Text Leveling System

Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters

RDQ:	3008	Max Word/Sent	35	Total Words	4196		Diff Words	1293
Lex	1080	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	3026	72.1%	Hi freq	514	39.8%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	10.3	Low Freq occurs	381	9.1%	Low freq	316	24.4%

It was winter in New York City and the days were short. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun already hung low over the horizon, casting sharp pink light on the clouds above the skyscrapers.
Cornelia S. Englehart lagged five steps behind her classmate Lauren Brannigan as they walked down the street. School had just ended for the day.
Lauren wheeled around to face Cornelia, her long blond braids whipping through the air. "Come on, Cornelia," she said irritably, as if Cornelia were her annoying little sister. "Hurry up."
Cornelia reluctantly quickened her pace.
"So, what do you want to do this afternoon?" Lauren
 
asked without enthusiasm after they had walked several blocks in complete silence.
Now, in certain circles, Cornelia was renowned for her extreme reserve. Some girls always have a coterie of pretty friends, sisters, and cousins fluttering around them but not her. She spent most of her time alone and hadn't had playmates since nursery school. Party invitations and after school playdates had become few and far between. And when Cornelia did get asked over to someone's house, she was terribly out of practice and awkward.
"We can do whatever you want," Cornelia answered, her breath forming a misty cloud in the cold air.
Lauren sighed impatiently. "Well, I just got some new American Girl play scripts for Christmas," she said. "Maybe we can dress up and act one of them out."
Cornelia's heart sank. "I've never done a play before," she said, longing for her warm bedroom at home, with her armchair and all of her books.
"Fine," Lauren said. "My older sister just got a karaoke machine as one of her presents. Why don't we use that?"
What a nightmare, Cornelia thought. "I don't like singing either," she said.
Lauren lost her patience. "What do you like to do, then?" she snapped, staring at Cornelia.
"We could play Scrabble," Cornelia suggested.  It
 
would give her secret satisfaction to trounce Lauren in the game, for Cornelia knew lots of uncommon words. It was her special weapon.
"That is so boring," said Lauren as she strode down the street. "But better than nothing, I suppose."
They arrived at Lauren's brownstone house and rang the front doorbell. When they heard the sound of footsteps coming toward the door from inside, Lauren whispered to Cornelia, "The only reason I invited you over in the first place is because my mother made me."
She smiled meanly as Cornelia's face turned ashen. At that moment, Mrs. Brannigan yanked the front door open.
"Hello, girls," she cried, clapping her hands together in apparent joy. "Come in, come in. It's absolutely freezing out there! Hello, hello, Cornelia! Welcome to our humble home. It's about time you came over and visited us. Ever since I heard that you were in Lauren's class, I have been simply begging Lauren to invite you over to play. And you live so nearby as well." She took the girls' coats and stuffed them into the front closet. "Follow me, troops I have a snack for you in the kitchen," she shouted as she practically galloped down the front hallway.
Lauren glared at her guest as she followed her mother to the kitchen. Cornelia trailed after them.
"Sit   down,   ladies,   sit   down,"   Mrs.   Brannigan
 
whooped, clattering down some plates, cupcakes, and glasses of milk for the girls. Cornelia, who found Mrs. Brannigan as volatile as a pot of boiling water, warily sat down at the kitchen table. Mrs. Brannigan plunked down in the chair next to her.
Lauren stomped to the refrigerator. "I want Sprite, not milk," she complained. "I'm not five years old, in case you forgot." Of course, she didn't offer Cornelia any soda as she poured herself a huge glass.
Mrs. Brannigan gave a little hoot. "Have whatever you want, dearest, as long as it's not brandy," she said, and smiled coyly at her cleverness. Then she swiveled around and leaned in toward Cornelia as if they were long-lost friends.
"So, my dear," Mrs. Brannigan said. "How is that mother of yours?"
"Fine," Cornelia replied, wishing by now that she were at the bottom of the ocean. The cupcake sat like a wart on the plate in front of her.
"I heard her play in a concert at Carnegie Hall last month," Mrs. Brannigan said. "Marvelous, absolutely marvelous! She has such flair, and my goodness, is she gorgeous! Those long, elegant arms! I could just die! I imagine that you play the piano too, don't you?"
"No," said Cornelia.
"What?" shrieked Mrs. Brannigan. "You don't? How can that be? I would think that your parents would
 
