IAR: Grade 5 - ELA
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated over 1 year ago
20 Questions
Read the passage from the novel titled Ida B. Then answer the questions.
from Ida B
by Katherine Hannigan
1 Saturday morning, I was sitting on the front porch, waiting for nothing, with nothing I wanted to do. Rufus sat beside me for a while, hoping I’d be up to something more than misery. But he got tired of waiting and went off on his own, leaving a small sea of spit where he’d been sitting.
2 Just as I was about to take myself back to bed and try starting the day over again in the afternoon, I saw the big white car come down the road and turn left at the T. And right away, I knew what I had to do.
3 No plans. No least-possible-pain-and-humiliation scheming. Just plain and straight do the deed.
4 As soon as the white car disappeared down the DeLunas’ drive, I picked myself up and headed out through the fields, then around the base of the mountain.
5 I walked through the orchard, eyes fixed forward, not slow and not rushed, either. Like I was on my way to the final showdown. Yes, there was a bunch of them and only one of me. Yes, they might ambush me, and I might not come back in one piece. But I’d take whatever those people needed to dish out, because I was going to do the right thing.
6 I stopped just before I stepped onto the land that now belonged to the DeLunas, and took a deep breath as I walked over that invisible boundary line.
7 And there was Claire straight ahead, looking at me, waiting for me. Her mom and little brother were crouched down at the side of the house, planting little bushes.
8 Clump . . . clump . . . clump . . . was the only sound my feet were making this time as I walked toward Claire, arms out from my sides and palms up, letting her know that I wasn’t coming for a fight, even if she had some trouble and torture she needed to visit on me.
9 Claire’s mother spotted me and stood, dusted off her hands, and watched as I walked up to Claire. Then all of the world was still except for the two of us.
10 “Claire,” I said, making myself look her in the eye, “I’m sorry I scared you in the woods. I’m sorry I was mean to you. I was following you in school so I could apologize. I . . . I . . .” And there I was, babbling again. Should I tell her about Mama and the trees and school and everything? Where would I start if I was going to explain it all?
11 Then Ms. W. came into my head and I knew it didn’t really matter.
12 “I’m just sorry,” I said.
13 Sometimes, on spring days, there will be the brightest, warmest sun and the darkest, rainiest clouds sharing the sky. All day long you wonder, “Will it rain? Will it shine?” And that’s what I was thinking then, while I was looking at Claire’s face. Everything was there, but nothing was happening one way or the other. I couldn’t hang around any longer to see what would win out, though, because I had something else to do.
14 I turned to Claire’s little brother, who had his arm around his mama’s leg, and I could see that he was scared of me. He thought I was a monster, just like I’d wanted him to.
15 “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “I won’t ever do it again. I promise.”
16 And he just stared at me, too. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that this family’s mouths were under repair.
17 It was too hard waiting there for those people to decide if they wanted to tell me something, and I wasn’t quite sure I could stand to hear the words they might want to say anyway. So I turned back to the orchard and started home.
18 I braced myself for a DeLuna ambush from behind and decided that when Mama and Daddy found me, just holding on to a tiny sliver of life, my last words would be, “Turn the land into a park, teach Rufus some mouth-related manners, and make sure Lulu gets her treats. Please.”
19 But I got to the property line without harm or hollering, and by the time I crossed it, I did feel better. Like my heart was heavier and lighter at the same time.
* * *
20 Apologizing is like spring-cleaning. First of all, you don’t want to do it. But there’s something inside you, or somebody outside you who’s standing there with her hands on her hips saying, “It’s time to make things right around here,” and there’s no getting out of it.
21 Once you get started, though, you find out that you can’t just clean out one room and be done with it; you have to do the whole house or you’re tracking dirt from one place to the other. Well, it starts to seem like too, too much, and you want to quit more than Christmas. But there’s that somebody or something telling you again, “Keep going. You’re almost done. No quitting allowed.”
Passage from Ida B by Katherine Hannigan, text copyright © 2004 by Katherine Hannigan. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Read the passage from the novel titled Moon Over Manifest. Then answer the questions.
from Moon Over Manifest
by Clare Vanderpool
Santa Fe Railway
Southeast Kansas
May 27, 1936
1 The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE.
2 I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he’d say to me, “Abilene, did I ever tell you ’bout the time. . .?” I’d get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he’d tell stories about Manifest, the town where he’d lived once upon a time.
3 His words drew pictures of brightly painted storefronts and bustling townsfolk. Hearing Gideon tell about it was like sucking on butterscotch. Smooth and sweet. And when he’d go back to not saying much, I’d try recalling what it tasted like. Maybe that was how I found comfort then, even with him being so far away. By remembering the flavor of his words. But mostly, I could taste the sadness in his voice when he told me I couldn’t stay with him for the summer while he worked a railroad job back in Iowa. Something had changed in him. It started the day I got a cut on my knee. It got bad and I got real sick with infection. The doctors said I was lucky to come out of it. But it was like Gideon had gotten a wound in him too. Only he didn’t come out of it. And it was painful enough to make him send me away.
4 I reached into my satchel for the flour sack that held my few special things. A blue dress, two shiny dimes I’d earned collecting pop bottles, a letter from Gideon telling folks that I would be received by Pastor Howard at the Manifest depot, and my most special something, kept in a box lined with an old 1917 Manifest Herald newspaper: my daddy’s compass.
