Text Leveling System

The Wild Robot

RDQ:	1840	Max Word/Sent	35	Total Words	3124		Diff Words	921
Lex	880	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	2183	69.9%	Hi freq	339	36.8%
AR	4.7	Long Sentences	11.9	Low Freq occurs	233	7.5%	Low freq	174	18.9%

CHAPTER I
THE OCEAN
Our story begins on the ocean, with wind and rain and
thunder and lightning and waves. A hurricane roared and
raged through the night. And in the middle of the chaos,
a cargo ship was sinking
down
down
down
to the ocean floor.
The ship left hundreds of crates floating on the surface.
But as the hurricane thrashed and swirled and
knocked them around, the crates also began sinking into
the depths. One after another, they were swallowed up by
the waves, until only five crates remained.
By morning the hurricane was gone. There were no
clouds, no ships, no land in sight. There was only calm]]
water and clear skies and those five crates lazily bobbing
along an ocean current. Days passed. And then a smudge
of green appeared on the horizon. As the crates drifted
closer, the soft green shapes slowly sharpened into the
hard edges of a wild, rocky island.
The first crate rode to shore on a tumbling, rumbling
wave and then crashed against the rocks with such force
that the whole thing burst apart.
Now, reader, what I haven't mentioned is that tightly
packed inside each crate was a brand-new robot. The
cargo ship had been transporting hundreds of them before
it was swept up in the storm. Now only five robots were
left. Actually, only four were left, because when that first
crate crashed against the rocks, the robot inside shattered
to pieces.
The same thing happened to the next crate. It crashed
against the rocks, and robot parts flew everywhere. Then
it happened to the next crate. And the next. Robot limbs
and torsos were flung onto ledges. A robot head splashed
into a tide pool. A robot foot skittered into the waves.]]
And then came the last crate. It followed the same path
as the others, but instead of crashing against the rocks, it
sloshed against the remains of the first four crates. Soon,
more waves were heaving it up out of the water. It soared
through the air, spinning and glistening until it slammed
down onto a tall shelf of rock. The crate was cracked and
crumpled, but the robot inside was safe.]]
CHAPTER 2
THE OTTERS
The island's northern shore had become something of
a robot gravesite. Scattered across the rocks were the
broken bodies of four dead robots. They sparkled in
the early-morning light. And their sparkles caught the
attention of some very curious creatures.]]
A gang of sea otters was romping through the shallows
when one of them noticed the sparkling objects. The
otters all froze. They raised their noses to the wind. But
they smelled only the sea. So they cautiously crept over
the rocks to take a closer look.
The gang slowly approached a robot torso. The biggest
otter stuck out his paw, swatted the heavy thing, and
quickly jumped back. But nothing happened. So they
wriggled over to a robot hand. Another brave otter stuck
out her paw and flipped the hand over. It made a lovely
clinking sound on the rocks, and the otters squeaked with
delight.
They spread out and played with robot arms and legs
and feet. More hands were flipped. One of the otters discovered
a robot head in a tide pool, and they all dove in
and took turns rolling it along the bottom.
And then they spotted something else. Overlooking
the gravesite was the one surviving crate. Its sides
were scraped and dented, and a wide gash ran across
its top. The otters scampered up the rocks and climbed
onto the big box. Ten furry faces poked through the
gash, eager to see what was inside. What they saw was
another brand-new robot. But this robot was different]]
from the others. It was still in one piece. And it was
surrounded by spongy packing foam.
The otters reached through the gash and tore at the 
foam. It was so soft and squishy! They squeaked as they
snatched at the fluffy stuff. Shreds of it floated away on
the sea breeze. And in all the excitement, one of their 
paws accidentally slapped an important little button on
the back of the robot's head.
Click. ,,
It took a while for the otters to realize that something
was happening inside the crate. But a moment later, they 
heard it. A low whirring sound. Everyone stopped and
stared. And then the robot opened her eyes.]]
CHAPTER 3
THE ROBOT
The robot's computer brain booted up. Her programs began
coming online. And then, still packed in her crate, she
automatically started to speak.
Hello, I am ROZZUM unit 7134, but you may call me
Roz. While my robotic systems are activating, I will tell
you about myself.
Once fully activated, I will be able to move and communicate and learn. Simply give me a task and I will complete it. Over time, I will find better ways of completing my tasks. I will become a better robot. When I am
not needed, I will stay out of the way and keep myself in
good working order.
"Thank you for your time.
"I am now fully activated."]]
CHAPTER 4
THE ROBOT
HATCHES
As you might know, robots don't really feel emotions. Not
the way animals do. And yet, as she sat in her crumpled
crate, Roz felt something like curiosity. She was curious
about the warm ball of light shining down from above. So
her computer brain went to work, and she identified the
light. It was the sun.
The robot felt her body absorbing the sun's energy.
With each passing minute she felt more awake. When
her battery was good and full, Roz looked around and
realized that she was packed inside a crate. She tried to
move her arms, but they were restrained by cords. So
she applied more force, the motors in her arms hummed
a little louder, and the cords snapped. Then she lifted
her hands and pulled apart the crate. Like a hatchling
breaking from a shell, Roz climbed out into the world.]]
CHAPTER )
THE ROBOT
GRAVESITE
Those otters were now hiding behind a rock. Their round
