COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: Appendix B Text Exemplar

The Raft By Jim LaMarche

Somehow, on the river, it seemed like summer would never end. But of course it did.

On my last day, I got up extra early and crept down to the dock. The air was cool and a low pearly fog hung over the river. I untied the raft and quietly drifted downstream.

Ahead of me, through the fog, I saw two deer moving across the river, a doe and a fawn. When they reached the shore, the doe leaped easily up the steep bank, then turned to wait for her baby. But the fawn was in trouble. It kept slipping down the muddy bank. The doe returned to the water to help, but the more the fawn struggled, the deeper it got stuck in the mud.

I pushed off the river bottom and drove the raft hard onto the muddy bank, startling the doe. Then I dropped into the water. I was ankle-deep in mud.

You’re okay,” I whispered to the fawn, praying that the raft would calm it. “I won’t hurt you.”

Gradually the fawn stopped struggling, as if it understood that I was there to help. I put my arms around it and pulled.

It barely moved. I pulled again, then again. Slowly the fawn eased out of the mud, and finally it was free. Carefully I carried the fawn up the bank to its mother.

Then, quietly, I returned to the raft. From there I watched the doe nuzzle and clean her baby, and I knew what I had to do. I pulled the stub of a crayon from my pocket, and drew the fawn, in all its wildness, onto the old gray boards of the raft. When I had finished, I knew it was just right.

A Medieval Feast By Aliki

It was announced from the palace that the King would soon make a long journey.

On the way to his destination, the King and his party would spend a few nights at Camdenton Manor. The lord of the manor knew what this meant. The king traveled with his Queen, his knights, squires, and other members of his court. There could be a hundred mouths to feed!

Preparations for the visit began at once. The lord and lady of the manor had their serfs to help them. The serfs lived in huts provided for them on the lord’s estate, each with its own plot of land. In return, they were

1 COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: Appendix B Text Exemplar bound to serve the lord. They farmed his land, managed his manor house, and if there was a war, they had to go to battle with the lord and the King.

But now they prepared. The manor had its own church, which was attended by everyone on the estate. The manor house had to be cleaned, the rooms readied, tents set up for the horsemen, fields fenced for the horses. And above all, provisions had to be gathered for the great feast.

The Royal Suite was redecorated. Silk was spun, new fabric was woven. The Royal Crest was embroidered on linen and painted on the King’s chair.

The lord and his party went hunting and hawking for fresh meat. Hunting was a sport for the rich only. The wild animals that lived on the lord’s estate belonged to him. Anyone caught poaching—hunting illegally— was severely punished.

Falcons and hawks were prized pets. They were trained to attack birds for their masters to capture.

They trapped rabbits and birds of all kinds, and fished for salmon and eels and trout.

Serfs hid in bushes and caught birds in traps. They set ferrets in burrows to chase out rabbits. There were fruits and vegetables growing in the garden, herbs and flowers for sauces and salads, and bees made honey for sweetening.

The Birchbark House

By Louise Erdrich

She was named Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. She grew into a nimble young girl of seven winters, a thoughtful girl with shining brown eyes and a wide grin, only missing her two top front teeth. She touched her upper lip. She wasn’t used to those teeth gone, and was impatient for new, grown-up teeth to complete her smile. Just like her namesake, Omakayas now stared long at a silky patch of bog before she gathered herself and jumped. One hummock. Safety. Omaykayas sprang wide again. This time she landed on the very tip-top of a pointed old stump. She balanced there, looking all around. The lagoon water moved in sparkling crescents. Thick swales of swamp grass rippled. Mud turtles napped in the sun. The world was so calm that Omakayas could hear herself blink. Only the sweet call of a solitary white-throated sparrow pierced the cool of the woods beyond.

All of a sudden Grandma yelled.

“I found it!”

2 COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: Appendix B Text Exemplar

Startled, Omakayas slipped and spun her arms in wheels. She teetered, but somehow kept her balance. Two big, skipping hops, another leap, and she was on dry land. She stepped over spongy leaves and moss, into the woods where the sparrows sang nesting songs in delicate relays.

“Where are you?” Nokomis yelled again. “I found the tree!”

“I’m coming,” Omakayas called back to her grandmother.

It was spring, time to cut Birchbark.

Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea

By Sy Montgomery

Stuart Little, the small mouse with big parents, had nothing on baby marsupials. Marsupials (“mar-SOUP- ee-ulz”) are special kinds of mammals. Even the biggest ones give birth to babies that are incredibly small. A two-hundred-pound six-foot mother kangaroo, for instance, gives birth to a baby as small as a lima bean. That’s what makes marsupials marsupials. Their babies are born so tiny that in order to survive they must live in a pouch on the mother’s tummy. The pouch is called a marsupium. (Don’t you wish you had one?)

A baby marsupial lives hidden in the mother’s warm moist pouch for months. There it sucks milk from a nipple like other baby mammals. One day it’s big enough to poke its head out to see the world. The European explorers who saw kangaroos for the first time in Australia reported they had discovered a two- headed animal—with one head on the neck and another in the belly.

North America has only one marsupial. You may have seen it: The Virginia opossum actually lives in most of the United States, not just Virginia. South America also has marsupials. But most marsupials live in or near Australia. They include the koala (which is not a bear), two species of wombat, the toothy black Tasmania devil, four species of black and white spotted “native cats” (though they’re not cats at all), and many others.

The most famous marsupials, however, are the kangaroos. All kangaroos hop—some of them six feet high and faster than forty miles an hour. More than fifty different species of kangaroo hop around on the ground —from the big red kangaroo to the musky rat kangaroo.

3 COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS: Appendix B Text Exemplar

Excerpt from QUEST FOR THE TREE KANGAROO: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea by Sy Montgomery. Text Copyright © 2006 by Sy Montgomery. Used by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved