Text Leveling System

A Single Shard

RDQ:	2366	Max Word/Sent	52	Total Words	3473		Diff Words	1048
Lex	950	Ave Word/.Sent	14	Hi Freq occurs	2472	71.2%	Hi freq	404	38.5%
AR	5.6	Long Sentences	23.8	Low Freq occurs	251	7.2%	Low freq	215	20.5%

"Eh, Tree-ear! Have you hungered well today?" Crane-man called out as Tree-ear drew near the bridge.
The well-fed of the village greeted each other politely by saying, "Have you eaten well today?" Tree-ear and his friend turned the greeting inside out for their own little joke.
Tree-ear squeezed the bulging pouch that he wore at his waist. He had meant to hold back the good news, but the excitement spilled out of him. "Crane-man! A good thing that you greeted me so just now, for later today we will have to use the proper words!" He held the bag high. Tree-ear was delighted when Crane-man's eyes widened in surprise. He knew that Crane-man would guess at once -only one thing could give a bag that kind of smooth fullness. Not carrot-tops or chicken bones, which protruded in odd lumps. No, the bag was filled with rice.
Crane-man raised his walking crutch in a salute.
"Come, my young friend! Tell me how you came by such a fortune-a tale worth hearing, no doubt!"
Tree-ear had been trotting along the road on his early morning perusal of the village rubbish heaps. Ahead of him a man carried a heavy load on a jiggeh, an open framed backpack made of branches. On the jiggeh was a large woven-straw container, the kind commonly used to carry rice.
Tree-ear knew that the rice must be from last year's crop; in the fields surrounding the village this season's rice had only just begun to grow. It would be many months before the rice was harvested and the poor allowed to glean the fallen grain from the bare fields. Only then would they taste the pure flavor of rice and feel its solid goodness in their bellies. just looking at the straw box made water rush into Tree-ear's mouth.
The man had paused in the road and hoisted the wooden jiggeh higher on his back, shifting the cumbersome weight. As Tree-ear stared, rice began to trickle out of a hole in the straw box. The trickle thickened and became a stream. Oblivious, the man continued on his way.
For a few short moments Tree-ear's thoughts wrestled with one another. Tell him-quickly! Before he loses too much rice!
No! Don't say anything: you will be able to pick up the fallen rice after he rounds the bend ...
Tree-ear made his decision. He waited until the man had reached the bend in the road, then ran to catch him.
"Honorable sir," Tree-ear said, panting and bowing. "As I walked behind you, I noticed that you are marking your path with rice!"
The farmer turned and saw the trail of rice. A well-built man with a broad suntanned face, he pushed his straw hat back, scratched his head, and laughed ruefully.
"Impatience," said the farmer. "I should have had this container woven with a double wall. But it would have taken more time. Now I pay for not waiting a bit longer." He struggled out of the jiggeh's straps and inspected the container. He prodded the straw to close the gap but to no avail, so he threw his arms up in mock despair. Tree-ear grinned. He liked the farmer's easygoing nature.
"Fetch me a few leaves, boy," said the farmer. Tree-ear complied, and the man stuffed them into the container as a temporary patch.
The farmer squatted to don the jiggeh. As he started walking, he called over his shoulder. "Good deserves good, urchin. The rice on the ground is yours if you can be troubled to gather it."
"Many thanks, kind sir!" Tree-ear bowed, very pleased with himself. He had made a lucky guess, and his waist pouch would soon be filled with rice.
Tree-ear had learned from Crane-man's example. Foraging in the woods and rubbish heaps, gathering fallen
grain-heads in the autumn-these were honorable ways to garner a meal, requiring time and work. But stealing and begging, Crane-man said, made a man no better than a dog.
"Work gives a man dignity, stealing takes it away," he often said.
Following Crane-man's advice was not always easy for Tree-ear. Today, for example. Was it stealing, to wait as Tree-ear had for more rice to fall before alerting the man that his rice bag was leaking? Did a good deed balance a bad one? Tree-ear often pondered these kinds of questions, alone or in discussion with Crane-man.
"Such questions serve in two ways," Crane-man had explained. "They keep a man's mind sharp-and his thoughts off his empty stomach."
Now, as always, he seemed to know Tree-ear's thoughts without hearing them spoken. "Tell me about this farmer," he said. "What kind of man was he?"
Tree-ear considered the question for several moments, stirring his memory. At last, he answered, "One who lacks patience-he said it himself. He had not wanted to wait for a sturdier container to be built. And he could not be bothered to pick up the fallen rice." Tree-ear paused. "But he laughed easily, even at himself."
"If he were here now, and heard you tell of waiting a little longer before speaking, what do you think he would say or do?"
"He would laugh," Tree-ear said, surprising himself
with the speed of his response. Then, more slowly, "I i Fink ... he would not have minded."
Crane-man nodded, satisfied. And Tree-ear thought of something his friend often said: Scholars read the great words of the world. But you and I must learn to read the world itself.
Free-ear was so called after the mushroom that grew in wrinkled half-circles on dead or fallen tree trunks, emerging from the rotten wood without benefit of parent seed. A good name for an orphan, Crane-man said. If ever Tree ear had had another name, he no longer remembered it, nor the family that might have named him so.
Tree-ear shared the space under the bridge with Crane-man-or rather, Crane-man shared it with him. After all, Crane-man had been there first, and would not be leaving anytime soon. The shriveled and twisted calf and foot he had been born with made sure of that.