heads nervously poked up, and they watched as a sparkling
monster emerged from the crate. The monster
slowly turned her head as she scanned the coastline. Her
head turned and turned, all the way around, and it didn't
stop turning until she was looking right at the otters.
"Hello, otters, my name is Roz."
The robot's voice was simply too much for the skittish
creatures. The biggest otter squeaked, and the whole gang
suddenly took off. They galloped back across the robot
gravesite, flopped into the ocean, and raced through the
waves just as fast as they could.
Roz watched the otters go, but her eyes lingered on
the sparkling objects that littered the shore. The objects]]
looked strangely familiar. The robot swung her left leg
forward, then her right, and just like that she was taking
her very first steps. She stomped away from her crate and
over the rocks and through the gravesite until she was
standing above a broken robot body. She leaned in and
noticed the word ROZZUM lightly etched on the torso.
She noticed the same word on all the torsos, including
her own.
Roz continued exploring the gravesite until a playful
little ocean wave washed over the rocks. She automatically
stepped away from it. Then a bigger wave sloshed
toward her, and she stepped away again. And then a
gigantic wave crashed over the rocks and engulfed the
entire gravesite. Heavy water pounded against her body
and knocked her to the ground, and her Damage Sensors
flared for the first time. A moment later, the wave was
gone, and Roz lay there, dripping and dented and surrounded
by dead robots.
Roz could feel her Survival Instincts-the part of her
computer brain that made her want to avoid danger and
take care of herself so she could continue functioning
properly. Her instincts were urging her to move away
from the ocean. She carefully got to her feet and saw that]]
high above the shore, the land was bursting with trees
and grasses and flowers. It looked lush and safe up there.
It looked like a much better place for our robot. She had
just one problem. To get up there, she would have to
climb the sea cliffs.]]
CHAPTER 6
THE CLIMB
Crack!
Thunk!
Clang!
Roz was having a little trouble climbing the cliffs. She
had a new dent on her rear and a long scrape down her
side. And she was just about to get another ding when a
crab scuttled out from under a piece of driftwood.
The crab looked up and immediately showed off his
giant claws. Everyone was afraid of his claws. But not
the robot. She just looked down and introduced herself.
"Hello, crab, my name is Roz."
After a brief standoff, the crab cautiously backed
away. And that's when Roz noticed how easily he moved
over the rocks. With his wide stance and his grippy feet,
the crab could crawl up and down any rock face. So Roz]]
decided to try out his climbing technique.
She spread her arms wide and clamped
each of her hands onto the cliffside. She
jammed one foot into a crack and lifted
her other foot onto a narrow ledge, and
just like that she was climbing.
Roz moved awkwardly at first. A
chunk of rock crumbled in her hand,
and she had trouble finding footholds.
But as she climbed higher and higher,
she started to get the hang of it.
Seagulls squawked from their cliff
nests and soared away when the robot
came too close. But Roz paid them
no mind. She was focused only
on getting to the top. Up and up
and up she went, methodically
climbing past nests and ledges
and tiny trees rooted in the
cracks, and before long our
robot felt the soft soil of the
island beneath her feet.]]
CHAPTER 7
THE WILDERNESS
Animal sounds filled the forest. Chirps and wingbeats and
rustlings in the underbrush. And then, from the sea cliffs,
there came new sounds. Heavy, crunching footsteps. The
forest animals fell silent, and from their hiding places
they watched as a sparkling monster stomped past.
But the forest was not a comfortable place for Roz.
Jagged rocks and fallen trees and tangled underbrush
made it difficult for her to walk. She stumbled along,
struggling to keep her balance, until her foot snagged
and she toppled over like a piece of timber. It wasn't a
bad fall. No dings, no dents, just dirt. But Roz was programmed
to keep herself in good working order, and
once she was back on her feet, she immediately began
cleaning herself off. Her hands darted around her body,
quickly brushing and picking off every speck of dirt.]]
Only when the robot was sparkling again did she continue
through the forest.
Roz stumbled on until she found a patch of ground
that was flat and open and carpeted with pine needles.
It seemed like a safe place, and safety was all the robot
really wanted, so she stood there, motionless, all perfect
lines and angles set against the irregular shapes of the
wilderness.]]
CHAPTER 8
THE PINECONES
If you stand in a forest long enough, eventually something
will fall on you. And Roz had been standing in the forest
long enough. A gentle wind whispered through the
treetops, and then-thunk!-a pinecone bounced off her
head. The robot looked down and watched the pinecone
roll to a stop. It seemed harmless, so Roz went right back
to doing nothing.]]
A few hours later, a gust of wind rushed through the
treetops and then-thunk!-the robot looked down as
another pinecone rolled away.
And then a few hours after that, a howling wind tore
through the treetops. It bent trunks and shook branches
and then-thunk thunk thunk!-pinecones began raining
down. Thunk thunk! Roz felt something like annoyance.
Thunk! She quickly scanned the area for somewhere safe
from pinecones. And she spotted the perfect place when
she looked up at the huge, rocky shape that towered
above the forest.]]
CHAPTER 9
THE MOUNTAIN
Roz was now stomping her way up the mountain. Dense
forest and rocky outcrops forced the robot to zig and
zag and backtrack, but after an hour of steady hiking,
she arrived at the craggy mountain peak.
Grasses and flowers and shrubs sprouted from every
