Text Leveling System

Toys Go Out

RDQ:	1094	Max Word/Sent	56	Total Words	3064		Diff Words	838
Lex	760	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	2163	70.6%	Hi freq	363	43.3%
AR	3.8	Long Sentences	13.5	Low Freq occurs	157	5.1%	Low freq	104	12.4%

CHAPTER ONE
In the Backpack,
Where It Is Very Dark
The backpack is dark and smells like a wet bathing suit.
Waking up inside, Lumphy feels cramped and grumped.
"I wish I had been asked," he moans. "If I had been asked,
I would have said I wasn't going."
"Shhh," says StingRay, though she doesn't like the
dark backpack any more than Lumphy. "It's not so bad if
you don't complain."]]
"We weren't told about this trip," snorts Lumphy.
"We were just packed in the night."
"Why don't you shut your buffalo mouth?" snaps
Sting Ray. "Your buffalo mouth is far too whiny."
There is a small nip on the end of her tail, and
StingRay curls it away from Lumphy's big square buffalo
teeth.
Plastic usually hums when she is feeling nervous. "Um
tum tum-um tum tum-tum-tiddle-tee," she trills, to
see if it will make the inside of the backpack seem any
nicer.
"Don't you know the words to that song?" asks
Lumphy.
"There are no words. It's a hum," answers Plastic.
No one says anything for a while, after that.
"Does anyone know where we're going in here?"
wonders Lumphy.
Plastic does not.]]
StingRay doesn't, either.
"My stomach is uncomfortable," grumphs the buffalo.
"I think I'm going to be sick.
Buh-huh bump! It feels like the backpack is going
down some stairs. Or maybe up some stairs.
Or maybe up something worse than stairs.
StingRay tries to think calming thoughts. She pictures
the high bed with the fluffy pillows where she usually
sleeps. She pictures the Little Girl with the blue barrette,
who scratches where the ears would he if StingRay had
ears. But none of these thoughts makes her feel calm.
 "I hope we're not going to the vet," StingRay says,
finally.
"What's the vet?" asks Lumphy.
"The vet is a big human dressed in a white coat who
puts animals in a contraption made. from rubber hands, in
order to see what is wrong with them," answers StingRay,]]
who sometimes says she knows things when she doesn't.
"Then he pokes them over and over
with needles the size of carrots,
and makes them drink nasty-tasting medicine,
and puts them in the bumpity washing
machine to fix whatever's broken."
"If anyone needs to go to the vet, it's the one-eared
sheep, says Plastic, remembering the oldest of the Little
Girl's toys. "And Sheep's not even here. No, we can't be
going to the vet. We aren't broken."
"Speak for yourself," snorts Lumphy, who feels even
sicker than before at the thought of the bumpity washing
machine.
Woosh. Woosh. The backpack begins to swing.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Or maybe round and round.
"I hope we're not going to the zoo," moans StingRay.]]
"They'll put us in cages with no one to talk to. Each one
in a separate cage,
and we'll have to woosh back and forth all day,
and do tricks on giant swings,
with people throwing quarters at our faces,
and teasing."
"I don't think we're big enough for the zoo," Plastic
says hopefully. "I'm pretty sure they're only interested in
very large animals over there."
"I'm large," says Lumphy.
"She means really, really, very large," says StingRay.
"At the zoo they have stingrays the size of choo-choo
trains,
and plastics the size of swimming pools.
Zoo buffaloes would never fit in a backpack.
They eat backpacks for lunch, those
buffaloes."
"Is that true?" asks Lumphy, but nobody answers him.]]
Plunk! The backpack is thrown onto the ground.
Or maybe into a trash can.
Or onto a garbage truck.
"We might be going to the dump!" cries StingRay.
"We'll be tossed in a pile of old green beans,
and sour milk cartons,
because the Little Girl doesn't love us
anymore,
and it will be icy cold all the time;
and full of garbage-eating sharks,
and it will smell like throw-up."
"I don't think so," soothes Plastic.
"I'll be forced to sleep on a slimy bit of used paper baggie,
instead of on the big high bed with the fluffy pillows!"
continues StingRay.
There is a noise outside the backpack. Not a big noise,
but a rumbly one. "Did you hear that?" asks StingRay. "I]]
think it is the X-ray machine. The vet is going to X-ray us
one by one
and look into our insides with an enormous
magnifying glass,
and then poke us with the giant carrot!"
"I'm sure it's not an X-ray," says Plastic calmly, although
she isn't sure at all. "An X-ray would be squeakier."
"Then I think it is a lion." cries Sting Ray. "A lion at
the zoo who does not want to be on display with any small
