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 23 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
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 Violin in the Loft
Nobody in our family plays anything. So the violin in the loft was a mystery for eleven years.
Then Great-Aunt Sylvie came for Christmas and saw the case on the table. She went very quiet.
"That was my brother's," she said. "He played in a café in Marseille before the war."
She opened it. Three strings had gone, and the bridge lay loose in the bottom of the case.
She did not play it. She held it under her chin for about ten seconds, put it back, and closed the lid. Then she asked for more potatoes and did not mention it again.
1. How is this story like "The Last Letter"?
2. How does this story's ending differ from "The Last Letter"?
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. How is this story's ending different from "The Violin in the Loft"?
2. How is Ada like Great-Aunt Sylvie?
LessonPrint · RL.3.9 · Set 23 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Same Author, Same Characters
Set 23. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. Both are about an object — a violin, a shoebox of letters — that carries somebody's history. 2. This one closes the subject — Sylvie shuts the violin case; that one opens it up, and the letters are posted.
2.1. This one resolves — the letters go; that one closes the subject with nothing changed. 2. Both act rather than explain — Ada found the address, Sylvie held the violin and asked for potatoes.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.