pocket of soil. But there were no trees at the top. Roz was
safe from those annoying pinecones. She dusted herself
off and then carefully climbed up a leaning slab of stone,
to the very highest point of the entire mountain.
The robot slowly turned her head completely around.
She saw the ocean stretching to the horizon in every
direction. And in that moment, Roz learned what you and
I have known since the beginning of this story. In that
moment, Roz finally realized that she was on an island.
Roz looked down and surveyed the island. Starting]]
from the sandy southern point, the island grew wider
and greener and hillier until it finally jutted up into the
rocky cone of the mountain. In some places the mountain
fell away, leaving sheer cliffs. A waterfall rushed off one
cliff and fed a river that wound its way through a great
meadow in the center of the island. The river flowed
past wildflowers and ponds and boulders and then disappeared
into the forest.
Blurry shapes suddenly cut through the robot's vision.
She refocused her eyes and saw vultures circling above
the foothills. Then she noticed lizards warming themselves
on a distant rock. A badger peeked out from a
berry bush. A moose waded through a stream. A flock
of sparrows turned in perfect unison above the trees. The
island was teeming with life. And now it had a new kind
of life. A strange kind of life. Artificial life.]]
CHAPTER IO
THE REMINDER
I should remind you, reader, that Roz had no idea how
she had come to be on that island. She didn't know that
she'd been built in a factory and then stored in a warehouse
before crossing the ocean on a cargo ship. She
didn't know that a hurricane had sunk the ship and left
her crate floating on the waves for days until it finally
washed ashore. She didn't know that she'd been accidentally
activated by those curious sea otters. As the
robot looked out at the island, it never even occurred to
her that she might not belong there. As far as Roz knew,
she was home.]]
CHAPTER I I
THE ROBOT SLEEPS
Roz stood on the peak and watched the sun sink behind the
ocean. She watched shadows slowly spread over the island
and up the mountainside. She watched the stars come out,
one by one, until the sky was filled with a million points of
light. It was the first night of the robot's life.
She activated her headlights, and suddenly bright
shafts of light were beaming out from her eyes and illuminating
the whole mountaintop. Too bright. So she
dimmed them. Then she turned them off and sat in darkness
and listened to the chorus of nighttime chirps.
After a while, our robot's computer brain decided it was
a good time to conserve energy. So she sat and anchored
her hands to the rocks, her nonessential programs switched
off, and then, in her own way, the robot slept.]]
CHAPTER 12
THE STORM
Roz felt safe up on the mountaintop. So she spent the next
few days and nights perched on the peak. But everything
changed one afternoon when a low-flying cloud crept
up the mountain and Roz found herself surrounded by
white. When the world faded back into view, she noticed
more clouds floating south past the island. Then she
heard a deep rumble behind her. The robot turned her
head around and saw that the sky was filled with a swirling
wall of darkness. Light flickered here and there. More
deep rumbles.
A storm was approaching, and it wasn't just any storm.
It was as fierce as the one that had sent the cargo ship to
the ocean floor. The wind picked up, and the first drops
of rain tapped against the robot. It was time to go. Roz
unclamped her hands and began sliding down the peak.]]
Hot sparks flew from where her body scraped against the
leaning slab of stone. As soon as her feet hit soil, she was
off and running.
The rain fell harder.
The wind blew faster.
The lightning flashed brighter.
The thunder cracked louder.
So much rainwater was falling that rushing rivers of
runoff started springing up everywhere. Roz splashed
down the mountain, searching through the gloom for any
kind of shelter. But she should have watched where she
was going. Her heavy feet slipped and tripped, and she
tumbled right into a mudslide.
Our robot was helpless. The river of mud whisked her
downhill, slamming her into rocks and dragging her
through bushes and sweeping her straight toward a cliff!
Mud was pouring off the cliff like a waterfall! Roz frantically
clawed at the ground, grasping for anything she
could hold on to, but the flow only carried her faster
toward the edge. And just as she was about to plunge over
the side, she came to a hard, sudden stop.
Mud surged around her, spraying into her face and pinning
her against some solid thing. She blindly felt with
her hands and recognized the thick roots and trunk of a]]
pine tree. In an instant she was pulling herself up into the
branches. The wind whipped across the mountainside and
Roz heard the familiar thunk! of pinecones pelting her
body. But she didn't mind them. She was just happy to be
safe from the mudflow. The robot locked her arms and
legs around the tree and waited for the storm to blow over.]]
CHAPTER I3
THE AFTERMATH
Daybreak, and the storm had passed, but the sounds of
water were everywhere. The air was filled with the dripping
sounds of mountain runoff and the sloshing sounds
of flooded streams. And then came a very different sound.
It was the clanging sound made when a robot slips on a
wet rock. There were quite a few clangs that morning.
As Roz worked her way downhill, she scanned the
aftermath of the storm. Giant mounds of mud and debris
had formed below the cliffs. The island's central river
had crested its banks and spilled into the nearby fields
and forests. Some trees had been uprooted. Others were
submerged, their upper branches barely poking above
the floodwaters, their lower branches swarming with fish
instead of birds.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Multiple phrases

