Text Leveling System

Mr. Popper's Penguins

RDQ:	1152	Max Word/Sent	34	Total Words	1615		Diff Words	527
Lex	770	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	1141	70.7%	Hi freq	226	42.9%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	18.4	Low Freq occurs	79	4.9%	Low freq	55	10.4%

Stillwater
It as an afternoon in late September.
In the pleasant little city of Stillwater
Mr. Popper the house painter
was going home from work.
He was carrying his buckets his
ladders and his boards so that he had rather a hard time
moving along. He was spattered here and there with
paint and calcimine and there were bits of wallpaper
clinging to his hair and whiskers for he was rather an
untidy man.
The children looked up from their play to smile at him]]
as he passed and the housewives seeing him said "Oh 
dear there goes Mr. Popper. I must remember to ask 
John to have the house painted over in the spring."]]
No one knew what went on inside of Mr. Popper's 
head and no one guessed that he would one day be the 
most famous person in Stillwater.
 He was a dreamer. Even when he was busiest smoothing 
down the paste on the wallpaper or painting the outside 
of other people's houses he would forget what he 
was doing. Once he had painted three sides of a kitchen 
green and the other side yellow. The housewife instead 
of being angry and making him do it over had liked it 
so well that she had made him leave it that way. And all 
the other housewives when they saw it admired it too 
so that pretty soon everybody in Stillwater had two-
colored kitchens.
The reason Mr. Popper was so absent-minded was that 
he was always dreaming about far-away countries. He 
had never been out of Stillwater. Not that he was 
unhappy. He had a nice little house of his own a wife 
whom he loved dearly and two children named Janie 
and Bill. Still it would have been nice he often thought 
if he could have seen something of the world before he]] 
met Mrs. Popper and settled down. He had never hunted 
tigers in India or climbed the peaks of the Himalayas 
or dived for pearls in the South Seas. Above all he had 
never seen the Poles.
That was what he regretted most of all. He had never 
seen those great shining white expanses of ice and snow. 
How he wished that he had been a scientist instead of a 
house painter in Stillwater so that he might have joined 
some of the great Polar expeditions. Since he could not 
go he was always thinking about them.
Whenever he heard that a Polar movie was in town he 
was the first person at the ticket-window and often he 
sat through three shows. Whenever the town library had 
a new book about the Arctic or the Antarctic - the North 
Pole or the South Pole - Mr. Popper was the first to 
borrow it. Indeed he had read so much about Polar 
explorers that he could name all of them and tell you what 
each had done. He was quite an authority on the subject.
His evenings were the best time of all. Then he could 
sit down in his little house and read about those cold 
regions at the top and bottom of the earth. As he read 
he could take the little globe that Janie and Bill had 
given him the Christmas before and search out the exact 
spot he was reading about.
So now as he made his way through the streets he 
was happy because the day was over and because it was 
the end of September.
When he came to the gate of the neat little bungalow 
at 432 Proudfoot Avenue he turned in.
"Well my love" he said setting down his buckets 
and ladders and boards and kissing Mrs. Popper "the 
decorating season is over. I have painted all the kitchens 
in Stillwater; I have papered all the rooms in the new 
apartment building on Elm Street. There is no more 
work until spring when people will want their houses 
painted."
Mrs. Popper sighed. "I sometimes wish you had the 
kind of work that lasted all year instead of just from 
spring until fall" she said. "It will be very nice to have 
you at home for a vacation of course but it is a little]] 
hard to sweep with a man sitting around reading all 
day."
"I could decorate the house for you."
"No indeed" said Mrs. Popper firmly. "Last year 
you painted the bathroom four different times because 
you had nothing else to do and I think that is enough 
of that. But what worries me is the money. I have saved 
a little and I daresay we can get along as we have other 
winters. No more roast beef no more ice cream not 
even on Sundays."
"Shall we have beans every day?" asked Janie and Bill 
coming in from play.
"I'm afraid so" said Mrs. Popper. "Anyway go wash 
your hands for supper. And Papa put away this litter 
of paints because you won't be needing them for quite 
a while."]] 
The Voice in the Air
THAT EVENING when the little 
Poppers had been put to bed Mr. 
and Mrs. Popper settled down for a 
long quiet evening. The neat living 
