspaper.

12 Her father looked over his newspaper and smiled. He enjoyed this still-dark part of the day; they both did. Outside the window, the neighborhood woke up slowly, lights came on behind curtains and venetian blinds, and a car engine lurched and echoed across the empty street.

13 “Remember when you collected rocks?” her father asked as he perused an article about moon rocks. His hand, smudged with newsprint, reached from behind the open paper for his coffee.

14 Anna had to smile; she had been so proud of her rock collection. Wherever she went, she had prowled the ground—the furrows of the field behind her grandfather’s house, the grassy hills beside the playground, sandy beaches when they spent a day on the coast.

15 Her favorite rock was a chunk of jasper. She had found it one warm autumn afternoon when she was walking with her grandfather. The rock was nearly buried in brown soil, and she had knelt to pick it up, startled by the rainbow stripes that wrapped the rock’s opaque canvas. “It’s beautiful,” her grandfather had said as Anna held it up in the sunlight. “That’s jasper. I used to look for jasper when I was a boy, playing out here with my cousins. They were hard to find.”

16 “You have always found hidden treasures,” her grandfather had said, and Anna remembered how the rainbow rock had felt smooth and cold in her hand.

17 “You have always found such beautiful rocks,” her father said now, running the side of his hand down the crease of the newspaper. “Earth rocks,” he chuckled. Anna had to smile. She imagined the astronauts hunched down in their awkward suits hunting for moon rocks and wondered if the rocks shattered into fine dust before they could pry them out of the moon’s surface.

The scene with Anna and her father in paragraphs 10 through 17 contributes to the plot of the story “Moon Landing” because it leads Anna to —
A
remember what she loves most about her grandfather
B
read an article about the recent visit to the moon
C
renew an interest in a hobby that eases her restlessness
D
imagine what it would be like to explore the moon

Answer 1

D

The newspaper headline and her father's conversation about rocks prompt Anna to picture the astronauts "hunched down in their awkward suits hunting for moon rocks," so the scene leads her to imagine what exploring the moon would be like.