Text Leveling System

Harriet's Hare

RDQ:	1167	Max Word/Sent	51	Total Words	2248		Diff Words	692
Lex	770	Ave Word/.Sent	9	Hi Freq occurs	1599	71.1%	Hi freq	298	43.1%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	12.9	Low Freq occurs	124	5.5%	Low freq	98	14.2%

Harriet sat up suddenly wide awake. 
What was that noise? It was a rushing tearing swishing noise just like the sound fireworks make yet much much louder. But this was the start of a midsummer day and - Harriet looked at her watch - early too not even five o'clock. She leaped out of her bed and ran to the window. The farmhouse and its buildings were tucked into the side of a gentle hill and in the flat little valley below were two large fields the nearer green the farther gold. In the first her father's cows would normally have been waiting around the gateway for him to come and fetch them in for morning milking. but now the whole herd was galloping and buck-jumping around the pasture as though something had scared the wits out of them. The second field was of wheat almost ready for harvesting that looked from the house like a square golden blanket glowing in the morning sunlight. But there seemed to be a hole in the blanket. In one corner of the field Harriet could see there was a perfect circle of flattened wheat. It took Harriet fifteen minutes to dress and slip out of the house and run down the dewy hillside. By now the cows had quieted and she ran past them to the field beyond then climbed over its gate and pushed through the standing wheat to step into that perfect circle. What had made it? What had made the noise that had woken her and terrified the cows? What had happened in the field called Ten Acre on Longhanger Farm at the start of this July day? Harriet walked into the middle of the circle. it was big perhaps sixty feet across and all the wheat in it was squashed down flat to the ground as though an enormously heavy weight had stood there. As she stood there now in the stillness with no sound but distant birdsong a hare suddenly came out into the circle and stopped and sat up. It turned its head a little sideways the better to see her. Harriet stood perfectly still. Aren't you handsome she thought with your tawny coat and your black-tipped ears and your long hind legs. Don't run away. I won't hurt you. For a moment the hare stayed where it was watching her. Then to her great surprise it loped right up to her. Surprise is one thing but total amazement is quite another and that was what Harriet felt next when all of a sudden the hare said loudly and clearly "Good morning." Harriet pinched herself - hard. Wake up", she thought. This whole thing is a dream. Hares don't talk. And aloud she said "Hares don't talk." "I'm sure they don't as a general rule" said the hare "but I'm a rather unusual hare." "You certainly are" said Harriet. "Do you have anything to do with this circle?" For a moment the hare did not answer but instead began grooming its face. Then it said "What's your name?" "Harriet." "Can you keep a secret Harriet?" "Yes." "I" said the hare "am a visitor from outer space." "You mean ... this circle was made by your spaceship?" "Yes." "So you come from another planet?" "Yes. I come from Pars." "Pars?" said Harriet. "Is that near Mars?" "Oh no" said the hare. "Much much farther away." "But" said Harriet. "I thought that aliens were well little and green and had four arms and eyes on stalks." "Not far off" said the hare. "But you see Harriet we Partians have the ability to change. Imagine how strange your modern world here would seem to cave dwellers. What would they make of microsurgery and satellite television and supersonic flight? You have to understand that on Pars we are as far ahead of you people on Earth as you now are of the cave dwellers. One of the things we can do for example is to speak all earthly languages. But perhaps to you the most astonishing we have perfected the ability to change our shape. When my colleagues left me here in this wheatfield I could for instance have decided to become a tiger - though that might have caused a bit of a stir in deepest Wiltshire - or a dog or a sheep or anything else you like. But I chose to change myself into a hare." "Why?" asked Harriet. "Because in this world the hare has always been thought to be a beast of magic. People said that hares were witches and could melt away and reappear to dance and play in the light of the moon. Incidentally some people still say that if you look at