Slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel The Poet X , winner of the 2018 National Book

Choice A is the best answer. Nothing belongs to the “poems” in the sentence, so it should not be possessive—just a simple plural noun. The protagonist does belong to the novel—it’s the protagonist of the novel—so “novel” needs to be a singular possessive noun.

Choice B is incorrect. This doesn’t complete the text in a way that conforms to the conventions of Standard English. This choice uses the singular possessive “poem’s,” but the text indies that it should be the simple plural “poems”: there is more than one poem, and nothing belongs to the poems. Choice C is incorrect. This doesn’t complete the text in a way that conforms to the conventions of Standard English. This choice uses the singular possessive “poem’s,” but the text indies that it should be the simple plural “poems”: there is more than one poem, and nothing belongs to the poems. This choice also uses the plural possessive “novels’,” which is incorrect because there is only one novel. Choice D is incorrect. This doesn’t complete the text in a way that conforms to the conventions of Standard English. This choice uses the plural possessive “novels’,” which is incorrect because there is only one novel, so it should be the singular possessive “novel’s.” .