5 In a gold case, it wore like a pocket watch, but inside was a compass showing every direction. Only problem was, a working compass always points north. This one, the arrow dangled and jiggled every which way. It wasn’t even that old. It had the compass maker’s name and the date it was made on the inside. St. Dizier, October 8, 1918. Gideon had always planned to get it fixed, but when I was leaving, he said he didn’t need it anyway, what with train tracks to guide him. Still, I liked imagining that the chain of that broken compass was long enough to stretch all the way back into his pocket, with him at one end and me at the other.
6 Smoothing out the yellowed newspaper for the thousandth time, I scanned the page, hoping to find some bit of news about or insight into my daddy. But there was only the same old “Hogs and Cattle” report on one side and a “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary: Charter Edition” on the other, plus a couple of advertisements for Liberty Bonds and Billy Bump’s Hair Tonic. I didn’t know anything about Hattie Mae Harper, except what she wrote in her article, but I figured her newspaper column had protected Gideon’s compass for some time, and for that l felt a sense of gratitude. I carefully placed the newspaper back in the box and stored the box in the satchel, but held on to the compass. I guess I needed to hold on to something.
7 The conductor came into the car, “Manifest, next stop.”
8 The seven-forty-five evening train was going to be right on time. Conductors only gave a few minutes’ notice, so I had to hurry. I shoved the compass into a side pocket of the satchel, then made my way to the back of the last car. Being a paying customer this time, with a full-fledged ticket, I didn’t have to jump off, and I knew that the preacher would be waiting for me. But as anyone worth his salt knows, it’s best to get a look at a place before it gets a look at you. I’d worn my overalls just for the occasion. Besides, it wouldn’t be dark for another hour, so I’d have time to find my way around.
9 At the last car, I waited, listening the way I’d been taught—wait till the clack of the train wheels slows to the rhythm of your heartbeat. The trouble is my heart speeds up when I’m looking at the ground rushing by. Finally, I saw a grassy spot and jumped. The ground came quick and hard, but I landed and rolled as the train lumbered on without a thank-you or goodbye.
10 As I stood and brushed myself off, there was the sign not five feet in front of me. It was so weathered there was hardly a chip of blue paint to be found. And it looked to have been shot up so bad most of the words were gone. All that was left read MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A PAST.
Excerpt from MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool, copyright © 2010 by Clare Vanderpool. Used by permission of Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
*Ida B passage, followed by Moon Over Manifest passage*
from Ida B
by Katherine Hannigan
1 Saturday morning, I was sitting on the front porch, waiting for nothing, with nothing I wanted to do. Rufus sat beside me for a while, hoping I’d be up to something more than misery. But he got tired of waiting and went off on his own, leaving a small sea of spit where he’d been sitting.
2 Just as I was about to take myself back to bed and try starting the day over again in the afternoon, I saw the big white car come down the road and turn left at the T. And right away, I knew what I had to do.
3 No plans. No least-possible-pain-and-humiliation scheming. Just plain and straight do the deed.
4 As soon as the white car disappeared down the DeLunas’ drive, I picked myself up and headed out through the fields, then around the base of the mountain.
5 I walked through the orchard, eyes fixed forward, not slow and not rushed, either. Like I was on my way to the final showdown. Yes, there was a bunch of them and only one of me. Yes, they might ambush me, and I might not come back in one piece. But I’d take whatever those people needed to dish out, because I was going to do the right thing.
6 I stopped just before I stepped onto the land that now belonged to the DeLunas, and took a deep breath as I walked over that invisible boundary line.
7 And there was Claire straight ahead, looking at me, waiting for me. Her mom and little brother were crouched down at the side of the house, planting little bushes.
8 Clump . . . clump . . . clump . . . was the only sound my feet were making this time as I walked toward Claire, arms out from my sides and palms up, letting her know that I wasn’t coming for a fight, even if she had some trouble and torture she needed to visit on me.
9 Claire’s mother spotted me and stood, dusted off her hands, and watched as I walked up to Claire. Then all of the world was still except for the two of us.
10 “Claire,” I said, making myself look her in the eye, “I’m sorry I scared you in the woods. I’m sorry I was mean to you. I was following you in school so I could apologize. I . . . I . . .” And there I was, babbling again. Should I tell her about Mama and the trees and school and everything? Where would I start if I was going to explain it all?
11 Then Ms. W. came into my head and I knew it didn’t really matter.
12 “I’m just sorry,” I said.
13 Sometimes, on spring days, there will be the brightest, warmest sun and the darkest, rainiest clouds sharing the sky. All day long you wonder, “Will it rain? Will it shine?” And that’s what I was thinking then, while I was looking at Claire’s face. Everything was there, but nothing was happening one way or the other. I couldn’t hang around any longer to see what would win out, though, because I had something else to do.
14 I turned to Claire’s little brother, who had his arm around his mama’s leg, and I could see that he was scared of me. He thought I was a monster, just like I’d wanted him to.
15 “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “I won’t ever do it again. I promise.”
16 And he just stared at me, too. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that this family’s mouths were under repair.
17 It was too hard waiting there for those people to decide if they wanted to tell me something, and I wasn’t quite sure I could stand to hear the words they might want to say anyway. So I turned back to the orchard and started home.
