Text Leveling System

The Hundred Dresses

RDQ:	1478	Max Word/Sent	57	Total Words	1663		Diff Words	538
Lex	820	Ave Word/.Sent	13	Hi Freq occurs	1143	68.7%	Hi freq	227	42.2%
AR	4.3	Long Sentences	19.7	Low Freq occurs	63	3.8%	Low freq	52	9.7%

Today, Monday, Wanda petronski was not in her seat. But nobody, not even Peggy and Madeline, the girls who started all the fun, noticed her absence.

Usually Wanda sat in the next to the last seat in the last row in the room 13. She sat in the corner of the room where the rough boys who did not make good marks on their report cards sat; the corner of the room where there was most scuffling of feet, most roars of laughter when anything funny was said, and most mud and dirt on the floor.
Wanda did not sit there because she was rough and noisy. On the contrary she was quiet and rarely said anything at all. Sometimes she twisted her mouth into a crooked sort of smile, but that was all.

Nobody knew exactly why Wanda set in that seat unless it was because she came all the way from Boggins Heights, and her feet were usually caked with dried mud that she picked up coming down the country roads. Maybe the teacher liked to keep all the children who were apt to come in with dirty shoes in one corner of the room. But no one really talked much about Wanda petronski once she was in the classroom. The time they thought about her was outside of school hours, when they were coming back to school, or in the morning early before school began, when groups of two or three or even more would be talking and laughing on their way to the schoolyard.

And sometimes they waited for Wanda to have fun with her.

The next day Tuesday Wanda was not in school either. And nobody noticed her absence again except the teacher and probably big Bill Byron, who sat in the seat behind Wanda's and who could now put his long legs around his or her empty desk  one on each side and sit there like a frog to the great entertainment of all in his corner of the room.

But on Wednesday, Peggy and Maddie, who sat in the front row along with other children who got good marks and didn't track in a whole lot of mud, did notice that Wanda wasn't there. Peggy was the most popular girl in school. She was pretty; she had many pretty clothes and her auburn air was curly. Maddie was her closest friend.

The reason Peggy and Maddie noticed Wanda's absence was because Wanda had made them late to school. They had waited and waited for Wanda to have some fun with her and she just hadn't come. They kept  thinking she'd come any minute. He saw Jack Beggles running to school, his necktie askew and his cap at a Precarious tilt. They knew it must be late, for he always managed to slide into his chair exactly when the bell rang as though he were making a touchdown. Still they waited one minute more and one minute more, hoping she'd come. But finally we have to race off without seeing her.

The two girls reached their classroom after the doors have been closed. The children were reciting in unison the Gettysburg address, for that was the way Miss Mason always began the session. Peggy and Maddie slipped into their seats just as the class was saying the last lines. "That these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

After Peggy and Maddie stopped feeling like intruders in the class that had already begun, they looked across the room and noticed that Wanda was not in her seat. Furthermore her desk was dusty and looked as though she hadn't Been there yesterday either. Come to think of it they haven't seen her yesterday. They had waited or her a little while but have forgotten about her when they reached school.

They often waited for Wanda petronski to have fun with her.

Wanda lived on Boggins Heights, and Boggins Heights was no place to live. It was a good place to go and pick wildflowers in the summer, but you always held your breath till you got safely past old man Svenson's  yellow house. People in the town said old man Svenson was no good. He didn't work and, worse still, his house and yard were disgracefully dirty, with rusty tan canvas strewn about and even an old straw hat. He lived alone with his dog and his cat. No wonder, said the people of the town. Who would live with him? And many stories circulated about him and the stories were the kind that make people scurry past his house even in broad daylight and hope not to meet him.

Beyond Svenson's there were a few small scattered frame houses, and in one of these Wanda petronski lived with her father and her brother Jake.

Wanda petronski. Most of the children in room 13 didn't have names like that. They had named easy to say, like Thomas, Smith, or Allen. There was one boy named Bounce, William Bounce, and people thought that was funny but not funny in the same way that petronski was.

Wanda didn't have any friends. She came to school alone and went home alone. She always wore a faded blue dress that didn't hang right. It was clean, but it looked as though it had never been ironed properly. She didn't have any friends, but a lot of girls talked to her. They waited for her under the maple trees on the corner of Oliver Street. Or they surrounded her in the schoolyard as she stood watching some little girls play hopscotch on the worn hard ground.

"Wanda," Peggy would say in a most courteous manner, as though she were talking to Miss Mason or to the principal perhaps. "Wanda," she'd say, giving one of her friends and nudge, "tell us. How many dresses did you say you had hanging out in your closet?"

"A hundred," said Wanda.

"A hundred!" exclaimed all the girls incredulously, and the little girls would stop playing hopscotch and listen.

"Yeah, a hundred, all lined up," said Wanda. Then her thin lips drew together in silence.

"What are they like? All silk, I bet," said Peggy.

"Yeah, all silk, all colors."

"Velvet, too?"

"Yeah, velvet, too.  A hundred dresses," repeated Wanda stolidly. "All lined up in my closet."

Then they'd let her go. And then before she'd gone very far, they couldn't help bursting into shrieks and peals of laughter.

A hundred dresses! Obviously the only address Wanda had was the blue one she wore every day. So what did she say she had a hundred for? What a story! And the girls laughed derisively, while Wanda moved over to the sunny place by the ivy-covered brick wall of the school building where she usually stood and waited for the bell to ring.

But if the girls had met her at the corner Of Oliver St., they'd carry her along with them for a way, stopping every few feet or more incredulous questions. And it wasn't always dresses they talked about. Sometimes it was hats, or coats, or even shoes.

"How many shoes did you say you had?"

"Sixty.

"Sixty! Sixty pairs or sixty shoes?"

"Sixty pairs. All lined up in my closet."

"Yesterday you said fifty."

"Now I got sixty."
Price of exaggerated politeness greeted this.

"All alike?" Said the girls.

"Oh, no. Every care is different. All colors. All lined up." And Wanda would shift her eyes quickly from Peggy to a distant spot, as though she were looking far ahead, looking but not seeing anything.

Then the outer fringe of the crowd of girls would break away gradually, laughing, and little by little in pairs, the group would disperse. Peggy, who had thought up this game, and Maddie, her inseparable friend, were always the last to leave. And finally Wanda would move up the street, her eyes dull and her mouth closed tight, hitching her left shoulder every now and then in the funny way she had, finishing the walk to school alone.

Peggy was not really cruel. She protected small children from bullies. And she cried for hours if she saw an animal mistreated. If anybody had said to her, "don't you think that is a cruel way to treat Wanda?" She would have been surprised. Cruel? What did the girl want to go and say she had a hundred dresses for? Anybody could tell that was a lie. Why did she want to lie? And she wasn't just an ordinary person, else why would she have a name like that? Anyway, they never made her cry.

As for Maddie, this business of asking Wanda every day how many dresses and how many hats and how many this and that she had was bothering her. Maddie was poor herself. She usually wore somebody's hand-me-down clothes. Thank goodness she didn't live up on Boggins Heights or have a funny name. At her for head didn't Shine the Way Wanda's round one did. What did she use on it? Sapolio? That's what all the girls wanted to know.

Sometimes when Peggy was asking Wanda those questions in that mock polite voice,  Maddie felt embarrassed and studied the marbles in the palm of her hand, rolling them around and saying nothing herself. Not that she felt sorry for Wanda exactly. She would never have paid any attention to Wanda if Peggy hadn't invented the dresses game. But suppose Peggy and all the others started in on her next explanation she wasn't as poor as Wanda perhaps, but she was poor. Of course she would have more sense than to say a hundred dresses. Still she would not like them to begin on her. Not at all! Oh, dear! She did wish they would stop teasing Wanda petronski.

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

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Headings

Features

Character traits

Character development

Complex character relationships

Simple Plot

Difficult names

Topic

Inclusion

Teasing

Bullies

Behaviors

*Feelings, Behaviors

Low Frequency Words

absence	apt	askew	auburn	circulated
contrary	courteous	cruel	derisively	disgracefully
disperse	embarrassed	exaggerated	freedom	furthermore
gettysburg	government	gradually	heights	hoping
hopscotch	incredulous	incredulously	inseparable	intruders
ironed	ivy	laughter	maple	mistreated
mock	nation	necktie	nudge	ordinary
peals	politeness	precarious	properly	reciting
rough	sapolio	schoolyard	scuffling	scurry
stolidly	strewn	studied	surrounded	unison
vain	velvet	wildflowers