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Same Author, Same Characters is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on finding what two related stories share and change, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.9. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 24 of them with different questions, so no two pupils in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 12 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 24 of these 25 sets ask different questions — this skill does not have 25 questions to give. The rest reorder them, so no two pupils have the same paper in front of them.

Same Author, Same Characters

RL.3.9

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Night the Lamp Went Out

Grace's father kept the lighthouse. On the worst night of the winter, the lamp went out. He was ill in bed. Grace was eleven. She carried the oil up ninety-seven steps in the dark, twice, because the can was too heavy to lift full. Her arms shook so much on the second trip that she had to sit down halfway. She trimmed the wick the way she had watched a hundred times. She struck the match on the fourth try. By the time the light swung out across the water, three ships had already turned back. Grace never knew whether she had been in time. She decided not to think about it.

  1. 1. How is Grace like Halim in "The Wrong Bus"?
  2. 2. How is Grace's problem different from Halim's?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Last Letter

Every Thursday for six years, Mr Ellis posted a letter to his sister in Canada. Then the letters started coming back. Address unknown. He kept writing them anyway. He put them in a shoebox instead of the postbox. When his neighbour Ada asked why, he said, "Because the day I stop writing is the day she is really gone." Ada went home and looked up the town on a map. It took her three weeks and eleven phone calls to find the new address. The shoebox held ninety-two letters. They posted them all on the same day.

  1. 1. How is Ada like Great-Aunt Sylvie?
  2. 2. How is this story's ending different from "The Violin in the Loft"?

LessonPrint · RL.3.9 · Set 12 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Same Author, Same Characters

Set 12. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Both keep going alone — Grace up the lighthouse stairs, Halim working out the 41 — with no adult to take over. 2. Grace's is a job she chooses to finish; Halim's is a mistake he has to get out of.
  2. 2.1. Both act rather than explain — Ada found the address, Sylvie held the violin and asked for potatoes. 2. This one resolves — the letters go; that one closes the subject with nothing changed.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.