18 I braced myself for a DeLuna ambush from behind and decided that when Mama and Daddy found me, just holding on to a tiny sliver of life, my last words would be, “Turn the land into a park, teach Rufus some mouth-related manners, and make sure Lulu gets her treats. Please.”
19 But I got to the property line without harm or hollering, and by the time I crossed it, I did feel better. Like my heart was heavier and lighter at the same time.
* * *
20 Apologizing is like spring-cleaning. First of all, you don’t want to do it. But there’s something inside you, or somebody outside you who’s standing there with her hands on her hips saying, “It’s time to make things right around here,” and there’s no getting out of it.
21 Once you get started, though, you find out that you can’t just clean out one room and be done with it; you have to do the whole house or you’re tracking dirt from one place to the other. Well, it starts to seem like too, too much, and you want to quit more than Christmas. But there’s that somebody or something telling you again, “Keep going. You’re almost done. No quitting allowed.”
Passage from Ida B by Katherine Hannigan, text copyright © 2004 by Katherine Hannigan. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
from Moon Over Manifest
by Clare Vanderpool
Santa Fe Railway
Southeast Kansas
May 27, 1936
1 The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE.
2 I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he’d say to me, “Abilene, did I ever tell you ’bout the time. . .?” I’d get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he’d tell stories about Manifest, the town where he’d lived once upon a time.
3 His words drew pictures of brightly painted storefronts and bustling townsfolk. Hearing Gideon tell about it was like sucking on butterscotch. Smooth and sweet. And when he’d go back to not saying much, I’d try recalling what it tasted like. Maybe that was how I found comfort then, even with him being so far away. By remembering the flavor of his words. But mostly, I could taste the sadness in his voice when he told me I couldn’t stay with him for the summer while he worked a railroad job back in Iowa. Something had changed in him. It started the day I got a cut on my knee. It got bad and I got real sick with infection. The doctors said I was lucky to come out of it. But it was like Gideon had gotten a wound in him too. Only he didn’t come out of it. And it was painful enough to make him send me away.
4 I reached into my satchel for the flour sack that held my few special things. A blue dress, two shiny dimes I’d earned collecting pop bottles, a letter from Gideon telling folks that I would be received by Pastor Howard at the Manifest depot, and my most special something, kept in a box lined with an old 1917 Manifest Herald newspaper: my daddy’s compass.
5 In a gold case, it wore like a pocket watch, but inside was a compass showing every direction. Only problem was, a working compass always points north. This one, the arrow dangled and jiggled every which way. It wasn’t even that old. It had the compass maker’s name and the date it was made on the inside. St. Dizier, October 8, 1918. Gideon had always planned to get it fixed, but when I was leaving, he said he didn’t need it anyway, what with train tracks to guide him. Still, I liked imagining that the chain of that broken compass was long enough to stretch all the way back into his pocket, with him at one end and me at the other.
6 Smoothing out the yellowed newspaper for the thousandth time, I scanned the page, hoping to find some bit of news about or insight into my daddy. But there was only the same old “Hogs and Cattle” report on one side and a “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary: Charter Edition” on the other, plus a couple of advertisements for Liberty Bonds and Billy Bump’s Hair Tonic. I didn’t know anything about Hattie Mae Harper, except what she wrote in her article, but I figured her newspaper column had protected Gideon’s compass for some time, and for that l felt a sense of gratitude. I carefully placed the newspaper back in the box and stored the box in the satchel, but held on to the compass. I guess I needed to hold on to something.
7 The conductor came into the car, “Manifest, next stop.”
8 The seven-forty-five evening train was going to be right on time. Conductors only gave a few minutes’ notice, so I had to hurry. I shoved the compass into a side pocket of the satchel, then made my way to the back of the last car. Being a paying customer this time, with a full-fledged ticket, I didn’t have to jump off, and I knew that the preacher would be waiting for me. But as anyone worth his salt knows, it’s best to get a look at a place before it gets a look at you. I’d worn my overalls just for the occasion. Besides, it wouldn’t be dark for another hour, so I’d have time to find my way around.
9 At the last car, I waited, listening the way I’d been taught—wait till the clack of the train wheels slows to the rhythm of your heartbeat. The trouble is my heart speeds up when I’m looking at the ground rushing by. Finally, I saw a grassy spot and jumped. The ground came quick and hard, but I landed and rolled as the train lumbered on without a thank-you or goodbye.
10 As I stood and brushed myself off, there was the sign not five feet in front of me. It was so weathered there was hardly a chip of blue paint to be found. And it looked to have been shot up so bad most of the words were gone. All that was left read MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A PAST.
Excerpt from MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool, copyright © 2010 by Clare Vanderpool. Used by permission of Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Read the passage from The Youngest Girl in the Fifth. Then answer the questions.
from The Youngest Girl in the Fifth
by Angela Brazil
1 So far from looking withering as Gwen entered the room, the Principal wore an unusually encouraging and benign expression. She was a handsome, large, imposing woman, with a stern cast of features, and was held in great awe by the whole school. As a rule, Seniors and Juniors quailed alike under the glance of her keen dark eyes.