insist! Especially since you're their only child, and all of that talent would go to waste if you didn't play too! After all, your father is a famous pianist also, isn't he?"
Cornelia stared at her glass of milk. "Yes, he is," she said after a moment. "But I've never met him."
For the first time since the girls had walked through the front door, the room was utterly silent. Even Lauren stared at Cornelia.
Mrs. Brannigan shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Ohhh," she said. "I see. Well, that's all right, dear." She patted Cornelia's hand in a fakey, consoling manner.
Then she went on, "In any case, your mother seems so fabulous. I have always wanted to get to know her! She seems very warm. And, you see, I am planning this charity gala a big party and I'm sure it would be a big hit if your mother played the piano at it."
Tears sprang to Cornelia's eyes. Now she understood the invitation to Lauren's house. Believe it or not, this sort of thing had happened to her before. It always astonished Cornelia that adults were willing to make such fools of themselves in front of her just to get the chance to meet her famous mother.
"I think I'll go home now," she said, feeling older than her eleven years. "I have a stomachache." She got up and began to walk toward the front door. Lauren looked elated for the first time that afternoon.
"Ohhhh," wailed Mrs. Brannigan, sensing that her
 
mission was in danger. "What's the matter, sweetie?" She followed Cornelia down the hallway and snatched an envelope from a desk in the foyer.
"Just a second, dear," she cried, handing the envelope to Cornelia. "Please give this to your mother. And come back anytime! I mean it absolutely anytime!"
Cornelia put on her coat, marched out the front door, and closed it behind her, sealing Mrs. Brannigan back up inside. Cornelia sighed with relief. Her visit had lasted a grand total of ten minutes, nearly a record high for an after-school social outing.
She looked at the letter in her hand. "To Lucy" was scrawled on the front of the envelope. "Please call me!" wa;s written on the back of it.
Cornelia dropped it in the gutter and went for a stroll.
Cornelia loved walking around her city neighborhood, Greenwich Village. She had never lived anywhere else, and it had been a wonderful place to grow up. Usually wh^n people thought of New York City, they conjured up images of steel buildings tall enough to touch the sky, and wide avenues filled with rumbling taxis and buses. They thought of noise and dirt and crowds.
But Greenwich Village was different, like a world within a world. Its narrow streets wound around in a wonderful maze, and worn down cobblestones covered
 
many of them instead of plain old asphalt. People in the Village did not live in towering skyscrapers. They lived in rows of colorful brick houses with pretty trees and flower beds out front. Dogs of every shape and size briskly walked their owners up and down the sidewalks. Sometimes Cornelia forgot that she lived in a big city at all. Greenwich Village felt like, well, a small village, the sort of place where parents let children play ball in parks by themselves.
Cornelia liked exploring alone. She knew every building, nook, and cranny in the area. She loved visiting the Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street. In the front window, the bakers arranged lines of dainty cupcakes covered with pale pink, baby blue, or buttery yellow frosting. Cornelia's mother called them "fairy cakes," and customers stood in long lines down the block just to buy one. When the line was too long, Cornelia sometimes went around the corner to a. tiny cafe called Westville instead. She ordered French fries and a root beer and watched people outside rush past the window. She made up stories about the passersby that she never told to anyone else.
However, the Biography Bookshop on Bleecker Street was Cornelia's favorite destination. She always marched past the tilting stacks of books written for girls her age and headed straight for the dictionary section. There she inspected the books for new arrivals. After
 
