Text Leveling System

Tuck Everlasting

RDQ:	2929	Max Word/Sent	53	Total Words	2488		Diff Words	788
Lex	1060	Ave Word/.Sent	14	Hi Freq occurs	1832	73.6%	Hi freq	337	42.8%
AR	6.8	Long Sentences	31.4	Low Freq occurs	166	6.7%	Low freq	143	18.1%

The first week of August hangs at the very top of 
summer the top of the live-long year like the highest 
seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. 
The weeks that come before are only a climb from 
balmy spring and those that follow a drop to the 
chill of autumn but the first week of August is 
motionless and hot. It is curiously silent too with blank 
white dawns and glaring noons and sunsets smeared 
with too much color. Often at night there is lightning 
but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder 
no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless 
days the dog days when people are led to do things 
they are sure to be sorry for after.
One day at that time not so very long ago three 
things happened and at first there appeared to be no 
connection between them.]]
At dawn Mae Tuck set out on her horse for the 
wood at the edge of the village of Treegap. She was 
going there as she did once every ten years to meet 
her two sons Miles and Jesse.
At noontime Winnie Foster whose family owned 
the Treegap wood lost her patience at last and 
decided to think about running away.
And at sunset a stranger appeared at the Fosters' 
gate. He was looking for someone but he didn't say who.
No connection you would agree. But things can 
come together in strange ways. The wood was at the 
center the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a 
hub. A Ferris wheel has one as the sun is the hub of 
the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are and 
best left undisturbed for without them nothing 
holds together. But sometimes people find this out 
too late.]]
The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long 
before by a herd of cows who were to say the least 
relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles 
swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of 
a small hill ambled down again between fringes of 
bee-hung clover and then cut sidewise across a 
meadow. Here its edges blurred. It widened and 
seemed to pause suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: 
slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of 
the infinite. And then it went on again and came at 
last to the wood. But on reaching the shadows of the 
first trees it veered sharply swung out in a wide arc 
as if for the first time it had reason to think where it 
was going and passed around.
On the other side of the wood the sense of 
easiness dissolved. The road no longer belonged to the]]
cows. It became instead and rather abruptly the 
property of people. And all at once the sun was 
uncomfortably hot the dust oppressive and the meager 
grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn. 
On the left stood the first house a square and solid 
cottage with a touch-me-not appearance surrounded 
by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by 
a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly 
said "Move on-we don't want you here." So the 
road went humbly by and made its way past cottages 
more and more frequent but less and less forbidding 
into the village. But the village doesn't matter 
except for the jailhouse and the gallows. The first house 
only is important; the first house the road and the wood.
There was something strange about the wood. If 
the look of the first house suggested that you'd better 
pass it by so did the look of the wood but for quite 
a different reason. The house was so proud of itself 
that you wanted to make a lot of noise as you passed 
and maybe even throw a rock or two. But the wood 
had a sleeping otherworld appearance that made 
you want to speak in whispers. This at least is what 
the cows must have thought: "Let it keep its peace; 
we won't disturb it."
Whether the people felt that way about the wood 
or not is difficult to say. There were some perhaps 
who did. But for the most part the people followed]]
the road around the wood because that was the way 
it led. There was no road through the wood. And 
anyway for the people there was another reason to 
leave the wood to itself: it belonged to the Fosters 
the owners of the touch-me-not cottage and was 
therefore private property in spite of the fact that it 
lay outside the fence and was perfectly accessible.
The ownership of land is an odd thing when you 
come to think of it. How deep after all can it go? If 
a person owns a piece of land does he own it all the 
way down in ever narrowing dimensions till it meets 
all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does 
ownership consist only of a thin crust under which 
the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
In any case the wood being on top-except of 
course for its roots-was owned bud and bough by 
the Fosters in the touch-me-not cottage and if they 
never went there if they never wandered in among 
the trees well that was their affair. Winnie the only 
child of the house never went there though she 
sometimes stood inside the fence carelessly banging 
a stick against the iron bars and looked at it. But she 
had never been curious about it. Nothing ever seems 
interesting when it belongs to you-only when it 
doesn't.
And what is interesting anyway about a slim few 
acres of trees? There will be a dimness shot through 
with bars of sunlight a great many squirrels and]]
birds a deep damp mattress of leaves on the ground 
and all the other things just as familiar if not so 
pleasant-things like spiders thorns and grubs.
In the end however it was the cows who were 
responsible for the wood's isolation and the cows 
through some wisdom they were not wise enough to 
know that they possessed were very wise indeed. If 
they had made their road through the wood instead 
of around it then the people would have followed 
the road. The people would have noticed the giant 
ash tree at the center of the wood and then in time 
they'd have noticed the little spring bubbling up 
among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there 
to conceal it. And that would have been a disaster so 
immense that this weary old earth owned or not to 
its fiery core would have trembled on its axis like a 
beetle on a pin.]]
And so at dawn that day in the first week of August 
Mae Tuck woke up and lay for a while beaming at 
the cobwebs on the ceiling. At last she said aloud 
"The boys'll be home tomorrow!"
Mae's husband on his back beside her did not 
stir. He was still asleep and the melancholy creases 
that folded his daytime face were smoothed and slack. 
He snored gently and for a moment the corners of 