2 “Come here, Gwen,” she said blandly, as her pupil stood hesitating near the door. “I want to have a little talk with you. I’ve been looking over your reports for the last few weeks, and I find that you’ve done well—so well, that I consider the standard of the Upper Fourth is too easy for you. I think you ought to be able to manage the work of the Fifth Form, and I’m going to move you there.”
3 Gwen stared at Miss Roscoe, too surprised to answer. Such a proposal as a change of Form was absolutely the last thing she could have expected. In the middle of a term it was surely an unprecedented happening. For the moment she scarcely knew whether to be alarmed or flattered at the honour thus thrust upon her.
4 “You may find the mathematics a little difficult,” continued Miss Roscoe; “but Miss Woodville shall coach you until you’ve caught up the rest of the class. She can also go over the arrears of Latin translation with you. With that help you shouldn’t be so far behind. I’ve spoken to both Miss Slade and Miss Douglas about it, and they fully agree with me. Do you think yourself you’ll be able to manage the work?”
5 “I don’t know, I’m sure,” stammered Gwen. “I expect I’m behind in maths.—but—”
6 “But you must try your best. I shall trust you to make a great effort. I should be very sorry to have to put you down again. Come with me now, and I’ll take you to your new Form.”
7 Gwen followed the Principal with her head in a buzzing whirl. It seemed like a dream to be suddenly translated from the Lower School to the Upper. She wished she could have had a little time to get accustomed to the idea: she would have liked a day’s preparation at least, so as to think the change over and discuss it at home. Miss Roscoe, however, always did things in a hurry; she never had a moment to waste, and at present she whisked her pupil along the corridor and into the Fifth Form room with almost breathless energy.
From The Youngest Girl in the Fifth by Angela Brazil—Public Domain
Read the passage from the article by Lauren Tarshis titled “The Amazing Penguin Rescue.” Then answer the questions.
from “The Amazing Penguin Rescue”
by Lauren Tarshis
1 Imagine you are an African penguin living on an island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. You live with tens of thousands of other penguins on a rocky beach. It’s a typical day there in June—cold and windy. The beach echoes with penguin noises, barks and honks and brays. Some of your fellow penguins fight for territory. Others cuddle with their mates and dote on their chicks.
2 You’re hungry, so you head down to the water’s edge. You waddle on tiny feet, and your wings are too stubby for flying. But in the water, you can swim faster and dive deeper than any bird on Earth. As you plunge into the sea, your wings become powerful underwater propellers. You shoot through the water at 12 miles an hour, a black-and-white blur, snatching sardines from the surface, swallowing them whole, then catching more. Your thick feathers protect you from the freezing water.
3 You stay in the sea for hours until your belly is full. Then you turn to head back to shore.
4 That’s when something goes wrong.
5 As you come to the surface for air, the water feels unfamiliar. It is thick, and it burns your eyes. You try to swim away, but suddenly your wings are too heavy to lift and you can barely propel yourself. Your body wobbles and rolls. You feel bitterly cold. You shiver and gasp for breath.
6 What you don’t know is that just hours ago, a cargo ship called Treasure hit a reef and split apart. As it sank, 1,300 tons of toxic crude oil gushed into the sea. Oil surrounds your breeding ground—the largest African penguin breeding ground in the world.
7 You are not the only penguin that has become soaked with the poisonous oil. Thousands of others have been trapped in the massive oil slick.
8 The impact of oil on a penguin (or any bird) is immediate and devastating. You are shivering because the oil has caused your layers of feathers to separate. Freezing water now lashes at your sensitive skin. Your eyes hurt because the oil has burned them. Your wings are heavy because they are coated with oil.
9 But your instinct for survival is strong. Somehow you struggle back to shore, fighting the waves and the current. The trip, usually effortless, is an agonizing ordeal. You manage to stagger onto the beach and back to your nest. You lick and peck at your feathers, desperate to clean them. Finally you give up. There is nothing to do but stand there, terrified, dazed, and silent.
Strange Creatures
10 Then the beach is invaded by enormous creatures.
11 They are humans, but you don’t know that. You have never seen a human before. These men and women know what you don’t: that this oil spill is a catastrophe for you and your species. Some of them have devoted their lives to helping birds like you, birds caught in oil spills and other human-made disasters. They have helped with bird rescues around the world. All they care about is saving your life.
12 But how could you know this?
13 As the humans swarm the beach, you are overcome with panic. A man catches you. You lash out viciously with your powerful jaws and razor-sharp beak. You bite his arm, ripping his skin through the fabric of his thick coat. He doesn’t let go. You strike again, biting his leg, inflicting a wound that will leave a scar for the rest of his life. But he cares more about you than himself. All across the beach, dozens of people are capturing penguins, enduring excruciating bites and wing slaps as they load you and the other penguins into crates. It is painful, exhausting work. The sight of all of these scared and injured penguins is heartbreaking to the humans. Some—grown men and women—fight tears.
14 But they don’t give up. Tens of thousands of penguins are in danger. And they intend to save every single one.
15 Ten miles from the island, outside the city of Cape Town, a team of workers and volunteers has transformed a warehouse into a penguin rescue center. They have worked with astonishing speed. The warehouse holds hundreds of round enclosures, each large enough for 100 penguins. There are additional areas where penguins will be washed. One room is filled with ten tons of frozen fish, the amount needed daily to feed the penguins. Acquiring this enormous quantity of fish every day will be one of the workers’ great challenges.
