Book excerpt: Grammardog Teacher's Guide contains 16 quizzes for this travel book. All sentences are from the book. Figurative language describes the voyage up the Mississippi ("gray beards of Spanish moss," "water's mulatto complexion," "the desert of water," "dense forest that guards the two banks," "angry ridge of water," "a boat hates shoal water"). Allusions include many references to literature (Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Dante, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Richard III, Othello).