room at 432 Proudfoot Avenue was
much like all the other living rooms in Stillwater except 
that the walls were hung with pictures from the National 
Geographic Magazine. Mrs. Popper picked up her mending 
while Mr. Popper collected his pipe his book and 
his globe.]] 
From time to time Mrs. Popper sighed a little as she thought about the long winter ahead. Would there really be enough beans to last she wondered.
Mr. Popper was not worried however. As he put on his spectacles he was quite pleased at the prospect of a whole winter of reading travel books with no work to interrupt him. He set his little globe beside him and began to read.
"What are you reading?" asked Mrs. Popper.
"I am reading a book called Antarctic Adventures. It is very interesting. It tells all about the different people who have gone to the South Pole and what they have found there."
"Don't you ever get tired of reading about the South Pole?"
"No I don't. Of course I would much rather go there than read about it. But reading is the next best thing."
"I think it must be very boring down there" said Mrs. Popper. "It sounds very dull and cold with all that ice and snow."]] 
"Oh no" answered Mr. Popper. "You wouldn't think it was dull if you had gone with me to see the movies of the Drake Expedition at the Bijou last year."
"Well I didn't and I don't think any of us will have any money for movies now" answered Mrs. Popper a little sharply. She was not at all a disagreeable woman but she sometimes got rather cross when she was worried about money.
"If you had gone my love" went on Mr. Popper "you would have seen how beautiful the Antarctic is. But I think the nicest part of all is the penguins. No wonder all the men on that expedition had such a good time playing with them. They are the funniest birds in the world. They don't fly like other birds. They walk erect like little men. When they get tired of walking they just lie down on their stomachs and slide. It would be very nice to have one for a pet."
"Pets!" said Mrs. Popper. "First it's Bill wanting a dog and then Janie begging for a kitten. Now you and penguins! But I won't have any pets around. They make]] 
too much dirt in the house and I have enough work now trying to keep this place tidy. To say nothing of what it costs to feed a pet. Anyway we have the bowl of goldfish."
"Penguins are very intelligent" continued Mr. Popper. "Listen to this Mamma. It says here that when they want to catch some shrimps they all crowd over to the edge of an ice bank. Only they don't just jump in because a sea leopard might be waiting to eat the penguins. So they crowd and push until they manage to shove one penguin off to see if it's safe. I mean if he doesn't get eaten up the rest of them know it's safe for them all to jump in."
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Popper in a shocked tone. "They sound to me like pretty heathen birds."
"It's a queer thing" said Mr. Popper "that all the polar bears live at the North Pole and all the penguins at the South Pole. I should think the penguins would like the North Pole too if they only knew how to get there."
At ten o'clock Mrs. Popper yawned and laid down her]] 
mending. "Well you can go on reading about those heathen birds but I am going to bed. Tomorrow is Thursday September thirtieth and I have to go to the first meeting of the Ladies' Aid and Missionary Society."
"September thirtieth!" said Mr. Popper in an excited tone. "You don't mean that tonight is Wednesday September twenty-ninth?"
"Why yes I suppose it is. But what of it?" Mr. Popper put down his book of Antarctic Adventures and moved hastily to the radio.
"What of it!" he repeated pushing the switch. "Why this is the night the Drake Antarctic Expedition is going to start broadcasting."
"That's nothing" said Mrs. Popper. "Just a lot of men at the bottom of the world saying 'Hello Mamma. Hello Papa.'"
"Sh!" commanded Mr. Popper laying his ear close to the radio.
There was a buzz and then suddenly from the South Pole a faint voice floated out into the Popper living room.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concept: Fanciful

Sequence of Events: Chronological

Features

Character development

Topic

*Animals

Animals: Ocean

*Entertainment & Fun

*Family & Friends

Performing

Pets

Birds

Low Frequency Words

adventures	antarctic	authority	borrow	bungalow
busiest	calcimine	collected	daresay	disagreeable
erect	expanses	expedition	expeditions	geographic
hastily	heathen	himalayas	housewife	housewives
intelligent	interrupt	janie	ladies	leopard
mamma	manage	mending	minded	missionary
national	ninth	papered	pearls	penguin
penguins	pleasant	prospect	proudfoot	regions
regretted	scientist	season	shove	smoothing
society	spattered	spectacles	stillwater	stomachs
thirtieth	tidy	untidy	whiskers	yawned