16 Actually, everything is a challenge. Simply getting one penguin to eat is a monumental task. In the wild, penguins hunt for sardines and gobble them up while they are still alive and wriggling. These penguins won’t accept the dead fish offered by human hands; workers have to force-feed them. They must restrain a penguin, pry its beak open, and shove the fish down its throat. Feeding one penguin can take an hour. Feeding all of the penguins takes an army of workers 15 hours.
17 And then there is the smell that fills the warehouse—a combination of penguin droppings, dead sardines, and human sweat. It is a stench so powerful that many people throw up when they first arrive.
18 But not even the smell keeps people away.
19 As news of the rescue effort spreads, hundreds, and then thousands, of volunteers flock to the warehouse, eager to help. They are a diverse group, including rich women from fancy neighborhoods and poor teenagers from Cape Town’s streets. Some have experience helping wildlife; some have never even owned a pet. All of them have one thing in common: a mission to save as many penguins as possible.
“The Amazing Penguin Rescue” by Lauren Tarshis and map graphic from Storyworks April/May 2011 Issue. Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.
Read the article by Dyan deNapoli titled “The Amazing Penguin Rescue.” Then answer the questions.
The Amazing Penguin Rescue
by Dyan deNapoli
as told to Natalie Smith
1 The summer of 2000, I had just finished my rounds tending to the New England Aquarium’s 60 penguins when I got an urgent call from South Africa. The manager of SANCCOB, a seabird rescue center in Cape Town, was on the line. The region’s penguins were in trouble. The cargo ship MV Treasure had sunk off the coast of Cape Town, creating an oil spill. Thirteen hundred tons of fuel oil were flowing near Robben Island, right in the middle of the African penguins’ primary habitat. In a matter of days, thick, toxic liquid had covered about 20,000 penguins. Without swift help, the seabirds would have no chance for survival.
2 SANCCOB had launched a massive rescue operation for the oiled penguins. Volunteers were showing up by the thousands, but they had no experience. The center needed penguin keepers to train the volunteers. Would I help?
3 Two days later, I boarded a plane to South Africa. I was about to take part in what would become the largest animal rescue operation ever attempted.
A Startling Silence
4 Just outside Cape Town, a large warehouse had been turned into a rescue center for the oiled penguins. The rescuers had set up makeshift pools, which held about 100 oiled birds each. Hundreds of pools covered the floor.
5 When I first walked into the building, I couldn’t believe my ears. Normally, African penguins are vocal birds. I expected to walk in to a chorus of honking and squawking. Instead, the center sounded like a library. Only the hushed voices of people could be heard. The penguins were dead silent.
6 I felt overwhelmed. My heart ached for the distressed birds. Cleaning them all seemed like an impossible task. But we had to carry on like doctors in an emergency room. There was no time for doubt.
Bird Bath
7 Cleaning oil off a penguin isn’t easy. It takes two people—one to hold the penguin, another to do the washing. The bird is sprayed with a degreaser and scrubbed with warm, soapy water. Delicate areas around the face must be brushed with a toothbrush. Then the bird gets rinsed under a hose. The whole process takes about an hour. Even with more than 12,500 volunteers, it took a month to bathe all 20,000 birds at the center.
The Spreading Spill
8 While workers bathed penguins at the rescue center, another crisis was developing. Oil from the spill had started moving north toward Dassen Island. Tens of thousands of penguins were in the oil’s path. But we already had our hands full with 20,000 recovering birds. Supplies were running low. If any more birds were oiled, we wouldn’t have enough resources to save them.
9 One researcher came up with an idea: What if the Dassen penguins were temporarily moved out of harm’s way? The method had never been tried before. Experts decided to give it a chance. Workers rounded up a large number of the penguins on Dassen Island and released them near Port Elizabeth, 500 miles away. The hope was that by the time the seabirds swam home, the oil would be gone. The plan worked! Another 20,000 penguins were saved.
Amazing Rescue
10 The entire penguin rescue operation took about three months. In the end, more than 90 percent of the oiled penguins were successfully returned to the wild. In a previous large-scale penguin rescue, only half of the oiled birds survived. We could hardly believe that our efforts worked!
11 But for me, the most inspiring part was the work of the volunteers. Rescuing penguins isn’t glamorous. The stench of the rescue center—a mix of penguin droppings and dead fish—made people feel sick. The scratches and bites of terrified birds covered volunteers’ arms. As the Penguin Lady, I’m used to facing such hazards to care for the animals I love. What I didn’t realize was how many other people care for penguins too.
From Scholastic SuperScience, January 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.
Both "The Amazing Penguin Rescue" passages can be found here.
(Scroll down for the one by Dyan deNapoli.)
from “The Amazing Penguin Rescue”
by Lauren Tarshis
1 Imagine you are an African penguin living on an island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. You live with tens of thousands of other penguins on a rocky beach. It’s a typical day there in June—cold and windy. The beach echoes with penguin noises, barks and honks and brays. Some of your fellow penguins fight for territory. Others cuddle with their mates and dote on their chicks.