creatures like you and me.
A lion who doesn't like sharing her swing set,
and wants all the quarters for herself.
She is roaring because she hasn't had any
lunch yet,
and her favorite food is stingrays."
A lion would be fiercer," says Plastic, a bit uncertainly.
"It would sound hungrier, I bet."]]
"Maybe it is a giant buffalo," suggests Lumphy.
"Maybe it is a dump truck!" squeals StingRay. "A big
orange dump truck tipping out piles of rotten groceries
on top of us,
and trapping us with the garbage-eating
sharks
and the throw-up smell!"
"Wouldn't a dump truck be louder?" asks Plastic,
though she is starting to think StingRay might have a
point. "I'm sure it's not a dump truck."
The backpack thumps down again with a bang. "I
would like to be warned," moans Lumphy. "Sudden bumps
make everything worse than it already is.
"The Girl doesn't love us and she's trying to get rid of
us!" cries StingRay in a panic.
The backpack opens. The rumbly noise gets louder,]]
and the light is very bright so bright that StingRay,
Plastic, and Lumphy have to squinch up their eyes and
take deep breaths before they can see where they are. A
pair of warm arms takes them all out of the dark, wet bathing-
suit smell together.
The three toys look around. There are small chairs, a
sunny window, and a circle of fidgety faces.
It is not the vet.
It is not the zoo.
It is not the dump. (They are pretty sure.)
But where is it?
The rumbly noise surges up. A grown-up asks everyone
to Please Be Quiet Now. And then comes a familiar
voice.
"These are my best friends," says the Little Girl who
owns the backpack and sleeps in the high bed with the
fluffy pillows. "My best friends in the world. That's why I
brought them to show-and-tell."]]
"Welcome," says the teacher.
Sticky, unfamiliar fingers pat Lumphy's head and
StingRay's plush tail.
Plastic is held up for all to admire. "We are here to be
shown and told," she whispers to StingRay and Lumphy,
feeling quite bouncy as she looks around at the schoolroom.
"Not to be thrown away or put under the X-ray
machine!"
The teacher says Lumphy looks a lot like a real buffalo.
(Lumphy wonders what the teacher means by "real,"
but he is too happy to worry much about it.)
"We're special!" whispers StingRay. "We're her best
friends!"
"I knew it would be something nice," says Plastic.
Funny, but the ride home is not so uncomfortable.
The smell is still there, but the backpack seems rather
cozy. Plastic has herself a nap.]]
StingRay isn't worried about vets and zoos and garbage dumps anymore; she curls herself into a ball by
Lumphy's buffalo stomach. "The Little Girl loves us,"
she tells him. "I knew it all along, really. I just didn't want
to say."
Lumphy licks StingRay's head once, and settles down
to wait. When he knows where he is going, traveling isn't
so bad. And right now, he is going home.]]
CHAPTER TWO
The Serious Problem
of Plastic-ness
The room with the high bed and the fluffy pillows has
bookshelves. Plastic never paid much attention to them
before, but now she thinks they are interesting. Most of
the shelves hold storybooks, hut the bottom one has
schoolbooks on it: books about animals, the meanings of
words the size of oceans, and the ways of plants.]]
"When you've been to school like I have," says
StingRay, interrupting one evening as Plastic is looking
curiously at the shelves, "when you've gone to show and 
tell and seen the classroom and all the important
things they have in there, then you know that books are a
place to find out truths."
"Truths about what?" asks Plastic.
"Just truths," says StingRay, positioning herself
proudly in front of the books. "Like what is two and two?"
"Four," pipes up Lumphy, who is watching the sun set
from the windowsill nearby.
"If we want the answer," explains StingRay, as if she
hasn't heard him, "we can look it up. Truths like these are
in books. That's what you learn at school, if you've been
to school like I have."
"We were all at school," mutters Lumphy, still on the
windowsill.]]
Plastic wants to know which book would have that
truth inside, about two and two.
"A book on money," says StingRay. "It tells you how
to be rich and famous
and how to fill up your really big swimming
pool with liquid gold,
and how to eat expensive chocolates for
breakfast,
and have banquets for hundreds of your best
friends,
and swing from chandeliers made from
diamonds.
Also, how to count numbers together, if that is the
kind of truth you are after."
"How is that a truth?" calls Lumphy.
"Okay, a fact, then. Facts are in books. If you've been
to school."]]
"Ahem," coughs Lumphy. "I was right there next to 
