Text Leveling System

The One and Only Ivan

RDQ:	1177	Max Word/Sent	41	Total Words	3066		Diff Words	971
Lex	780	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	2225	72.6%	Hi freq	420	43.3%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	14.2	Low Freq occurs	159	5.2%	Low freq	131	13.5%

hello
I Am Ivan. I am a gorilla.
It's not as easy as it looks.]]
names
People call me the Freeway Gorilla. The Ape at Exit 8.
The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.
The names are mine, but they're not me. I am Ivan, just
Ivan, only Ivan.
Humans waste words. They toss them like banana
peels and leave them to rot.
Everyone knows the peels are the best part.
I suppose you think gorillas can't understand you. Of
course, you also probably think we can't walk upright.
Try knuckle walking for an hour. You tell me: Which
way is more fun?]]
patience
I've learned to understand human words over the years,
but understanding human speech is not the same as
understanding humans.
Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps,
crowding the world with their noise even when they
have nothing to say.
It took me some time to recognize all those human
sounds, to weave words into things. But I was patient.
Patient is a useful way to be when you're an ape.
Gorillas are as patient as stones. Humans, not so much.]]
how I look
I used to be a wild gorilla, and I still look the part.
I have a gorilla's shy gaze, a gorilla's sly smile. I wear a
snowy saddle of fur, the uniform of a silverback. When
the sun warms my back, I cast a gorilla's majestic
shadow.
In my size humans see a test of themselves. They hear
fighting words on the wind, when all I'm thinking is
how the late-day sun reminds me of a ripe nectarine.
I'm mightier than any human, four hundred pounds of
pure power. My body looks made for battle. My arms,
outstretched, span taller than the tallest human.
My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great
ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees
and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and
distrustful cousins.]]
I know this is troubling.
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across
time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered
clowns.
Chimps. There's no excuse for them.]]
the exit 8 big top mall
and video arcade
I live in a human habitat called the Exit 8 Big Top
Mall and Video Arcade. We are conveniently located
off l-95, with shows at two, four, and seven, 365 days
a year.
Mack says that when he answers the trilling telephone. 
Mack works here at the mall. He is the boss.
I work here too. I am the gorilla.
At the Big Top Mall, a creaky-music carousel spins all
day, and monkeys and parrots live amid the merchants.
In the middle of the mall is a ring with benches where
humans can sit on their rumps while they eat soft
pretzels. The floor is covered with sawdust made of
dead trees.]]
My domain is at one end of the ring. I live here because
I am too much gorilla and not enough human.
Stella's domain is next to mine. Stella is an elephant.
She and Bob, who is a dog, are my dearest friends.
At present, I do not have any gorilla friends.
My domain is made of thick glass and rusty metal and
rough cement. Stella's domain is made of metal bars.
The sun bears domain is wood; the parrots is wire
mesh.
Three of my walls are glass. One of them is cracked,
and a small piece, about the size of my hand, is missing
from its bottom corner. I made the hole with a baseball
bat Mack gave me for my sixth birthday. After that he
took the bat away, but he let me keep the baseball that
came with it.
A jungle scene is painted on one of my domain walls.
It has a waterfall without water and flowers without
scent and trees without roots. I didn't paint it, but I ]]
enjoy the way the shapes flow across my wall, even if it
isn't much of a jungle.
I am lucky my domain has three windowed walls. I can
see the whole mall and a bit of the world beyond: the
frantic pinball machines, the pink billows of cotton
candy, the vast and treeless parking lot.
Beyond the lot is a freeway where cars stampede without
end. A giant sign at its edge beckons them to stop and
rest like gazelles at a watering hole.
The sign is faded, the colors bleeding, but I know what
it says. Mack read its words aloud one day: "COME
TO THE EXIT 8 BIG TOP MALL AND VIDEO
ARCADE, HOME OF THE ONE AND ONLY
IVAN, MIGHTY SILVERBACK!"
Sadly, I cannot read, although I wish I could. Reading
stories would make a fine way to fill my empty hours.
Once, however, I was able to enjoy a book left in my
domain by one of my keepers.]]
It tasted like termite.
The freeway billboard has a drawing of Mack in his
clown clothes and Stella on her hind legs and an angry
animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair.
That animal is supposed to be me, but the artist made
a mistake. I am never angry.]]
Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain
order and warn his troop of danger. When my father
beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge.
I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.
Here in my domain, there is no one to protect.]]
 the littlest big top on earth
My neighbors here at the Big Top Mall know many
tricks. They are an educated lot, more accomplished
than I am.
One of my neighbors plays baseball, although she is
a chicken. Another drives a fire truck, although he is
a rabbit.
I used to have a neighbor, a sleek and thoughtful seal,