all, Cornelia had an impressive dictionary collection of her own, and she needed to stay up to date.
Sometimes, if she was in the mood, she visited Cornelia Street. Cornelia's mother, Lucy, had lived there when she'd first moved to New York City, long before Cornelia was born. And then, when Cornelia came along years later and they moved to a bigger apartment, Lucy gave her new baby the most unusual name: Cornelia Street Englehart. Lucy's grownup friends thought this was just wonderful, but Cornelia did not. In public, she shortened her name to Cornelia S. Englehart and kept her full identity to herself.
Today, Cornelia just sat in a nearby park and tried to forget about Lauren and her mother. When the sun finally started setting at four o'clock, she walked to her home on Greenwich Street. The big brick building where she lived looked like a Roman fortress with its rounded corners and arched windows. The Hudson River ran past it, two short blocks away. Cornelia squeezed through the heavy front doors into the grand foyer.
"Miss Englehart," boomed a voice from the front desk. "Might I 'ave a moment of your time, please?"
Walter Withycombe, the building's sociable, plump old doorman, peered down at Cornelia. White hair stuck out in tufts on his head, from his nostrils and ears, and even on his fingers with their knobby joints.
 
His eyes always smiled and he talked to children with the same level of respect as he did to adults. He had grown up in London, and he loved to tease the building's tenants in his loud, cockney accented voice. Cornelia was his favorite target, and he always enjoyed catching her as she tried to slip unnoticed into the elevator.
He disappeared into the big, dark closet behind the front desk and reemerged with a large, banged up box. Tape and string wound around it like a mummy and stamps covered the top.
"Tell Madame Desjardins to leg it down 'ere straight away and get this parcel," Walter said. "I rung 'er on the phone about it hours ago." He drummed his fingers on the top of the box as he talked. Madame Desjardins was Cornelia's French housekeeper.
"Where is it from? Who sent it?" Cornelia asked. She stood on her tiptoes to see the stamps.
Walter investigated the writing on the box. "It's from your mum," he announced. "Blimey she's in Moscow? Where 'asn't that lady been?"
Cornelia ignored his questions. "I'll tell Madame Desjardins to come down and get it," she said.
"Tell 'er to get it tonight or I'll throw it away," Walter threatened jovially. "It'll go straight into the bin! I mean it this time," he called after Cornelia as she got into the elevator and the door slid shut.
 
Somber as a widow, Walter thought to himself, shaking his head. I 'sped all she needs is a spot of sunshine. Miss Lucille should take 'er along on a trip once in a while.
He dropped the box under the desk with a thud.
Madame Desjardins opened the front door of the apartment with great flourish and ushered Cornelia in.
"Where have you been, Cornelia Street?" she exclaimed as Cornelia wiggled out of her backpack straps. "I began to think that you were blown away in the wind! Mon Dieu, your cheeks are cold." She hung up Cornelia's coat.
Madame Desjardins had been working for Lucy since Cornelia was born. It had been a decade filled with constant talking. Even though the housekeeper's English was proficient at best, she managed to fill every second of the day with chatter, and she was as nosy as a detective. An old fashioned servant, she wore a white apron even when she did errands.
"Walter says that there's a box for us downstairs," Cornelia said. "It's from my mother."
"A box?" Madame Desjardins answered distractedly, taking the book bag into the kitchen. Cornelia followed her. "Oh, oui. Yes. I forgot. I will send Ingrid down when she is done with the living room. I am scared to ask her, though, for today she is in a worse mood than ever."
 
Ingrid was their maid. She came twice a week to give the apartment a vicious cleaning.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" asked Madame Desjardins, whisking a teakettle off the stove top and heading for the sink.
"No, thank you," said Cornelia. "I'm just going to go upstairs to read until dinner."
"Comment? What? But you have only just come home," said Madame Desjardins, the kettle hanging at her side. "You do not want to tell me about school or your visit with the Brannigan girl, l'enfant terrible? Maybe I will come upstairs to sit with you. I am lonely today, with no one but Ingrid to speak with. Your mother is always away and you are too quiet." She looked at Cornelia as pitifully as possible.
"I want to read," said Cornelia. She had to be firm, for privacy was as rare as diamonds in a household run by Madame Desjardins. "But I'll come down when Ingrid gets the package," she added generously, and she ran out of the room.
Cornelia's home had an upstairs and a downstairs, which was unusual for an apartment in New York City. Extra shiny wood covered the floors in all of the rooms and high ceilings loomed overhead. The apartment could easily be mistaken for a vast white museum instead of a house, for several enormous paintings hung on the walls and isolated clusters of modern
 
furniture stood In the rooms. The dramatic spareness of the decor had a single purpose: to make the star of the house, Cornelia's mother, stand out as much as possible.
On the other hand, the apartment always made Cornelia herself seem smaller than she really was. Her footsteps echoed off the walls as she hustled down the corridor to the stairs.
Then she noticed that the big double doors to her mother's music room had been left open. Cornelia looked back toward the kitchen, but Madame Desjardins was clanging some pots around and showed no signs of emerging. Ingrid made some crashing noises down in the living room. Since no one was paying any attention, Cornelia ducked into the room where her mother spent her every waking moment when she was at home in New York.
The room's complicated beauty always intimidated Cornelia and made her feel out of place. It smelled slightly of old papers and cigarette smoke, and even more slightly of Chanel No. 5, an expensive perfume worn by Cornelia's mother. Dark, opulent wine red silk covered the walls, and huge white bookshelves towered to the ceiling on two sides of the room. Hundreds of music books, written on coarse yellow and tan pages, lined the shelves. Every page in every book featured an
 
intricate web of lines and notes, which only Lucy could read.
In the middle of the room stood a huge, sleek grand piano. It looked as important as a king on a chessboard, and its black lacquer gleamed like a mirror. Its row of shining black and white keys looked like a wide, teeth baring grin. Madame Desjardins called the instrument the "Bete Noire," which meant "black beast," and she never went near it.
The only person who ever touched the Bete Noire was Cornelia's mother, who was indeed a very famous concert pianist. And she was the only person in the apartment who understood the instrument at all. In fact, she loved it, seemingly more than anything else in the world. In return, the piano seemed to love Lucy with all of its heart, which was made of wire and felt and wooden hammers beating and moving and twanging inside its massive body. To everyone else, the piano was indifferent and haughty.
When Cornelia was a very little girl, she used to loll under the piano while her mother practiced. She would lie on her stomach and watch Lucy's feet working the pedals as the music thundered from the Bete Noire's belly above her. But as she got older, Cornelia grew wary of the instrument, and considered it her foremost enemy in the battle for Lucy's attention.
 
Cornelia poked around the room for a few minutes, breathing in its musty scent. Ingrid had straightened up, pushing stacks of music books usually strewn about on the floor into neat piles. Being inside the room made Cornelia miss her mother, who was at this very moment performing in a concert far away, halfway around the globe. Cornelia disliked her home when her mother was gone. The rooms in the apartment came alive only when Lucy was here and music was coming from the very room in which Cornelia stood.
She walked over to a large window and peered outside at the Hudson River. It looked cold and fierce, and loneliness trickled down inside her. After a few minutes, she went upstairs to her room and closed the door.
Outside, evening deepened into night and Cornelia's room darkened. She sat in her armchair, thumbing through a book and enjoying the relative quiet of her space. Like the music room downstairs, Cornelia's bedroom had tall bookshelves in it, most of which were crammed with books. Toys and stuffed animals that she had outgrown lined the hard-to-reach top shelves.
Cornelia's favorite shelf contained her precious dictionaries. Some of them were leather-bound; others were clad in tattered, faded canvas covers. She even had a thesaurus that had been owned by a famous writer who'd lived in Cuba and Spain and France, and had
 
written about wars and bullfighting. It had been a present from Lucy, who was amused by her daughter's precocious interest in words.
While Cornelia loved reading books, her interest in dictionaries and complicated words had more to do with warding off people who tried to strike up lengthy conversations with her. Her life was simply too full of grownups who always looked over her shoulder or pestered her or peppered her with annoying questions about her family. Long, confusing words were often her only defense against the artillery of adults who plagued her.
The primary offender was Madame Desjardins, who, as it has been noted, still stuck to the simpler expressions of English as though she were clinging to the wall of an ice-skating rink. Whenever Madame Desjardins became too pesky or intrusive, Cornelia simply filled her sentences with longer and longer and increasingly inscrutable words. Finally, Madame Desjardins would bluster her speech to a halt and stare at Cornelia in a frustrated sort of way with her hands on her hips. "Mon Dieu! You are too much," she would say, and stomp down the hallway.
This afternoon, Cornelia's book of choice was The Superior Person's Book of Words. The inside flap of the book advertised the following: "Put an end to fopdoodly speech; amaze your friends, baffle your enemies, write
 