Tree-ear knew the story of his friend's name. "When t hey saw my leg at birth, it was thought I would not survive," Crane-man had said. "Then, as I went through life on one leg, it was said that I was like a crane. But besides standing on one leg, cranes are also a symbol of long life." [rue enough, Crane-man added. He had outlived all his Family and, unable to work, had been forced to sell his possessions one by one, including, at last, the roof over his head. Thus it was that he had come to live under the bridge.
Once, a year or so earlier, Tree-ear had asked him how long he had lived there. Crane-man shook his head; he no longer remembered. But then he brightened and hobbled over to one side of the bridge, beckoning Tree-ear to join him.
"I do not remember how long I have been here," he said, "but I know how long you have." And he pointed upward, to the underside of the bridge. "I wonder that I have not shown you this before."
On one of the slats was a series of deep scratches, as if made with a pointed stone. Tree-ear examined them, then shook his head at Crane-man. "So?"
"One mark for each spring since you came here," Crane-man explained. "I kept count of your years, for I thought the time would come when you would like to know how old you are."
Tree-ear looked again, this time with keen interest. There was a mark for each finger of both hands-ten marks in all.
Crane-man answered before Tree-ear asked. "No, you have more than ten years," he said. "When you first came and I began making those marks, you were in perhaps your second year-already on two legs and able to talk."
Tree-ear nodded. He knew the rest of the story already. Crane-man had learned but little from the man who had brought Tree-ear to the bridge. The man had been paid by a kindly monk in the city of Songdo to bring Tree-ear to the little seaside village of Ch'ulp'o. Tree-ear's parents had
died of fever, and the monk knew of an uncle in Ch'ulp'o. When the travelers arrived, the man discovered that i he uncle no longer lived there, the house having been abandoned long before. He took Tree-ear to the temple on the mountainside, but the monks had been unable to take the boy in because fever raged there as well. The villagers told the man to take the child to the bridge, where Crane-man would care for him until the temple was free of sickness.
"And," Crane-man always said, "when a monk came to fetch you a few months later, you would not leave. You clung to my good leg like a monkey to a tree, not crying but not letting go, either! The monk went away. You stayed."
When Tree-ear was younger, he had asked for the story often, as if hearing it over and over again might reveal something more-what his father's trade had been, what his mother had looked like, where his uncle had gone but there was never anything more. It no longer mattered. If there was more to having a home than Crane-man and the bridge, Tree-ear had neither knowledge nor need of it.
Breakfast that morning was a feast-a bit of the rice boiled to a gruel in a castoff earthenware pot, served up in a bowl carved from a gourd. And Crane-man produced yet another surprise to add to the meal: two chicken leg bones. No flesh remained on the arid bones, but the two friends cracked them open and worried away every scrap of marrow from inside.
Afterward, Tree-ear washed in the river and fetched a gourd of water for Crane-man, who never went into the river if he could help it; he hated getting his feet wet. Then Tree-ear set about tidying up the area under the bridge. He took care to keep the place neat, for he disliked having to clear a space to sleep at the tired end of the day.
Housekeeping complete, Tree-ear left his companion and set off back up the road. This time he did not zigzag between rubbish heaps but strode purposefully toward a small house set apart from the others at a curve in the road.
Tree-ear slowed as he neared the mud-and-wood structure. He tilted his head, listening, and grinned when the droning syllables of a song-chant reached his ears. The master potter Min was singing, which meant that it was a "throwing" day.
Min's house backed onto the beginnings of the foothills and their brushy growth, which gave way to pine-wooded mountains beyond. Tree-ear swung wide of the house. Under the deep eaves at the back, Min kept his potter's wheel. He was there now, his gray head bent over the wheel, chanting his wordless song.
Tree-ear made his way cautiously to his favorite spot, behind a paulownia tree whose low branches kept him hidden from view. He peeped through the leaves and caught his breath in delight. Min was just beginning a new pot.
Min threw a mass of clay the size of a cabbage onto the center of the wheel. He picked it up and threw it again, threw it several times. After one last throw he sat down and stared at the clay for a moment. Using his foot to spin the base of the wheel, he placed dampened hands on the sluggardly lump, and for the hundredth time Tree-ear watched the miracle.
In only a few moments the clay rose and fell, grew taller, then rounded down, until it curved into perfect symmetry. The spinning slowed. The chant, too, died out and became a mutter of words that Tree-ear could not hear.
Min sat up straight. He crossed his arms and leaned back a little, as if to see the vase from a distance. Turning the wheel slowly with his knee, he inspected the graceful shape for invisible faults. Then, "Pah!" He shook his head and in a single motion of disgust scooped up the clay and slapped it back onto the wheel, whereupon it collapsed into an oafish lump again, as if ashamed.
Tree-ear opened his mouth to let out his breath silently, only then realizing that he had been keeping it back. To his eyes the vase had been perfect, its width half its height, its curves like those of a flower petal. Why, he wondered, had Min found it unworthy? What had he seen that so displeased him?
Min never failed to reject his first attempt. Then he would repeat the whole process. This day Tree-ear was able to watch the clay rise and fall four times before Min
was satisfied. Each of the four efforts had looked identical to Tree-ear, but something about the fourth pleased Min. He took a length of twine and slipped it deftly under the vase to release it from the wheel, then placed the vase carefully on a tray to dry.
As Tree-ear crept away, he counted the days on his fingers. He knew the potter's routine well; it would be many days before another throwing day.