2 You’re hungry, so you head down to the water’s edge. You waddle on tiny feet, and your wings are too stubby for flying. But in the water, you can swim faster and dive deeper than any bird on Earth. As you plunge into the sea, your wings become powerful underwater propellers. You shoot through the water at 12 miles an hour, a black-and-white blur, snatching sardines from the surface, swallowing them whole, then catching more. Your thick feathers protect you from the freezing water.
3 You stay in the sea for hours until your belly is full. Then you turn to head back to shore.
4 That’s when something goes wrong.
5 As you come to the surface for air, the water feels unfamiliar. It is thick, and it burns your eyes. You try to swim away, but suddenly your wings are too heavy to lift and you can barely propel yourself. Your body wobbles and rolls. You feel bitterly cold. You shiver and gasp for breath.
6 What you don’t know is that just hours ago, a cargo ship called Treasure hit a reef and split apart. As it sank, 1,300 tons of toxic crude oil gushed into the sea. Oil surrounds your breeding ground—the largest African penguin breeding ground in the world.
7 You are not the only penguin that has become soaked with the poisonous oil. Thousands of others have been trapped in the massive oil slick.
8 The impact of oil on a penguin (or any bird) is immediate and devastating. You are shivering because the oil has caused your layers of feathers to separate. Freezing water now lashes at your sensitive skin. Your eyes hurt because the oil has burned them. Your wings are heavy because they are coated with oil.
9 But your instinct for survival is strong. Somehow you struggle back to shore, fighting the waves and the current. The trip, usually effortless, is an agonizing ordeal. You manage to stagger onto the beach and back to your nest. You lick and peck at your feathers, desperate to clean them. Finally you give up. There is nothing to do but stand there, terrified, dazed, and silent.
Strange Creatures
10 Then the beach is invaded by enormous creatures.
11 They are humans, but you don’t know that. You have never seen a human before. These men and women know what you don’t: that this oil spill is a catastrophe for you and your species. Some of them have devoted their lives to helping birds like you, birds caught in oil spills and other human-made disasters. They have helped with bird rescues around the world. All they care about is saving your life.
12 But how could you know this?
13 As the humans swarm the beach, you are overcome with panic. A man catches you. You lash out viciously with your powerful jaws and razor-sharp beak. You bite his arm, ripping his skin through the fabric of his thick coat. He doesn’t let go. You strike again, biting his leg, inflicting a wound that will leave a scar for the rest of his life. But he cares more about you than himself. All across the beach, dozens of people are capturing penguins, enduring excruciating bites and wing slaps as they load you and the other penguins into crates. It is painful, exhausting work. The sight of all of these scared and injured penguins is heartbreaking to the humans. Some—grown men and women—fight tears.
14 But they don’t give up. Tens of thousands of penguins are in danger. And they intend to save every single one.
15 Ten miles from the island, outside the city of Cape Town, a team of workers and volunteers has transformed a warehouse into a penguin rescue center. They have worked with astonishing speed. The warehouse holds hundreds of round enclosures, each large enough for 100 penguins. There are additional areas where penguins will be washed. One room is filled with ten tons of frozen fish, the amount needed daily to feed the penguins. Acquiring this enormous quantity of fish every day will be one of the workers’ great challenges.
16 Actually, everything is a challenge. Simply getting one penguin to eat is a monumental task. In the wild, penguins hunt for sardines and gobble them up while they are still alive and wriggling. These penguins won’t accept the dead fish offered by human hands; workers have to force-feed them. They must restrain a penguin, pry its beak open, and shove the fish down its throat. Feeding one penguin can take an hour. Feeding all of the penguins takes an army of workers 15 hours.
17 And then there is the smell that fills the warehouse—a combination of penguin droppings, dead sardines, and human sweat. It is a stench so powerful that many people throw up when they first arrive.
18 But not even the smell keeps people away.
19 As news of the rescue effort spreads, hundreds, and then thousands, of volunteers flock to the warehouse, eager to help. They are a diverse group, including rich women from fancy neighborhoods and poor teenagers from Cape Town’s streets. Some have experience helping wildlife; some have never even owned a pet. All of them have one thing in common: a mission to save as many penguins as possible.
“The Amazing Penguin Rescue” by Lauren Tarshis and map graphic from Storyworks April/May 2011 Issue. Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.
"The Amazing Penguin Rescue"
by Dyan deNapoli
as told to Natalie Smith
1 The summer of 2000, I had just finished my rounds tending to the New England Aquarium’s 60 penguins when I got an urgent call from South Africa. The manager of SANCCOB, a seabird rescue center in Cape Town, was on the line. The region’s penguins were in trouble. The cargo ship MV Treasure had sunk off the coast of Cape Town, creating an oil spill. Thirteen hundred tons of fuel oil were flowing near Robben Island, right in the middle of the African penguins’ primary habitat. In a matter of days, thick, toxic liquid had covered about 20,000 penguins. Without swift help, the seabirds would have no chance for survival.
2 SANCCOB had launched a massive rescue operation for the oiled penguins. Volunteers were showing up by the thousands, but they had no experience. The center needed penguin keepers to train the volunteers. Would I help?
3 Two days later, I boarded a plane to South Africa. I was about to take part in what would become the largest animal rescue operation ever attempted.
A Startling Silence
4 Just outside Cape Town, a large warehouse had been turned into a rescue center for the oiled penguins. The rescuers had set up makeshift pools, which held about 100 oiled birds each. Hundreds of pools covered the floor.