interoffice memos to end all discussion!" Cornelia had neither friends nor enemies, and she did not even know what an interoffice memo was, but the idea of ending all discussion sounded good to her.
She soon had a chance to see if the book worked. She heard the telltale thump, thump, thump of Madame Desjardins's footsteps as she heaved up the stairs and knocked on Cornelia's door.
"Cornelia Street! May I please enter?" wheezed Madame Desjardins. She was quite portly, and the trip up the stairs always drained her. Without waiting for Cornelia's answer, she pushed the door open.
"Why are you reading with no light on?" she exclaimed as she clumped into the room. She descended upon an unsuspecting desk lamp and clicked it on. "You will ruin your eyes. And then you will have to wear big glasses and then none of the boys will want to kiss you when you grow up!" she practically shouted.
Cornelia just sat there, dumbfounded by this grander-than-usual entrance. "Madame Desjardins, I'm trying to read," she said.
"What is that little book?" Madame Desjardins swooped in and nudged the book backward so she could see the title. "Eeeee! Another book of words," she cried in despair, knowing a foe when she saw one. "Why do you not read books like the other girls want to read?
 
Like, let me think like Harriet ze Spy or any of those Harry Potter books?"
Cornelia glanced down at page 68 of the book and found help right away. "Madame Desjardins, could you end this nugatory line of questioning and tell me what you want?" she asked, just warming up. "Nugatory" reportedly meant "pointless" or "trifling."
Her arrow met its target. "Comment?" squawked Madame Desjardins. "I want only to know what you would like to eat this evening. And what did you just say to me, young lady?" she added suspiciously.
Cornelia casually flipped to pages 84 and 85 and found a treasure trove of relevant words. "Please don't be a quidnunc, Madame Desjardins," she replied. "Must this conversation be quotidian? I find that quisquous."
She said this last word without even knowing if she pronounced it correctly. The word "quidnunc" meant "one who is forever anxious to know about everything that is going on." "Quotidian" meant "occurring every day," while "quisquous" meant "puzzling."
"Whatever you provide for sustenance will suffice," she finished. This meant that Madame Desjardins could cook anything she wanted. Cornelia sat back to watch the reaction to her speech unfold.
 Madame Desjardins shrieked. "Every day you do this! I will be like a
 
crazy woman when I leave this house someday. Mon Dieu!"
"You are being a virago, Madame Desjardins!" Cornelia pressed on, growing a little excited that things were going so well. "Virago" meant "a fierce, bad-tempered woman," according to page 111.
"Fine! I will make spaghetti with meat, and you will just have to be happy with it." She flounced out of the room and closed the door.
A little later, once the storm clouds had cleared and the smell of tomato sauce wafted up the stairs, Madame Desjardins shouted from the kitchen, "Mademoiselle Dictionnaire! Come down the stairs. We will open the box." Cornelia threw her new favorite book on her bed and ran down the stairs.
Ingrid grouchily lugged the box into the living room. It looked like it might have suffered a few petulant kicks in the elevator on the way up. She dropped the box with an "Ouff!" and turned to Madame Desjardins, who stood there with a pair of scissors, waiting to cut the package open.
"Maid," Ingrid grunted, pointing to her own chest. "I'm a maid, not a manual laborer. That might mean the same thing in France, Madame Overseer, but in America, that's two different categories." She gathered her coat and bag. "See you on Saturday. If my back isn't broken," she muttered, looking darkly at the box.
 
Madame Desjardins dismissed her with a wave of her hand and zealously cut the tape and strings off the box. "This time, there will be a present for you, I can feel it," she said to Cornelia, sawing and snipping away.
A surge of hope swelled up in Cornelia, followed immediately by a thump of doubt. Did Lucy really think about her daughter while she was away? Did she even think about Cornelia while she was here, for that matter? Cornelia looked at the package with a new urgency, as if its opening might answer these questions. Her stomach tightened.
The box finally groaned and gave in, and Madame Desjardins tore open the top. She started pulling things out of it. "Let me see some clothes . . . and, umm . . . programs from her concert! You can see where your mother is playing. And . . . umm . . . music books  I think she has played Chopin this time."
Madame Desjardins's stacks of clothes, books, and paper next to the box grew higher and higher.
"Aha!" she exclaimed, fishing a shoe box out of the bottom of the parcel. "I bet this is a little present for Mademoiselle Dictionnaire," she said, nodding at Cornelia.
"You open it," Cornelia said dubiously.
Madame Desjardins cut off some Scotch tape on the sides of the shoe box and took the top off.
"Oh," she said quietly, and her face changed. She

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Colorful, figurative

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Author's purpose: Obvious

Sequence of Events: Mostly chronological

Mature concepts: With common experiences or clear fantasy

Features

Character traits

Character development

Simple Plot

Difficult names

Foreign words

Dialect/Accents

Unusual use of vocabulary

Topic

Travel/Traveling

Storytelling

Mothers

Self Esteem

Friendship

Sisters

*Family & Friends

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

absolutely	accented	according	advertised	amused
announced	anxious	apparent	arched	artillery
ashen	asn't	asphalt	astonished	avenues
baffle	baring	bete	biography	blimey
bluster	bookshop	brannigan	brownstone	bullfighting
buttery	cafe	casting	casually	categories
charity	chessboard	cigarette	cleverness	clumped
cobblestones	cockney	complicated	concert	conjured
consoling	constant	conversation	conversations	corridor
coterie	cousins	coyly	cranny	customers
dainty	decade	decor	deepened	descended
desjardins	desjardins's	despair	destination	detective
diamonds	dictionaries	dictionnaire	dieu	discussion
disliked	dismissed	distractedly	doubt	dramatic
dubiously	dumbfounded	echoed	elated	elegant
elevator	englehart	enthusiasm	ere	errands
exploring	expressions	extreme	fabulous	fakey
fashioned	featured	flair	flounced	flourish
foe	fopdoodly	foremost	fortress	foyer
frustrated	gala	generously	glared	gorgeous
grander	greenwich	grouchily	grunted	halt
handing	haughty	heaved	horizon	household
housekeeper's	humble	hustled	identity	ignored
immediately	impatiently	impressive	increasingly	indifferent
ingrid	inscrutable	inspected	interoffice	intimidated
intricate	intrusive	investigated	invitation	invitations
irritably	isolated	joints	jovially	karaoke
knobby	knowing	l'enfant	laborer	lacquer
ladies	lagged	lauren	lauren's	lengthy
level	loll	loneliness	longing	lugged
madame	mademoiselle	magnolia	manual	marvelous
massive	meanly	memo	memos	mission
mistaken	mon	musty	muttered	neighborhood
nightmare	noire	noire's	nook	nostrils
nosy	noted	nudged	nugatory	nursery
occurring	offender	opulent	oui	outgrown
outing	overseer	pace	parcel	passersby
patience	peered	peppered	performing	perfume
pestered	petulant	pianist	pitifully	plagued
playmates	plunked	pointless	portly	potter
practically	practiced	precious	precocious	primary
privacy	proficient	public	purpose	puzzling
quickened	quidnunc	quisquous	quotidian	reemerged
refrigerator	relative	relevant	reluctantly	renowned
reportedly	reserve	respect	rink	roman
rounded	rung	satisfaction	sauce	sawing
scent	scissors	scotch	scrabble	scrawled
sealing	section	seemingly	sensing	servant
shelves	shortened	sidewalks	simpler	skyscrapers
sleek	snatched	snipping	sociable	social
somber	spareness	speech	sprang	sprite
straightened	strewn	strode	stroll	suffice
superior	surge	suspiciously	sustenance	sweetie
swelled	swiveled	tattered	taxis	teakettle
telltale	tempered	tenants	terribly	thesaurus
threatened	thumbing	thundered	tightened	tilting
towered	towering	trickled	trifling	trounce
trove	tufts	twanging	uncomfortably	uncommon
unnoticed	unsuspecting	urgency	ushered	utterly
vicious	virago	volatile	wafted	waking
warily	wart	wary	westville	wheeled
wheezed	whipping	whisking	who'd	whooped
widow	withycombe	writer	yanked	ze
zealously