The village of Ch'ulp'o faced the sea, its back to the mountains and the river edging it like a neat seam. Its potters produced the delicate celadon ware that had achieved fame not only in Korea but as far away as the court of the Chinese emperor.
Ch'ulp'o had become an important village for ceramics by virtue of both its location and its soil. On the shore of the Western Sea, it had access both to the easiest sea route northward and to plentiful trade with China. And the clay from the village pits contained exactly the right amount of iron to produce the exquisite gray-green color of celadon so prized by collectors.
Tree-ear knew every potter in the village, but until recently he had known them only for their rubbish heaps. It was hard for him to believe that he had never taken the time to watch them at work before. In recent years the pottery from the village kilns had gained great favor among those wealthy enough to buy pieces as gifts for both the royal court and the Buddhist temples, and the potters had achieved new levels of prosperity. The pickings from their rubbish heaps had become richer in consequence, and for the first time Tree-ear was able to forget about his stomach for a few hours each day.
During those hours it was Min he chose to watch most closely. The other potters kept their wheels in small windowless shacks. But in the warm months Min preferred to work beneath the eaves behind his house, open to the breeze and the view of the mountains.
Working without walls meant that Min possessed great skill and the confidence to match it. Potters guarded their secrets jealously. A new shape for a teapot, a new inscribed design-these were things that the potters refused to reveal until a piece was ready to show to a buyer.
Min did not seem to care about such secrecy. It was as if he were saying, Go ahead, watch me. No matter you will not be able to imitate my shill.
It was true, and it was also the main reason that Tree-ear loved watching Min. His work was the finest in the region, perhaps even in the whole country.
Tree-car peered between the leaves of the paulownia tree, puzzled. Several days had passed since his last visit to Min's house, and he had calculated that it was time for another throwing day. But there was no sign of Min at his work, nor any wet clay on the wheel. The workshop area was tidy, with a few chickens in the yard the only signs of life.
Emboldened by the silence, Tree-ear emerged from his hiding place and approached the house. Against the wall was a set of shelves holding a few of Min's latest creations. They were at the stage the potters called "leather-hard" dried by the air but not yet glazed or fired. Unglazed, the work was of little interest to thieves. The finished pieces were surely locked up somewhere in the house.
Tree-ear paused at the edge of the brush and listened hard one last time. A hen clucked proudly, and Tree-ear grinned-Min would have an egg for his supper. But
There was still no sign of the potter, so Tree-ear tiptoed the last few steps to stand before the shelves.
For the first time he was seeing Min's work at close range. There was a duck that would have fit in the palm of his hand, with a tiny hole in its bill. Tree-ear had seen such a duck in use before. A painter had been sitting on the riverbank, working on a water scene. The painter had poured water from the duck's bill onto a stone a single drop at a time, mixing ink to exactly the correct consistency for his work.
Tree-ear stared at Min's duck. Though it was now a dull gray, so detailed were its features that he found himself half listening for the sound of a quack. Min had shaped and then carved the clay to form curve of wing and tilt of head. Even the little tail curled up with an impudence that made Tree-ear smile.
He tore his gaze away from the duck to examine the next piece, a tall jug with ribbed lines that imitated the shape of a melon. The lines were perfectly symmetrical, curving so gracefully from top to bottom that Tree-ear longed to run his finger along the smooth shallow grooves. the melon's stem and leaves were cleverly shaped to form the lid of the jug.
The last piece on the shelf was the least interesting-a rectangular lidded box as large as his two hands. It was completely undecorated. Disappointed in its plainness, Tree-ear was ready to turn away when a thought struck him. Outside, the box was plain, but perhaps inside. . .
Holding his breath, he reached out, gently lifted the lid, and looked inside. He grinned in double delight at his own correct guess and at Min's skill. The plain box held five smaller boxes-a small round one in the center and four curved boxes that fit around it perfectly The small boxes appeared to completely fill the larger container, but Min had left exactly the right amount of space to allow any of them to be lifted out.
Tree-ear put the lid of the large box down on the shelf and picked up one of the curved containers. On the underside of its lid was a lip of clay that held the lid in place. Tree-ear's eyes flickered back and forth between the small pieces in his hand and the larger container, his brow furrowed in thought.
How did Min fit them together so perfectly? Perhaps he made the large box, then a second one to fit inside, and cut the smaller boxes from that? Or did he make an inside box first and fit the larger box around it? Maybe he began with the small central box, then the curved ones, then Someone shouted. The chickens squawked noisily and Tree-ear dropped what he was holding. He stood there, paralyzed for a moment, then threw his hands up in front of his face to protect himself from the blows that were raining down on his head and shoulders.
It was the old potter. "Thief!" he screamed. "How dare you come here! How dare you touch my work!"
Tree-ear did the only thing he could think of. He dropped to his knees and cowered in a deep formal bow.
"Please! Please, honorable sir, I was not stealing your work-I came only to admire it."
Min's cane halted in mid-blow. The potter stood over the boy with the cane still poised for another strike. "Have you been here before, beggar-boy?"

