Read the dialogue below and revise the simple dialogue tags to say something more descriptive. To revise a dialogue tag, select a dialogue tag from a dropdown list. Use the Dialogue Tag sheet for help. To check your answers, simply click the Check Answers button at the bottom of the page. You may try this exercise as many times as you wish.
"I never gave it much thought," Grandpa
, "but after I read this letter, I got to thinking-practically all tame animals have names.
Take your old milk cow, her name is Sally Gooden. Your Dad's two mules are named Fred and George. My buggy mares are named Molly and Birdie."
"I know, Grandpa," I , "but that monkey's not tame. He's as wild as a hoot owl."
Grandpa frowned and , "I don't believe that monkey is as wild as you think he is. Once an animal has been tamed, he doesn't forget it."
"What's the monkey's name, Grandpa?" I .
"According to what this trainer said in his letter, they call him Jimbo," Grandpa .
"Jimbo!" I
, laughing out loud. "Whoever heard of a name like that."
"Anyhow," Grandpa , "that's his name."
"Grandpa," I , "what good's it going to do us, knowing his name?"
"It might do a lot of good," Grandpa
. "This trainer says that if you could make friends with that monkey he would probably do
anything you wanted him to do."
"Make friends with him!" I , "Grandpa, I don't think that trainer knows what he's talking about. Why, you couldn't make
friends with that monkey in a hundred years."
"I don't know," Grandpa . "The trainer seems to think you could and he should know. He says to offer him something to eat, call him by name, and talk to him. It might be worth a try. After all, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose."
"Nothing to lose!" I . "Grandpa, if I got close enough to that monkey to offer him something to eat I could lose my arm. He's got teeth like a pitchfork."
"Oh I don't think you have to worry about that," Grandpa .
"From what you've told me, he's about the only monkey in the bunch that hasn't tried to bite you."
Thinking back to everything that had happened, I realized that Grandpa was right.
"By golly, Grandpa, you're right," I . "That Jimbo monkey hasn't tried to bite either Rowdy or me; but he sure doesn't mind sicking those little monkeys onto a fellow."
From Wilson Rawls' Summer of the Monkeys (Yearling Books, 1998), p. 107
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