you. Don't you remember?"
"Where?"
"At school."
"Time for bed," StingRay says importantly.
The Little Girl comes into the bedroom and lifts her 
up to sleep on the high bed with the fluffy pillows, while
Lumphy and Plastic stay where they are.
"Let's find the book on money," suggests Plastic,
when the lights are out and both StingRay and the Girl 
are asleep.
Lumphy makes a grouchy noise. Now that it's night 
and the Girl can't see him moving around, he wants to go 
down the hall to visit Tuk Tuk, the yellow towel who lives
in the bathroom. Tuk Tuk always has something interesting to say. She sees a lot of strange behavior in her life i]]
as a towel, although she doesn't get out much. Lumphy
particularly likes to hear about tooth brushing and fingernail
clipping, things he is not sure he properly understands.
"I'm busy," he tells Plastic.
So Plastic tries to get the one-eared sheep to look for
the money book.
"Is there anything about grass in it?" Sheep wants to
know.
"I don't think so. It's the truths and facts of liquid gold
swimming pools."
"Anything about clover?"
"Probably not," Plastic is forced to admit.
"If it's not going to be interesting, I'd just as soon skip
It," Sheep says kindly. She goes to play marbles with the
toy mice.
Plastic looks at the books by herself, reading the titles
on the spines. One explains the meanings of words. One is]]
full of maps. Another is about the wonderful world of
plants. But there isn't any book on money or gold swimming pools-and even if there was one, Plastic couldn't pull it out from the shelf.
Only one book lies open on the floor so that she can 
read it: a book about animals, with pictures and details:
about how they live, what they eat, and where they sleep
at night.
Plastic finds the part about stingrays. They live in the
ocean and flap their flipper-wings like birds in the sky.
She reads about sheep and how their woolly coats get
shorn. She reads about mice, who are part of the rodent
family. And she reads a good deal about buffaloes and
how they run around in herds.
"Ooh," she realizes. "I can read about plastics!"
But plastics aren't there.
She looks again.
They still aren't there.]]
Then Plastic goes page by page through the animal
book, looking at every picture of every single animal.
None of them looks like her.
Ladybugs are round and red, but Plastic doesn't have
wings like a ladybug.
Turtles are round when their legs are inside their
shells, but Plastic does not have a hard shell, or any kind
of shell at all.
Hedgehogs are round when they curl themselves in
balls, but Plastic is not spiny like a hedgehog.
People say foxes are red-but really they are much
more orange, and anyway, Plastic knows she is not a fox.
She is not sure she even has a nose.
Where are the plastics? she wonders, and calls the toy
mice over to help her pull out the book on the meanings
of words. The mice skitter off as soon as they are
done, leaving Plastic alone with the book. It is called a
Dictionary.]]
She finds the P's, and reads: "Plastic. A material produced by polymeri-something-or-other a very long
word).
But where do we live? wonders Plastic. What do we like
to eat?
She reads on. "Plastic. Capable of being shaped or
formed. Also, artificial."
Plastic doesn't know what Artificial means,
looks that up, too. "Fake," says the dictionary. "Not natural."
Artificial doesn't sound nice at all.
Plastic scoots under the high bed and doesn't come
out for several hours.
When he gets back from visiting Tuk Tuk the towel,
Lumphy finds Plastic and crawls under the bed next to.
her. "Did you know the Little Girl puts a piece of waxy]]
string in between her teeth every night before bed?" he
asks. "It's called dental floss."
No, Plastic didn't know.
"I wouldn't want string between my teeth," says
Lumphy.
Plastic is not sure she even has teeth.
"Especially not with wax."
"Maybe it feels nice," suggests Plastic. You never 
know until you try."
"I know without trying."
"Could it be a cleaning thing? Since she does it in the
bathroom."
"Nah," says Lumphy. "What could you clean with a
piece of string?"
Plastic doesn't know.
"All this cleaning, I don't see what it's about, anyway," 
Lumphy adds.]]
Plastic tells Lumphy about the dictionary and how it
says that plastics are Artificial.
"Hmmm." Lumphy scratches his ear and turns around
three times in the spot where he plans to sleep. "You don't
say what you really think," he says, finally. "You pretend
everything's all right when it isn't."
"So?"
"So, that's artificial."
"What about polymeri-something-or-other?"