his mouth turned upward in a smile. Tuck almost 
never smiled except in sleep.
Mae sat up in bed and looked at him tolerantly. 
"The boys'll be home tomorrow" she said again a 
little more loudly.
Tuck twitched and the smile vanished. He opened 
his eyes. "Why'd you have to wake me up?" he 
sighed. "I was having that dream again the good]]
one where we're all in heaven and never heard of 
Treegap."
Mae sat there frowning a great potato of a woman 
with a round sensible face and calm brown eyes. "It's 
no use having that dream" she said. "Nothing's 
going to change."
"You tell me that every day" said Tuck turning 
away from her onto his side. "Anyways I can't help 
what I dream."
"Maybe not" said Mae. "But all the same you 
should've got used to things by now."
Tuck groaned. "I'm going back to sleep" he said. 
"Not me" said Mae. "I'm going to take the horse 
and go down to the wood to meet them."
"Meet who?"
"The boys Tuck! Our sons. I'm going to ride 
down to meet them."
"Better not do that" said Tuck.
"I know" said Mae "but I just can't wait to see 
them. Anyways it's ten years since I went to 
Treegap. No one'll remember me. I'll ride in at sunset
 just to the wood. I won't go into the village. But 
even if someone did see me they won't remember. 
They never did before now did they?"
"Suit yourself then" said Tuck into his pillow. 
"I'm going back to sleep."
Mae Tuck climbed out of bed and began to dress:
three petticoats a rusty brown skirt with one enormous ]]
pocket an old cotton jacket and a knitted 
shawl which she pinned across her bosom with a 
tarnished metal brooch. The sounds of her dressing 
were so familiar to Tuck that he could say without 
opening his eyes "You don't need that shawl in the 
middle of the summer."
Mae ignored this observation. Instead she said 
"Will you be all right? We won't get back till late 
tomorrow."
Tuck rolled over and made a rueful face at her. 
"What in the world could possibly happen to me?" 
"That's so" said Mae. "I keep forgetting."
"I don't" said Tuck. "Have a nice time." And in 
a moment he was asleep again.
Mae sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a 
pair of short leather boots so thin and soft with age 
it was a wonder they held together. Then she stood 
and took from the washstand beside the bed a little 
square-shaped object a music box painted with roses 
and lilies of the valley. It was the one pretty thing 
she owned and she never went anywhere without it. 
Her fingers strayed to the winding key on its bottom 
but glancing at the sleeping Tuck she shook her 
head gave the little box a pat and dropped it into 
her pocket. Then last of all she pulled down over 
her ears a blue straw hat with a drooping exhausted 
brim.
But before she put on the hat she brushed her]]
gray-brown hair and wound it into a bun at the back 
of her neck. She did this quickly and skillfully without 
a single glance in the mirror. Mae Tuck didn't 
need a mirror though she had one propped up on 
the washstand. She knew very well what she would 
see in it; her reflection had long since ceased to 
interest her. For Mae Tuck and her husband and 
Miles and Jesse too had all looked exactly the same 
for eighty-seven years.]]
At noon of that same day in the first week of August
Winnie Foster sat on the bristly grass just inside the 
fence and said to the large toad who was squatting a 
few yards away across the road "I will though.
You'll see. Maybe even first thing tomorrow while 
everyone's still asleep."
It was hard to know whether the toad was listening 
or not. Certainly Winnie had given it good reason 
to ignore her. She had come out to the fence very 
cross very near the boiling point on a day that was 
itself near to boiling and had noticed the toad at 
once. It was the only living thing in sight except for 
a stationary cloud of hysterical gnats suspended in 
the heat above the road. Winnie had found some 
pebbles at the base of the fence and for lack of any 
other way to show how she felt had flung one at the]]
toad. It missed altogether as she'd fully intended it 
should but she made a game of it anyway tossing 
pebbles at such an angle that they passed through 
the gnat cloud on their way to the toad. The gnats 
were too frantic to notice these intrusions however 
and since every pebble missed its final mark the toad 
continued to squat and grimace without so much as 
a twitch. Possibly it felt resentful. Or perhaps it was 
only asleep. In either case it gave her not a glance 
when at last she ran out of pebbles and sat down to 
tell it her troubles.
"Look here toad" she said thrusting her arms 
through the bars of the fence and plucking at the 
weeds on the other side. "I don't think I can stand it 
much longer."
At this moment a window at the front of the cottage 
was flung open and a thin voice-her grandmother's
- piped "Winifred! Don't sit on that dirty 
grass. You'll stain your boots and stockings."
And another firmer voice - her mother's - added 
"Come in now Winnie. Right away. You'll get heat 
stroke out there on a day like this. And your lunch 
is ready."
"See?" said Winnie to the toad. "That's just what 
I mean. It's like that every minute. If I had a sister 
or a brother there'd be someone else for them to 
watch. But as it is there's only me. I'm tired of being 
looked at all the time. I want to be by myself for a]]
change." She leaned her forehead against the bars a
nd after a short silence went on in a thoughtful tone. 
"I'm not exactly sure what I'd do you know but 
something interesting-something that's all mine. 
Something that would make some kind of difference 
in the world. It'd be nice to have a new name to 
start with one that's not all worn out from being 
called so much. And I might even decide to have a 
pet. Maybe a big old toad like you that I could keep 
in a nice cage with lots of grass and . . ."
At this the toad stirred and blinked. It gave a heave 
of muscles and plopped its heavy mudball of a body 
a few inches farther away from her.
"I suppose you're right" said Winnie. "Then
 you'd be just the way I am now. Why should you 
have to be cooped up in a cage too? It'd be better if 
I could be like you out in the open and making up 
my own mind. Do you know they've hardly ever let 
me out of this yard all by myself? I'll never be able 
to do anything important if I stay in here like this. I 
expect I'd better run away." She paused and peered 
anxiously at the toad to see how it would receive this 
staggering idea but it showed no signs of interest. 
"You think I wouldn't dare don't you?" she said 
accusingly. "I will though. You'll see. Maybe even 
first thing in the morning while everyone's still 
asleep."
"Winnie!" came the firm voice from the window.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Colorful, figurative

