Reading Comprehension · Humanities
PrepTest 147 · Section 2 · Passage 2
Questions 8–14
Before you start
Open PrepTest 147, Section 2 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 8–14, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces an artist's wide-ranging career, the early craft she is most famous for, and the style she preferred over a popular alternative
- P2: explains a technical demand of that craft, traces how her work grew from flat to three-dimensional, gives a key example, and moves to practical furniture
- P3: argues that the early work foreshadows her later building design and illustrates the shared principle with examples
Step 2 · The kid passage
Aunt Rosa, From Inside Out
Aunt Rosa is most famous for her quilts, yet her craft kept growing: pillows, then furniture, then whole rooms, and at last a treehouse. Big or small, she minded tiny details nobody would see. She learned a slow, old style of quilting from a library book, piling up layers of stuffing. The style suited her, because she disliked frilly lace and swirly trim. She loved plain squares set side by side.
A quilt in her style must be stitched neatly on both faces, or it puckers. That tug between beauty and sturdiness makes her quilts feel like buildings, though it often stays hidden: a bedspread hides its back, while a hanging divider shows both faces. Her library divider juts from a wall, and its patches look like the shelves marching onto the cloth. It is a picture, furniture, and part of the room at once. Next came plain but cozy canvas beanbags. Unlike most quilters in town, she mixed sturdy new fabrics with the old style.
Her quilts point the way to her treehouse. She planned the walls and the inside things together, as one whole, starting with the interior, like a quilt. In the treehouse we live inside the hidden layers: cubbies in the ladder steps, a bench that is also a toy box, a swivel table that sits on the deck or indoors. She laid a rug under it in both spots, as if inside and outside were the same.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Bandstand Blueprint
Two families argued over who really designed the town bandstand. Mr. Whitfield called a surprise witness: an old puppet stage. "Your Honor, before Miss Dell ever built a bandstand, she built puppet theaters. Look inside: the prop shelves are tucked into the steps, the bench is also a trunk. She planned the inside first and let the outside follow." He pointed at the bandstand photo. "Same hidden shelves in the stairs. Same bench that opens. Her small work points straight to her big work." The judge peered over her glasses. "So the habits in the little boxes show up in the big building. Most folks only know her puppets, but the pattern is plain." Case decided for the Dell family.