the full moon it is not a man's face you see there but rather the shape of a hare. And others believe that hares could change their sex at will." "Oh" said Harriet. "Which are you at the moment?" "I" said the hare "am a buck and fully intend to remain so for the length of my stay on Earth." Harriet suddenly felt terribly disappointed. Here she was in her father's wheatfield deep in conversation with a magic hare but perhaps he would only be around for a very short time. "How long are you staying?" she asked. "It depends" said the hare "on how much I like it here. This is actually my first vacation on Earth." "You've come here on vacation?" asked Harriet. "Oh yes" said the hare. "Everyone on Pars takes a vacation abroad every so often. Interplanetary travel is so quick and easy nowadays you know - to anywhere in the solar system that you like. I've been to a number of heavenly bodies but never to Earth. I just wanted to go somewhere quite different this year somewhere rather primitive where the technology was no very advanced and one could relax among the simple ignorant natives. So I came here. But that's enough about me Harriet. Tell me a bit about yourself. All I know is your name." "Well" said Harriet "I'm almost eight and I go to the village school and my dad's a farmer and we've got cows and some sheep and some chickens and Dad works the farm all by himself except sometimes he gets a relief milker in so that we can take a vacation." "But your mother helps with the animals I expect?" said the hare. "My mother's dead" said Harriet. "She died when I was quite little . I don't really remember her. But I help Dad. I look after the hens and feed the calves and this year I bottle-fed three lambs. They'd lost their mother too." "You like animals" said the hare. "Oh yes. Especially my pony. she's a strawberry roan twelve and a half hands high. She's called Breeze. By the way I don't know your name." "Nor do I" said the hare "if you see what I mean. On Pars I had a perfectly good name but I really haven't given a thought about what to be called now that I am a specimen of lepus europaeus occidentalis." "What?" "That's the Latin name for hare." "You speak Latin too?" "I told you Partians are omnilingual." "Oh" said Harriet. "Well what should I call you?" "Whatever you like" said the hare. "You choose." Harriet thought. A visitor from outer space that speaks all languages that can transform itself into any shape a creature of witchcraft a magician. He's a wizard that's what he is. "Wiz" she said. The hare who had remained sitting in the middle of the circle throughout the entire conversation stood up on his hind legs. His ears raised his large brown eyes inquiring he looked the very picture of astonishment. "Wiz?" he said. "Yes. That's what I shall call you." "Oh very well" sighed Harriet's hare. "Wiz it is." Chapter two Suddenly a dog barked. Harriet turned to see her father coming down the hill toward the cow pasture the old sheepdog Bran running ahead of him. Bran's barking said quite clearly today as every day "Come along you silly cows whatever you're doing - it's time for milking." As soon as the farmer opened the gate Bluebell the head cow whose right it was to be first through any gateway began the climb up the path through the paddock the rest of the herd following behind her. "That's my dad" said Harriet but she found she was talking to herself for the hare had vanished. She climbed back over the field gate and ran toward her father. "Hattie!" he called in astonishment. "What in the world are you doing out so early?" Harriet thought quickly. "Can you keep a secret?" Wiz had said. She must say nothing about him. "There's a circle Dad!" she cried. "In our wheat. I saw it from my bedroom window." Leaving Bran to take the cows up on the hill the farmer walked with Harriet to the field. "I've heard about these Hattie" he said" but I've never seen one except in photos." "What made it Dad d'you think?" "There are lots of theories. Some say badgers rolling in the wheat but it would have taken a hundred giant badgers to make this. Most likely it's caused by a kind of whirling vortex of wind like a tornado. Though of course there are always the nuts who say the the circles are made by spaceships!" "That's ridiculous!" said Harriet. "It is!" said her father. Somewhere in the standing wheat there was a rustling noise. "Rabbit in there" said Harriet's father. "Or a hare perhaps?" said Harriet. "Could be. They'd better be out