Text Leveling System

Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm

RDQ:	745	Max Word/Sent	29	Total Words	1287		Diff Words	456
Lex	690	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	869	67.5%	Hi freq	196	43%
AR	3.2	Long Sentences	10	Low Freq occurs	77	6%	Low freq	55	12.1%

Harvey Potter was a very strange
fellow indeed. He was a farmer, but he
didn't farm like my daddy did. He farmed
a genuine, U. S. Government Inspected
Balloon Farm.
No one knew exactly how he did it.
Some folks said that it wasn't real - that it
was magic. But I know what I saw, and
those were real, actual balloons growing
out of the plain old ground!]]
Harvey Potter had some of the prettiest
colors you'd ever want to see on a 
balloon. Pleasin' Purple, Orange-Ray Sun,
Yellin' Yellow. There was Rip-Two Shot
Red, and Jelly-Bean Black, Bloomin' Blue,
and Grassy Green.]]
He had all kinds of shapes, too. Round
balloons. Long ones. Animal shapes.
Clowns with big noses and mouths. He 
even grew monster balloons with scary
faces and great big sharp teeth in time
for Halloween.]]
I tell you, Harvey Potter was a strange
fellow all right. To look at him, he was 
quite plain. Never wore nothin' to draw 
attention to himself. His hair was kept
close cropped to his head. Overalls with
a shirt underneath were his uniform.
There was nothin' special about his face,
either.
What wasn't so plain about him was
the conjure stick he carried with him
wherever he went. Sometimes he used it
to scratch his back, but mostly he just 
carried it under his arm.]]
It was Wheezle Mayfield who called
the Government on him. Sot the Government
came out to Harvey Potter's balloon
farm bright and early one morning. Our
whole town turned out for them. And,
though nobody said what they thought,
we all held our breath hoping we could
keep our balloons.]]
We never knowed how to grow nothin'
but trees - maple, sycamore, pine, oak -
and regular kinds of stuff like corn and
okra and tomatoes. But Harvey Potter
grew balloons. And no one knew what he
used for seed, either.]]
Anyway, the Government men were
standing around in white coats and
white hats and white gloves. They kept
us so far back we could hardly see, but
I climbed right up in the sycamore tree
and saw everything.]]
They pulled and they poked and finally
they pricked on of those plants with a
pin. And what was supposed to happen
did - the balloon popped. Even they
couldn't argue with that.]]
So they gave Harvey Potter the right to
grow balloons. He never asked them for
it, mind you. But he took it anyway, just
to be polite. Let me tell you, it made
everybody happy. Well, almost everybody.
Wheezle was sore.]]
Now, I had quite an interest in Harvey
Potter's balloon farm. And I decided I
was going to get to know him. He didn't 
seem to mind. In fact, he let me get to
know him right good. I'd bring him 
lemonade, or sit on his porch and swing in
his swing, but he never would confide in
me about how he grew those balloons. I
didn't pry. After a while, I just liked going
around him. He didn't ask you not questions
about why you weren't this or that.
He just let a person be. He let a person sit
and think out loud sometimes, and...
well...that's a mighty good thing to do.
Still, something in me was a-hankering
to know. So I decided I was just going
to go out there in the nighttime. That was 
when he did his field work - I told you he
was strange.]]
To this day, I am indebted to that sycamore
 tree and to that big ole moon. It was 
as full as it was wide that night. I saw 
him the second he opened his door, plain 
as day.
He stood there on his front porch, 
hands inside his pockets, looking 
straight ahead where the fields were. 
That conjure stick was under his arm. He 
just stood there, eyes staring straight 
ahead at something off yonder ways. 
Then he came down off that porch.
Step, step, step. His steps all seemed 
so big and so loud-it must have been his 
heavy field shoes. He walked down to the 
field and, without a sign of warning, 
commenced to holler.]]
The next thing I knew, he started
dancing and prancing with that stick held out
in front of him, like it was his dancing
partner. Then that stick started to glow a
nice orangey color and stood up directly 
on its own. And when it rose up into the
air, Harvey Potter rose up right along
with it.]] 
The two of them were making some 
mighty fine footwork, six feet or so off 
the ground! They were a-floatin' and a-
bobbin'. Why, it appeared as if the two of 
them had turned into glowing balloons 
themselves! Altogether it was a very 
strange sight, which got even stranger.
Harvey Potter dropped back down to 
earth, grabbed hold of that stick, and 
waved it 'round over his head. He 
whooped and he hollered and he yelled 
as he carried on so. Eeee Ya-Ya 
Ya ya ya ya ya, Eeee Ya Ya Ya Ya.""
I am not ashamed to say I was a-
mighty scared. I would've jumped right 
down and run for home, but my eyes 
were just plain glued to Harvey Potter. 
Then Harvey let go of that stick and it 
started to bounce and float over the field, 
dropping down here and there in nice 
neat rows. And all the while, Harvey 
Potter just kept a-whoopin' and a
screechin'. ""Eeee Ya-Ya Ya ya ya ya ya, 
Eeee Ya Ya Ya Ya!"" All of a sudden 
that stick came to a complete halt and 
flew right back into his hand.]]
That's when Harvey Potter stopped screeching.
He turned around and looked directly up at that
sycamore tree. I thought for sure he saw me. But I
guess not, 'cause he turned back on around and
went into his house and didn't come out again.]] 
I climbed down and fell off to sleep 
waiting. In the morning, when I woke up 
wet with dew and shivering cold, little
bitty colored mounds were popping up 
all over the ground. When I ran back 
after suppertime, they had all come up 
in the glory of that day's sun. I tell you, 
it was a sight!
Harvey Potter saw me out there in his 
fields admiring his latest crop of balloons. 
He said I could take as many as I 
wanted. I took three. A clown, and an 
elephant, and I couldn't resist the Jelly-Bean 
Black one. I didn't touch the monster ones
 on account of they were too plain scary.]]
Oh, those were the times! Harvey
Potter went right on growing the best
prettiest balloons this side of anywhere.
And we never heard a word from the
Government men again, either.]]
As for Wheezle Mayfield, he was so
riled up over the fun we were having with
our balloons, he packed up and moved
off to parts unknown.]]
I remember those days well. It was the
summer of '59, when I was hankering to
leave home myself to find out what the
world had to offer. Harvey Potter grew
me a balloon that was big enough to
carry me off. That's how I landed in this
place here. I never did go back home and
never did want to. This here place was
just right for me.]]
These days I farm. And I am not one to brag, but
I have harvested my thirty-second crop of 
balloons. Now, I don't grow mine the exact same way
as Harvey Potter does on account of I am not
Harvey Potter. I have my own methods. Maybe
I'll show you someday.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Some support

Inferences: Some implications

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Concept: Fanciful

Features

Character traits

Mood/tone

First Person

Dialect/Accents

Topic

Toys

*Plants

Magic

Farms

Gardens/Gardening

*Family & Friends

*Feelings, Behaviors

Low Frequency Words

account	actual	admiring	bloomin	bobbin'
commenced	confide	conjure	cropped	fellow
floatin	glory	glued	government	halloween
halt	hankering	harvested	holler	hollered
hoping	indebted	inspected	knowed	lemonade
maple	mayfield	methods	mounds	nighttime
nothin	okra	ole	orangey	overalls
partner	pleasin	pockets	potter	potter's
prettiest	pricked	resist	riled	screechin'
sot	suppertime	sycamore	unknown	wheezle
whooped	whoopin	would've	yellin	yonder