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Character development

Integral Setting - Cultural/Regional

Simple Plot

Difficult names

Foreign words

Topic

Work

Determination

*Careers

*Life Styles

Poverty

Low Frequency Words

abandoned	access	achieved	advice	approached
arid	avail	beckoning	beggar	bowing
brushy	bulging	buyer	calculated	castoff
cautiously	celadon	ceramics	collectors	companion
complied	confidence	consequence	consistency	cowered
cumbersome	curled	curve	curved	curves
curving	dampened	decision	deftly	delicate
deserves	despair	dignity	disappointed	discussion
disliked	displeased	doubt	droning	earthenware
easygoing	eaves	edging	emboldened	emerged
emperor	exquisite	features	fetched	foothills
foraging	formal	fortune	fullness	furrowed
garner	gathering	glazed	glean	gourd
graceful	gracefully	grooves	growth	gruel
guarded	halted	harvested	height	hobbled
hoisted	honorable	housekeeping	hundredth	hungered
imitated	impatience	impudence	inscribed	inspected
invisible	jealously	keen	kilns	kindly
knowledge	lacks	levels	lidded	location
longed	marrow	mattered	melon	melon's
minded	miracle	mock	moments	monk
monks	motion	mountainside	mushroom	mutter
nature	neared	noisily	oafish	oblivious
outlived	paralyzed	patience	paulownia	paused
peered	perusal	pickings	plainness	plentiful
poised	pondered	possessed	possessions	potter
potter's	pottery	pouch	preferred	prized
process	prodded	produce	prosperity	protruded
pure	purposefully	raged	realizing	recent
recently	rectangular	refused	region	reject
requiring	response	reveal	ribbed	riverbank
rounded	route	routine	royal	rubbish
rue	ruefully	satisfied	seaside	season's
secrecy	series	shallow	shared	shelves
shill	shown	shriveled	sickness	sluggardly
songdo	squatted	stirring	strode	structure
suntanned	surely	surrounding	survive	syllables
symbol	symmetrical	symmetry	temporary	thieves
tidy	tidying	tilted	unable	undecorated
underside	unglazed	unworthy	upward	urchin
villagers	virtue	ware	wealthy	whereupon
widened	width	windowless	wooded	workshop
worth	woven	wrestled	wrinkled	younger