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Difficult

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Abstract/Difficult

Chapters

Mature concepts: With common experiences or clear fantasy

Features

Complex Problem/Solution

Complex plot

Symbolism

Personification

Metaphors

Topic

Time

Age/Aging

Life Cycle

Low Frequency Words

abruptly	accessible	accusingly	acres	ambled
angle	angles	anxiously	anyways	axis
balmy	blurred	bosom	bough	bovine
boys'll	breathless	bristly	brooch	calendar
conceal	consist	contemplation	cooped	curious
curiously	curves	dawns	dimensions	dissolved
drooping	easiness	edges	enclosed	exhausted
familiar	ferris	fiery	flung	forbidding
forlorn	foster	fosters	frantic	frequent
fully	gallows	glance	glancing	glaring
gnats	grimace	heave	herd	humbly
hysterical	ignore	ignored	immense	infinite
intended	intrusions	isolation	jailhouse	knitted
lilies	mattress	meadow	meager	melancholy
motionless	mudball	narrowing	noons	noontime
object	one'll	oppressive	otherworld	ownership
painfully	patience	pause	paused	pauses
peace	peered	petticoats	piped	pleasant
plucking	possessed	private	property	propped
quivers	ragged	reflection	relieving	resentful
responsible	rueful	sensible	shawl	should've
sidewise	skillfully	slack	smoothed	somewhat
spite	squat	squatting	staggering	stationary
stirred	stockings	strayed	suggesting	surrounded
suspended	tangent	tarnished	thoughtful	thrusting
tolerantly	tranquil	treegap	trespassing	twitch
twitched	uncomfortably	undisturbed	upward	wandered
washstand	weary	wheeling	whispers	why'd
widened	winifred	wisdom