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Chapters

Headings

Author's purpose: Obvious

Sequence of Events: Chronological

Mature concepts: With common experiences or clear fantasy

Features

Character traits

Integral Setting

Complex plot

Topic

Language

Protection

Robots

*Animals

Helping

Islands

*Fictional Ideas/Charac

Birds

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

absorbing	accidentally	activated	aftermath	anchored
angles	annoyance	applied	approached	approaching
artificial	blurry	booted	boulders	cargo
carpeted	cautiously	chaos	chorus	circling
clinking	communicate	conserve	craggy	crested
curiosity	curious	current	debris	depths
driftwood	edges	emerged	emotions	engulfed
etched	eventually	exploring	familiar	floodwaters
flung	foothills	footholds	frantically	fully
functioning	furry	gash	gigantic	glistening
grasping	gravesite	greener	grippy	hatches
hatchling	headlights	heaving	helpless	hillier
horizon	hurricane	identified	illuminating	immediately
instant	instincts	introduced	island's	jagged
jutted	lazily	ledge	ledges	lightly
lingered	littered	lush	meadow	mentioned
methodically	motionless	motors	mounds	mountainside
mountaintop	mudslide	nervously	nighttime	nonessential
northern	objects	occurred	online	otter
otters	outcrops	pelting	perched	pinecone
pinecones	plunge	pouring	properly	raged
rainwater	realize	recognized	refocused	reminder
restrained	robotic	romping	roz	rozzum
runoff	rustlings	scampered	scuttled	seagulls
sensors	shafts	shallows	sheer	shrubs
skies	skittered	skittish	sliding	sloshed
smudge	snagged	snatched	soared	southern
sparkling	sparrows	spongy	springing	sprouted
squishy	stance	standoff	strangely	submerged
surged	surrounded	surveyed	survival	swallowed
swept	swirled	swirling	tangled	technique
teeming	thrashed	timber	toppled	torsos
towered	transporting	unclamped	underbrush	unison
urging	vision	vultures	warehouse	whipped
whirring	whisked	wildflowers	wingbeats	wriggled