who could balance a ball on her nose from dawn till
dusk. Her voice was like the throaty bark of a dog
chained outside on a cold night.
Children wished on pennies and tossed them into
her plastic pool. They glowed on the bottom like flat
copper stones.
The seal was hungry one day, or bored, perhaps, so she
ate one hundred pennies.]]
Mack said she'd be fine.
He was mistaken.
Mack calls our show "The Littlest Big Top on
Earth." Every day at two, four, and seven, humans fan
themselves, drink sodas, applaud. Babies wail. Mack,
dressed like a clown, pedals a tiny bike. A dog named
Snickers rides on Stella's back. Stella sits on a stool.
It is a very sturdy stool.
I don't do any tricks. Mack says it's enough for me to
be me.
Stella told me that some circuses move from town to
town. They have humans who dangle on ropes twining
from the tops of tents. They have grumbling lions with
gleaming teeth and a snaking line of elephants, each
clutching the limp tail in front of her. The elephants
look far off into the distance so they won't see the
humans who want to see them.]]
Our circus doesn't migrate. We sit where we are, like an
old beast too tired to push on.
After our show, humans forage through the stores. A
store is where humans buy things they need to survive.
At the Big Top Mall, some stores sell new things,
things like balloons and T-shirts and caps to cover the
gleaming heads of humans. Some stores sell old things,
things that smell dusty and damp and long forgotten.
All day, I watch humans scurry from store to store. They
pass their green paper, dry as old leaves and smelling of a
thousand hands, back and forth and back again.
They hunt frantically, stalking, pushing, grumbling.
Then they leave, clutching bags filled with things bright
things, soft things, big things-but no matter
how full the bags, they always come back for more.
Humans are clever indeed. They spin pink clouds you
can eat. They build domains with flat waterfalls.
But they are lousy hunters.]]
gone
Some animals live privately, unwatched, but that is not
my life.
My life is flashing lights and pointing fingers and
uninvited visitors. Inches away, humans flatten their
little hands against the wall of glass that separates us.
The glass says you are this and we are that and that is
how it will always be.
Humans leave their fingerprints behind, sticky with
candy, slick with sweat. Each night a weary man comes
to wipe them away.
Sometimes I press my nose against the glass. My
noseprint, like your fingerprint, is the first and last
and only one.
The man wipes the glass and then I am gone.]]
artists
Here in my domain, I do not have much to do. You
can only throw so many me-balls at humans before
you get bored.
A me-ball is made by rolling up dung until it's the size
of a small apple, then letting it dry. I always keep a few
on hand.
For some reason, my visitors never seem to carry any.
In my domain, I have a tire swing, a baseball, a tiny
plastic pool filled with dirty water, and even an old
TV.
I have a stuffed toy gorilla, too. Julia, the daughter of
the weary man who cleans the mall each night, gave it
to me.
The gorilla has empty eyes and floppy limbs, but I ]]
sleep with it every night. I call it Not-Tag.
Tag was my twin sister's name.
Julia is ten years old. She has hair like black glass and a
wide, half-moon smile. She and I have a lot in common.
We are both great apes, and we are both artists.
It was Julia who gave me my first crayon, a stubby blue
one, slipped through the broken spot in my glass along
with a folded piece of paper.
1 knew what to do with it. I'd watched Julia draw.
When I dragged the crayon across the paper, it left a
trail in its wake like a slithering blue snake.
Julia's drawings are wild with color and movement. She
draws things that aren't real: clouds that smile and cars
that swim. She draws until her crayons break and her
paper rips. Her pictures are like pieces of a dream.
I can't draw dreamy pictures. I never remember my
dreams, although I sometimes awaken with my fists]]
clenched and my heart hammering.
My drawings seem pale and timid next to Julia's. She
draws the ideas in her head. I draw the things in my cage,
simple items that fill my days: an apple core, a banana
peel, a candy wrapper. (I often eat my subjects before I
draw them.)
But even though I draw the same things over and over
again, I never get bored with my art. When I'm drawing,
that's all I think about. I don't think about where I am,
about yesterday or tomorrow. I just move my crayons
across the paper.
Humans don't always seem to recognize what I've
drawn. They squint, cock their heads, murmur. I'll
draw a banana, a perfectly lovely banana, and they'll
say, "It's a yellow airplane!" or "It's a duck without
wings!"
That's all right. I'm not drawing for them. I'm drawing
for me.]]
Mack soon realized that people will pay for a picture
made by a gorilla, even if they don't know what it is.
Now I draw every day. My works sell for twenty dollars
apiece (twenty-five with frame) at the gift shop near my
domain.
If I get tired and need a break, I eat my crayons.
shapes in clouds
I think I've always been an artist.
Even as a baby, still clinging to my mother, I had an
artist's eye. I saw shapes in the clouds, and sculptures in
the tumbled stones at the bottom of a stream. I grabbed
at colors-the crimson flower just out of reach, the
ebony bird streaking past.
I don't remember much about my early life, but I do
remember this: Whenever I got the chance, I would dip
my fingers into cool mud and use my mother's back for
a canvas.
She was a patient soul, my mother.]]
imagination
Someday, I hope I can draw the way Julia draws,
imagining worlds that don't yet exist.
I know what most humans think. They think gorillas
don't have imaginations. They think we don't remember
our pasts or ponder our futures.
Come to think of it, I suppose they have a point. Mostly
I think about what is, not what could be.
I've learned not to get my hopes up.]]
the loneliest gorilla in the world
When the Big Top Mall was first built, it smelled of
new paint and fresh hay, and humans came to visit
from morning till night. They drifted past my domain
like logs on a lazy river.
Lately, a day might go by without a single visitor. Mack
says he's worried. He says I'm not cute anymore. He
says, "Ivan, you've lost your magic, old guy. You used
to be a hit ."
It's true that some of my visitors don't linger the way
they used to. They stare through the glass, they cluck
their tongues, they frown while I watch my TV.
"He looks lonely," they say.
Not long ago, a little boy stood before my glass,
tears streaming down his smooth red cheeks. "He
must be the loneliest gorilla in the world," he said,]]
clutching his mother's hand.
At times like that, I wish humans could understand me
the way I can understand them.
It's not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With
enough time, you can get used to almost anything.
tv
My visitors are often surprised when they see the TV
Mack put in my domain. They seem to find it odd, the
sight of a gorilla staring at tiny humans in a box.
Sometimes I wonder, though: Isn't the way they stare at
me, sitting in my tiny box, just as strange?
My TV is old. It doesn't always work, and sometimes
days will go by before anyone remembers to turn it on.
I'll watch anything, but I'm particularly fond of
cartoons, with their bright jungle colors. I especially
enjoy it when someone slips on a banana peel.
Bob, my dog friend, loves TV almost as much as I do.
He prefers to watch professional bowling and cat-food
commercials.
Bob and I have seen many romance movies too. In a ]]
romance there is much hugging and sometimes face
licking.
I have yet to see a single romance starring a gorilla.
We also enjoy old Western movies. In a Western,
someone always says, "This town ain't big enough for
the both of us, Sheriff." In a Western, you can tell who
the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and the
good guys always win.
Bob says Westerns are nothing like real life.
the nature show
I have been in my domain for nine thousand eight
hundred and fifty-five days.
Alone.
For a while, when I was young and foolish, I thought I
was the last gorilla on earth.
I tried not to dwell on it. Still, it's hard to stay upbeat
 when you think there are no more of you.
Then one night, after I watched a movie about men
 in black hats with guns and feeble-minded horses, a
different show came on.
It was not a cartoon, not a romance, not a Western.
I saw a lush forest. I heard birds murmuring. The grass
moved. The trees rustled.]]
Then I saw him. He was a bit threadbare and scrawny,
and not as good-looking as I am, to be honest. But sure
enough, he was a gorilla.
As suddenly as he'd appeared, the gorilla vanished, and
in his place was a scruffy white animal called, I learned,
a polar bear, and then a chubby water creature called a
manatee, and then another animal, and another.
All night I sat wondering about the gorilla I'd glimpsed.
Where did he live? Would he ever come to visit? If
there was a he somewhere, could there be a she as well?
Or was it just the two of us in all the world, trapped in
our own separate boxes?]]
stella
Stella says she is sure I will see another real, live gorilla
someday, and I believe her because she is even older
 than I am and has eyes like black stars and knows more
than I will ever know.
Stella is a mountain. Next to her I am a rock, and Bob
is a grain of sand.
Every night, when the stores close and the moon washes
the world with milky light, Stella and I talk.
We don't have much in common, but we have enough.
We are huge and alone, and we both love yogurt raisins.
 Sometimes Stella tells stories of her childhood, of leafy
canopies hidden by mist and the busy songs of flowing
water. Unlike me, she recalls every detail of her past.
Stella loves the moon, with its untroubled smile. I love ]]
the feel of the sun on my belly.
She says, "It is quite a belly, my friend," and I say,
"Thank you, and so is yours."
We talk, but not too much. Elephants, like gorillas, do
not waste words.
Stella used to perform in a large and famous circus,
and she still does some of those tricks for our show.
During one stunt, Stella stands on her hind legs while
Snickers jumps on her head.]]
It's hard to stand on your hind legs when you weigh
more than forty men.
If you are a circus elephant and you stand on your hind
legs while a dog jumps on your head, you get a treat. If
you do not, the claw-stick comes swinging.
Elephant hide is thick as bark on an ancient tree, but a
claw-stick can pierce it like a leaf.]]
Once Stella saw a trainer hit a bull elephant with a
claw-stick. A bull is like a silverback, noble, contained,
calm like a cobra is calm. When the claw-stick caught
in the bull's flesh, he tossed the trainer into the air
with his tusk.
The man flew, Stella said, like an ugly bird. She never
saw the bull again.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Story/Poem

