Becoming Muhammad Ali

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Round 1

Reading Check

1. Who narrates the introduction to Round 1?

2. Where is Cassius for Round 1?

3. What does Cassius promise to buy for his mother?

4. Where is Cassius from?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Cassius describe himself in the first round of the novel?

2. How does Cassius feel after losing?

Round 2

Reading Check

1. What is Cassius’s mother’s name?

2. What is the age gap between Cassius and Rudy?

3. What is the name of the park with the “Whites Only” sign?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What might the fact that Cash has painted signs like “Colored Waiting Room” and “Whites Only” suggest about how he approaches his job?

2. Why do Cassius and Rudy go with Cash to their grandfather’s house?

3. What does it mean that there are “two Louisvilles”?

Round 3

Reading Check

1. Which superhero does Cassius enjoy reading about?

2. Whom was Rudy named after?

3. What card does Cassius pull during Granddaddy Herman’s card trick?

4. What sport did Granddaddy Herman play?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does it imply about Cassius that when he, Rudy, and Lucky were fleeing the white man who pulled out a knife, Cassius kept pace with the other two boys?

2. Why do Cassius and his friends emulate Jack Johnson?

3. Why does Cassius stay up after Rudy falls asleep working on the card trick?

Paired Resource

“The Difference Between Literal Truth and Story Truth”

• A 29-minute radio story from Montana Public Radio about story truth as it was popularized by Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried (For his definition of story truth, you can have students listen to the segment between 2:15 and 4:00 in the audio.)
• What do you think about the use of story truth in this novel? What truths can the authors convey by fictionalizing and/or adapting certain parts of Cassius’s life?

Round 4

Reading Check

1. Where would Cassius race against horses by running with them?

2. On whom does Cassius have a crush?

3. What is the early Christmas gift that Cassius receives from his parents?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why do Cassius and his friends have jobs?

2. Why does Cash tell Cassius that he has “the chance to be the first Clay to really do something”?

3. What does Cassius point out about his father’s painting on the ceiling of Clifton Street Baptist Church?

Round 5

Reading Check

1. Whom do Cassius, Lucky, and Rudy run into at the Louisville Defender Expo?

2. What does Cassius find beneath the Columbia Auditorium?

3. Whom does Cassius ask for permission to begin boxing?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Lucky suggest that he knows about Cassius that few other people do? Why is this important?

2. What happens to Cassius’s bike? Why is this a big moment?

Paired Resources

“Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch”

• A blog post from NPR’s Code Switch podcast that defines code-switching and offers some explanations for why people do it
• How does the term “code-switching” apply to this novel?

“Red Bike Moment”

• A page on the Muhammad Ali Center’s website that describes a campaign based on the theft of Ali’s red bike, which ultimately led him to start boxing
• Connects to the theme of Becoming the Greatest and Overcoming Oppression
• What is your red bike moment?

Round 6

Reading Check

1. What does Lucky want to study in college?

2. What nickname does Joe Martin suggest for Rudy?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is Lucky amazed that Cassius could envision himself as president?

2. What is Joe Martin’s advice to Cassius so that he can achieve his dream?

3. What happens during Cassius’s first fight?

4. Why is it important that Cash is at Cassius’s fight?

Round 7

Reading Check

1. Whom is Teenie dating?

2. What boxer does Cassius fight twice in this Round?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why doesn’t Cassius win his first fight in the Louisville Golden Gloves?

2. Why does the death of Emmett Till affect Cassius so deeply?

3. Why doesn’t Cassius want to join the army?

Paired Resource

“The Murder of Emmett Till”

• A resource from the Library of Congress that describes what happened to Emmett Till (Content Warning: discussion of racial violence)
• How does learning more about Emmett Till help you better understand Cassius’s reaction to his death?

Round 8

Reading Check

1. Who can make Cassius feel humble more than anyone else?

2. How much is the toll that Corky charges Cassius, Lucky, and Riney (including “interest”)?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Cassius struggle during the 1958 Golden Gloves?

2. Why does Cassius like walking with the grocery bags for his mother?

3. What is implied by the fact that Corky is the one to return Cassius’s handlebars?

Round 9

Reading Check

1. What book does Cassius read with his principal when he’s sent to the office?

2. Which boxer did Granddaddy Herman and Cash agree was the best heavyweight boxer in history?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is there a sign that says “Cassius slept here” in the Nazareth College library?

2. How was Cassius able to graduate from high school?

3. Why does Joe Martin have Cassius watch tapes of great boxers?

Final Round

Reading Check

1. When does Cassius Clay become Muhammad Ali?

2. Why does Ali stop boxing?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Cassius’s plan to defeat Sonny Liston?

2. What happens when Ali refuses to enlist in the US Army?

3. What is the “rope-a-dope”?

Recommended Next Reads

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

• A middle grade novel that touches on the theme of Black childhood in the United States and includes a familiar figure in Emmett Till
• Ghost Boys on SuperSummary

Clean Getaway by Nic Stone

• A middle grade novel in which a young Black boy travels with his grandmother through the South as they discuss the history of the civil rights movement
• Clean Getaway on SuperSummary