5 When I first walked into the building, I couldn’t believe my ears. Normally, African penguins are vocal birds. I expected to walk in to a chorus of honking and squawking. Instead, the center sounded like a library. Only the hushed voices of people could be heard. The penguins were dead silent.
6 I felt overwhelmed. My heart ached for the distressed birds. Cleaning them all seemed like an impossible task. But we had to carry on like doctors in an emergency room. There was no time for doubt.
Bird Bath
7 Cleaning oil off a penguin isn’t easy. It takes two people—one to hold the penguin, another to do the washing. The bird is sprayed with a degreaser and scrubbed with warm, soapy water. Delicate areas around the face must be brushed with a toothbrush. Then the bird gets rinsed under a hose. The whole process takes about an hour. Even with more than 12,500 volunteers, it took a month to bathe all 20,000 birds at the center.
The Spreading Spill
8 While workers bathed penguins at the rescue center, another crisis was developing. Oil from the spill had started moving north toward Dassen Island. Tens of thousands of penguins were in the oil’s path. But we already had our hands full with 20,000 recovering birds. Supplies were running low. If any more birds were oiled, we wouldn’t have enough resources to save them.
9 One researcher came up with an idea: What if the Dassen penguins were temporarily moved out of harm’s way? The method had never been tried before. Experts decided to give it a chance. Workers rounded up a large number of the penguins on Dassen Island and released them near Port Elizabeth, 500 miles away. The hope was that by the time the seabirds swam home, the oil would be gone. The plan worked! Another 20,000 penguins were saved.
Amazing Rescue
10 The entire penguin rescue operation took about three months. In the end, more than 90 percent of the oiled penguins were successfully returned to the wild. In a previous large-scale penguin rescue, only half of the oiled birds survived. We could hardly believe that our efforts worked!
11 But for me, the most inspiring part was the work of the volunteers. Rescuing penguins isn’t glamorous. The stench of the rescue center—a mix of penguin droppings and dead fish—made people feel sick. The scratches and bites of terrified birds covered volunteers’ arms. As the Penguin Lady, I’m used to facing such hazards to care for the animals I love. What I didn’t realize was how many other people care for penguins too.
From Scholastic SuperScience, January 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.
Found here:
- Both "The Amazing Penguin Rescue" passages
- "Endangered Penguins Caught in Oil Spill" video
(Scroll down to view both articles)
from “The Amazing Penguin Rescue”
by Lauren Tarshis
1 Imagine you are an African penguin living on an island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. You live with tens of thousands of other penguins on a rocky beach. It’s a typical day there in June—cold and windy. The beach echoes with penguin noises, barks and honks and brays. Some of your fellow penguins fight for territory. Others cuddle with their mates and dote on their chicks.
2 You’re hungry, so you head down to the water’s edge. You waddle on tiny feet, and your wings are too stubby for flying. But in the water, you can swim faster and dive deeper than any bird on Earth. As you plunge into the sea, your wings become powerful underwater propellers. You shoot through the water at 12 miles an hour, a black-and-white blur, snatching sardines from the surface, swallowing them whole, then catching more. Your thick feathers protect you from the freezing water.
3 You stay in the sea for hours until your belly is full. Then you turn to head back to shore.
4 That’s when something goes wrong.
5 As you come to the surface for air, the water feels unfamiliar. It is thick, and it burns your eyes. You try to swim away, but suddenly your wings are too heavy to lift and you can barely propel yourself. Your body wobbles and rolls. You feel bitterly cold. You shiver and gasp for breath.
6 What you don’t know is that just hours ago, a cargo ship called Treasure hit a reef and split apart. As it sank, 1,300 tons of toxic crude oil gushed into the sea. Oil surrounds your breeding ground—the largest African penguin breeding ground in the world.
7 You are not the only penguin that has become soaked with the poisonous oil. Thousands of others have been trapped in the massive oil slick.
8 The impact of oil on a penguin (or any bird) is immediate and devastating. You are shivering because the oil has caused your layers of feathers to separate. Freezing water now lashes at your sensitive skin. Your eyes hurt because the oil has burned them. Your wings are heavy because they are coated with oil.
9 But your instinct for survival is strong. Somehow you struggle back to shore, fighting the waves and the current. The trip, usually effortless, is an agonizing ordeal. You manage to stagger onto the beach and back to your nest. You lick and peck at your feathers, desperate to clean them. Finally you give up. There is nothing to do but stand there, terrified, dazed, and silent.
Strange Creatures
10 Then the beach is invaded by enormous creatures.
11 They are humans, but you don’t know that. You have never seen a human before. These men and women know what you don’t: that this oil spill is a catastrophe for you and your species. Some of them have devoted their lives to helping birds like you, birds caught in oil spills and other human-made disasters. They have helped with bird rescues around the world. All they care about is saving your life.
12 But how could you know this?
13 As the humans swarm the beach, you are overcome with panic. A man catches you. You lash out viciously with your powerful jaws and razor-sharp beak. You bite his arm, ripping his skin through the fabric of his thick coat. He doesn’t let go. You strike again, biting his leg, inflicting a wound that will leave a scar for the rest of his life. But he cares more about you than himself. All across the beach, dozens of people are capturing penguins, enduring excruciating bites and wing slaps as they load you and the other penguins into crates. It is painful, exhausting work. The sight of all of these scared and injured penguins is heartbreaking to the humans. Some—grown men and women—fight tears.