Glossary

Author's purpose: Obvious

Features

First Person

Topic

Monkeys

Elephants

*Animals

Animals: Jungle

Low Frequency Words

accomplished	apiece	applaud	arcade	awaken
beckons	billboard	billows	bonobos	canopies
carousel	chained	commercials	conveniently	cousins
crimson	dangle	distrustful	domain	domains
drawn	ebony	educated	feeble	forage
frantic	frantically	futures	gazelles	grumbling
habitat	hammering	hind	honest	imagination
imaginations	imagining	ivan	knuckle	linger
loneliest	lousy	lush	maintain	majestic
manatee	mannered	merchants	mesh	mightier
migrate	minded	mistaken	movement	murmur
murmuring	nature	nectarine	neighbor	neighbors
noble	noseprint	orangutans	particularly	pasts
patience	patient	perform	pierce	pinball
ponder	precious	professional	pure	raisins
recalls	recognize	romance	rough	rustled
sawdust	scent	scrawny	scruffy	sculptures
scurry	separate	separates	sheriff	sleek
slithering	snaking	snickers	soul	speech
squint	stalking	stampede	starring	stella's
streaking	stubby	stunt	sturdy	survive
sweat	termite	thoughtful	threadbare	throaty
timid	tongues	treeless	trilling	troubling
twining	understanding	uninvited	unkempt	untroubled
unwatched	upbeat	upright	wail	warn
waterfalls	weary	westerns	windowed	wrapper
yogurt