of it before I put the combine in." H takes his gun with him when he rides the combine Harriet thought. I must warn Wiz. "When will this field be ready d'you think?" she asked. Her father pulled off an ear of wheat rubbing it between his hands to free the kernels and then chewing them to test their ripeness. "Not long now" he said. From the top of the hill Bran barked. Again there was no mistaking his meaning. "The cows are in the yard I've done my part what d'you expect me to do no - milk 'em?" "Come on Hattie" said Harriet's father. "I've go work to do." "So do I" said Harriet. "I'm going to load the washing machine before I start making breakfast. And the downstairs needs dusting." "I'd forgotten" said her father. "It's the start of your school summer vacation, isn't it?" "Yes" said Harriet. "A woman's work is never done." A woman! thought her father as he let the first cows into the milking parlor. Poor girl she's had to grow up fast without a mother. Though I think she's mostly forgotten her now. Which I never shall. but it can't be much fun for Hattie stuck here alone with me. What she needs is a bit of magic in her life. Children believe in magic. She probably thinks that circle was made by extraterrestrials. Ridiculous. Later that morning when the wash was in the dryer and Harriet had flicked a duster about (a woman from the village came twice a week to do the cleaning) she went back down to the circle in the wheatfield. She half expected to see Wiz waiting for her but the circle was empty. Where had he gone? When would she see him again? Would she see him again? Like her he was on vacation but the fact that she was staying here on Longhanger Farm didn't mean that he was too. He could go wherever he liked. She trudged back across the cow pasture. Wiz might be miles away by now loping across the hillside simply enjoying being a hare with no thought of her at all. Just then she saw not fifteen feet away a brown shape squatting motionless in a clump of grass long ears flat to its head. "Wiz!" she cried and at the sound of her voice the hare leaped up and sped away. "Come back!" called Harriet but to no avail and she felt the prick of tears as the animal disappeared through the nearest hedge. Wiz didn't want to have anything more to do with her. Never again would she speak with the magical visitor from Pars. Or maybe thought Harriet I'm going crazy and I just imagined it all. "Wrong hare" said a voice behind her. "Oh Wiz!" cried Harriet. "Am I glad to see you! I was beginning to wonder ... " She stopped. "If you'd dreamed the whole thing?" said the hare. "Yes... no... I don't know what to think." Did you tell your father about me?" "No. I promised not to. But Wiz you must be careful. because soon he'll be harvesting the wheat and that means he goes around and around the field on a big machine called a combine and he shoots any rabbit that runs out especially at the end when there's only a little square of wheat left in the middle. People eat rabbits you see." "But I'm not a rabbit." "Hares too" said Harriet. "People eat hares?" said Wiz. "I'm afraid so. Jugged hare is very good" "Jugged?" "Yes. Cut up in pieces and stewed with wine and herbs. Sorry but they do." "How primitive!" said Wiz. "So bad for you all this meat eating. How fortunate that I chose to become a hare and not a tiger. Your grass is really excellent."]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Concept: Fanciful

Table of Contents

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Simple Plot

Topic

*Space

Changes

Magic

Language

Wizard

*Animals

Aliens

Romance

Low Frequency Words

ability	abroad	acre	aliens	amazement
astonishing	astonishment	avail	calves	colleagues
conversation	d'you	dewy	disappointed	duster
enormously	europaeus	excellent	extraterrestrials	fortunate
fully	gateway	general	grooming	handsome
harvesting	hedge	herbs	herd	hind
ignorant	imagined	incidentally	inquiring	instance
intend	interplanetary	jugged	kernels	languages
latin	lepus	likely	longhanger	loped
loping	magical	magician	microsurgery	midsummer
milker	milking	mistaking	motionless	natives
nowadays	occidentalis	omnilingual	paddock	parlor
pars	partians	pasture	perfected	prick
primitive	quieted	reappear	ridiculous	ripeness
roan	rustling	satellite	sheepdog	sideways
solar	specimen	squashed	squatting	stalks
stillness	tawny	tearing	technology	terribly
terrified	theories	throughout	tornado	transform
trudged	vortex	warn	wheatfield	whirling
wiltshire	witchcraft	woken