Lumphy curls himself into a ball. "It's too late to discuss
big words." He closes his eyes.
Plastic is the tiniest bit angry. "Real buffaloes are
interested in other people's problems," she says. "Real
buffaloes don't sleep when someone is talking to them. I
read it in a book."
Lumphy lifts his head. His face looks nervous. "What
do you mean, real buffaloes?"]]
Suddenly, Plastic feels like she isn't being very nice. 
And whatever plastics are, she wants to be a good one. 
"Nothing, she answers. "Never mind."
"I need to know the truth about plastics," Plastic confesses to StingRay the next morning, as they are sunning themselves in a square of light on the shaggy rug. "I can't find it in a book."
"What do you need to know?" asks StingRay kindly.
"I'm sure I can answer."
"Their natural habitat, says Plastic. "And what they
eat; and whether they are birds, or fish, or mammals."
"Mammals, definitely," answers StingRay, who doesn't
actually know. "They're very furry, plastics. And their natural
habitat is the frozen tundra,
where icicles grow up from the ground,
and the wind whistles,
and it's dark thirty hours a day in winter.]]
The plastics live in igloos that they build with
their teeth,
and they eat whale meat and also seals and
walruses that they catch,
and swallow whole.
Does that help?
I think it's a pretty thorough answer."
"Yes, thank you," says Plastic, with a hit of a sniffle. "I
just wonder," she mentions. "I'm not very furry."
"You probably lost your fur in an accident," says
StingRay. "It doesn't look bad at all, though. Really."
Plastic tries to remember a fur-losing accident, but it
must have slipped her mind.
After seven hours in front of the television, Plastic is
as confused as ever. She has watched four cooking shows,
two soap operas, endless commercials, and one after school
special. She knows that there are plastic cups,]]
forks, and containers; that these things are useful for taking
on picnics and freezing leftover stew; and that a delightful
tofu marinade can be made with only six ingredients. She
also knows there are plastic toys ("May contain small plastic
parts," the commercials say, "not suitable for children
under three") and plastic garbage bags.
But she hasn't seen any of the plastics eating whale
meat, or living in igloos, or growing fur-though maybe,
the fur is hard to see on the small television screen. In any
case, all the plastics look different. Most of them aren't
even red. There isn't any herd, like there are herds of buffaloes. The Plastics don't build dams, or collect pollen, or 
live in tunnels. They do appear to be famous-and yet there are no plastics to whom Plastic feels connected. 
None of them seem to have anything in common besides 
their plastic-ness.
Which isn't much.]]
For four days and four nights, Plastic feels un-bouncy.
She doesn't play marbles with the one-eared sheep; she
doesn't make jokes with the rocking horse in the comer
and she doesn't play I Doubt It with Lumphy or checkers
with StingRay. She looks out the window by herself and
thinks about plastic-ness.
On the fifth night, Plastic remembers Tuk Tuk. The
towel knows about dental floss and fingernail clippers.
Maybe she knows about plastics, too.
Plastic has only met Tuk Tuk once before, and she
feels embarrassed as she creeps down the hall and stops
outside the bathroom door. Maybe Tuk uk will not want
a visit from a small, confused plastic. After all, she is used
to large and furry friends like Lumphy.
But Plastic can't go on anymore, staring out the window,
doing nothing all night.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Blend of written/oral

Chapters

Headings

Features

Topic

Toys

Appearances

Learning

Discovery

*Fictional Ideas/Charac

Definitions

Low Frequency Words

artificial	banquets	barrette	buh	bumpity
calming	calmly	chandeliers	comer	commercials
confesses	contraption	coughs	curiously	curls
diamonds	doubt	eared	embarrassed	familiar
fidgety	fiercer	furry	groceries	grumped
grumphs	habitat	hedgehog	hedgehogs	herd
herds	hungrier	icicles	importantly	ingredients
interrupting	kindly	leftover	liquid	lumphy
lumphy's	magnifying	marinade	material	meanings
medicine	nah	operas	panic	particularly
plunk	plush	pollen	polymeri	positioning
properly	realizes	rodent	rumbly	schoolbooks
schoolroom	separate	shaggy	shelves	shorn
shown	skitter	sniffle	soothes	spines
spiny	squeakier	squinch	stingray	stingray's
stingrays	storybooks	suggests	suitable	sunning
surges	swallow	thorough	tiddle	tiniest
tofu	trills	tuk	tundra	uncertainly
uncomfortable	unfamiliar	waking	walruses	warned
whatever's	whiny	whispers	whistles	windowsill
wonders	woolly	woosh