14 But they don’t give up. Tens of thousands of penguins are in danger. And they intend to save every single one.
15 Ten miles from the island, outside the city of Cape Town, a team of workers and volunteers has transformed a warehouse into a penguin rescue center. They have worked with astonishing speed. The warehouse holds hundreds of round enclosures, each large enough for 100 penguins. There are additional areas where penguins will be washed. One room is filled with ten tons of frozen fish, the amount needed daily to feed the penguins. Acquiring this enormous quantity of fish every day will be one of the workers’ great challenges.
16 Actually, everything is a challenge. Simply getting one penguin to eat is a monumental task. In the wild, penguins hunt for sardines and gobble them up while they are still alive and wriggling. These penguins won’t accept the dead fish offered by human hands; workers have to force-feed them. They must restrain a penguin, pry its beak open, and shove the fish down its throat. Feeding one penguin can take an hour. Feeding all of the penguins takes an army of workers 15 hours.
17 And then there is the smell that fills the warehouse—a combination of penguin droppings, dead sardines, and human sweat. It is a stench so powerful that many people throw up when they first arrive.
18 But not even the smell keeps people away.
19 As news of the rescue effort spreads, hundreds, and then thousands, of volunteers flock to the warehouse, eager to help. They are a diverse group, including rich women from fancy neighborhoods and poor teenagers from Cape Town’s streets. Some have experience helping wildlife; some have never even owned a pet. All of them have one thing in common: a mission to save as many penguins as possible.
“The Amazing Penguin Rescue” by Lauren Tarshis and map graphic from Storyworks April/May 2011 Issue. Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.
"The Amazing Penguin Rescue"
by Dyan deNapoli
as told to Natalie Smith
1 The summer of 2000, I had just finished my rounds tending to the New England Aquarium’s 60 penguins when I got an urgent call from South Africa. The manager of SANCCOB, a seabird rescue center in Cape Town, was on the line. The region’s penguins were in trouble. The cargo ship MV Treasure had sunk off the coast of Cape Town, creating an oil spill. Thirteen hundred tons of fuel oil were flowing near Robben Island, right in the middle of the African penguins’ primary habitat. In a matter of days, thick, toxic liquid had covered about 20,000 penguins. Without swift help, the seabirds would have no chance for survival.
2 SANCCOB had launched a massive rescue operation for the oiled penguins. Volunteers were showing up by the thousands, but they had no experience. The center needed penguin keepers to train the volunteers. Would I help?
3 Two days later, I boarded a plane to South Africa. I was about to take part in what would become the largest animal rescue operation ever attempted.
A Startling Silence
4 Just outside Cape Town, a large warehouse had been turned into a rescue center for the oiled penguins. The rescuers had set up makeshift pools, which held about 100 oiled birds each. Hundreds of pools covered the floor.
5 When I first walked into the building, I couldn’t believe my ears. Normally, African penguins are vocal birds. I expected to walk in to a chorus of honking and squawking. Instead, the center sounded like a library. Only the hushed voices of people could be heard. The penguins were dead silent.
6 I felt overwhelmed. My heart ached for the distressed birds. Cleaning them all seemed like an impossible task. But we had to carry on like doctors in an emergency room. There was no time for doubt.
Bird Bath
7 Cleaning oil off a penguin isn’t easy. It takes two people—one to hold the penguin, another to do the washing. The bird is sprayed with a degreaser and scrubbed with warm, soapy water. Delicate areas around the face must be brushed with a toothbrush. Then the bird gets rinsed under a hose. The whole process takes about an hour. Even with more than 12,500 volunteers, it took a month to bathe all 20,000 birds at the center.
The Spreading Spill
8 While workers bathed penguins at the rescue center, another crisis was developing. Oil from the spill had started moving north toward Dassen Island. Tens of thousands of penguins were in the oil’s path. But we already had our hands full with 20,000 recovering birds. Supplies were running low. If any more birds were oiled, we wouldn’t have enough resources to save them.
9 One researcher came up with an idea: What if the Dassen penguins were temporarily moved out of harm’s way? The method had never been tried before. Experts decided to give it a chance. Workers rounded up a large number of the penguins on Dassen Island and released them near Port Elizabeth, 500 miles away. The hope was that by the time the seabirds swam home, the oil would be gone. The plan worked! Another 20,000 penguins were saved.
Amazing Rescue
10 The entire penguin rescue operation took about three months. In the end, more than 90 percent of the oiled penguins were successfully returned to the wild. In a previous large-scale penguin rescue, only half of the oiled birds survived. We could hardly believe that our efforts worked!
11 But for me, the most inspiring part was the work of the volunteers. Rescuing penguins isn’t glamorous. The stench of the rescue center—a mix of penguin droppings and dead fish—made people feel sick. The scratches and bites of terrified birds covered volunteers’ arms. As the Penguin Lady, I’m used to facing such hazards to care for the animals I love. What I didn’t realize was how many other people care for penguins too.
From Scholastic SuperScience, January 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Scholastic, Inc. Used by permission of Scholastic, Inc.