 |
Oregon Authors Project |
| Name: | Date: |
| The following piece is a fictional short story. Read carefully, then respond to the questions that follow. As you read, take time to make notes in the right-hand column of any thoughts, comments, or conclusions you have. (All written notes will help us score your paper by showing us how you think while you read.) Jamie was bored. B-o-o-o-o-ored. He propped his cheek on one hand and gazed out the schoolroom window. It was raining outdoors. He propped the other cheek on the other hand and looked around the room at his classmates, who were doing their arithmetic or their spelling or reading their library books. He'd finished everything. He looked at the clock over the blackboard, which said it was still twenty minutes 'till school was out. He propped both cheeks on both hands, heaved a big sigh, and found his teacher, Miss Morris, standing right beside his desk, looking down at him. "What'll I do?" he whispered. "I don't have anything to do again." "Yes, I noticed," she told him and she heaved a big sigh, too. "Well, today I'm ahead of you. I want you to draw me some pictures." "I've already drawn a lot of pictures," said Jamie, moving his elbows so she could see the five sheets of paper he had covered with drawings of cats and racing cars and spaceships and cartoon men and sharks and rockets. "You haven't drawn the kind of pictures I'm thinking of," said Miss Morris. She put a fresh sheet of paper on top of his drawings. "I want you to draw five pictures of something nobody's ever seen before. That ought to hold you till the bell rings." She walked away, leaving Jamie blinking after her. Something nobody had ever seen before? Jamie reached for his pencil, then sat frowning at the sheet of paper. He'd have to make something up. Something that wasn't like anything else. He let the pencil touch the paper and sort of do what it wanted to. It drew a blob. Jamie stared at it. He wasn't satisfied. It looked like a wad of chewing gum. It looked like a cloud. The longer he studied it the more things he thought it looked like. He scribbled it out and instead drew another sort of thing entirely, making the pencil do what he wanted it to. This was an animal kind of thing, only it had six legs and ears no wider than needles and polka-dots on its back. But when he got through, it looked a lot like a bug of some kind. Maybe a ladybug. With antennae. He scribbled that out and drew a sort of little Mars-man, only it somehow came out looking like a dog. Then he drew a huge giant Mars-man with only one leg and just a lot of crazy scribbles instead of a head--and it turned out to be the best tree he had ever drawn. He drew seven more pictures in the next ten minutes, and not one of them managed to look like something nobody had ever seen before. In fact, they all looked like things everybody saw every day. By now Jamie was so mad at the pictures, and his pencil, and himself, and Miss Morris, that he'd forgotten to watch the clock, and when the bell rang, he jumped. Scowling, Jamie wadded his drawings into a ball and stuffed the ball into his desk. Then he walked up to Miss Morris. "I didn't get through with the five drawings yet," he told her. "Not all through." He didn't want to admit he hadn't got through even one. "Oh, that's all right, Jamie," said Miss Morris. "Maybe you can't do it anyway." "I can do it," Jamie said, scowling harder. "I'll bring them tomorrow." "All right," Miss Morris said cheerfully. Jamie didn't feel cheerful. Scarcely noticing that it was still raining, he walked the four blocks to the drugstore where his mother worked. She wasn't waiting on anyone, so he went straight back to her cash register and said, "If you were going to draw something nobody's ever seen before, what would you draw? She only laughed and hugged him hello and said, "Goodness! What do I know about drawing pictures? Why not ask Mr. Rollo?" "Mr. Rollo? Would he know?" Jamie said in surprise. "He's an artist, isn't he?" Jamie's mother got her purse from under the counter and handed him his house key. "Now go straight home and be careful crossing Seventh Street. I'll be home about six." She hugged him good-bye and gave him a little shove toward the door. It was three more blocks to the corner of Oak and Seventh streets, where Jamie and his mother lived in the downstairs half of an old remodeled house. Mr. Rollo lived in the upstairs half and worked at an advertising agency. Jamie had never thought of him as an artist. He went to an office every day like anybody else. Still, he had told Jamie once that all he did at work was draw pictures of dining-room furniture and TV sets and refrigerators. Jamie had thought he was joking. When Mr. Rollo came home at five o'clock, Jamie was out in the front hall by the mail table, waiting for him. "Hi there, Jamie, how's it going?" said Mr. Rollo as he took off his wet raincoat. "Mr. Rollo, are you an artist?" Jamie asked him. "You could say that," answered Mr. Rollo, picking out the letters addressed to him. "I'm not exactly anything else." "A real artist?" said Jamie. "That's a different question." Mr. Rollo stuck his mail into his jacket pocket and looked down at Jamie. "Ask me something easier." "Well, could you draw a picture of something that nobody's ever seen before?" Mr. Rollo blinked, then said, "Sure. I do that all the time." "Really?" Jamie exclaimed. "But you said you only drew pictures of dining-room furniture and TV sets and-" "That's at work. At home I draw things nobody's ever seen before." He smiled at Jamie. "Come on up and see." Jamie had never been in Mr. Rollo's part of the house, and it surprised him. Mostly it was one long room, with some furniture way back in a corner and a strong smell of paint. There were pictures all over the walls. Jamie just stood and stared at them--first one, then the next, then the next. All of them were pictures of things nobody had ever seen before--every single one. "What are they, Mr. Rollo?" he asked at last. "I mean, what do you call them? "Well, sometimes I call them abstractions. Sometimes I just call them shapes. Now and then I call one a galumpagaloos." Jamie laughed. This time he knew Mr. Rollo was joking. "But how do you draw them? How do you start?" he asked. Mr. Rollo thought a minute, then said, "I look at something." "Oh," said Jamie, feeling doubtful. "But it's supposed to be something nobody's ever seen." "Nobody ever has seen it the way I see it, because nobody else is me. Look there, Jamie," said Mr. Rollo, turning Jamie to face a big painting on the wall. "Did you ever see the thing in that picture before?" Jamie looked carefully, then said, "No." "Yes, you have," said Mr. Rollo. He turned Jamie to face the window. Outside, you could see a piece of the Methodist church, and there was a bowl of oranges and lemons on the sill. "That's what you saw. But I saw something nobody'd ever seen before--not even me, until I drew it on the paper." Jamie stared at the big painting, and then at the window, and then at the big painting again. And slowly he began to understand. It made him feel very excited. "Could I draw one of those galumpagalooses, do you think?" he asked. "Never know till you try," said Mr. Rollo. So Jamie tried. He hurried downstairs and found some paper and a pencil. Then he looked at things. He looked until he really saw them in his very own way. And then he drew. Right away he knew he was drawing things he'd never seen before, until he saw them on his paper. By the time his mother came home, he had three sheets of paper covered with drawings, and when he showed them to her she said she'd certainly never seen such things in all her born days. But he still wasn't sure about Miss Morris. The next morning at school, he drew one last picture before Miss Morris got there. Then he took them all up to her desk. She looked at him and then at the paper in his hand. "Do you mean you've done it?' she asked him. "I think so," Jamie told her. He handed her the last picture he had drawn. "Did you ever see that thing before?" Miss Morris looked at it carefully. Then she said, "No." Jamie began to smile, because he knew she had. But not the way he had seen it. "It's a galumpagaloos," he said. He handed her his other drawings. "And here are seven other galumpagalooses, all in different positions." He watched her spread them out on her desk and stare at them, first one, then the next, then the next. Finally she raised her eyes and said, "You win." "I told you I could do it," said Jamie. For a minute they just grinned at each other. Then Jamie had a thought. "Miss Morris," he said. "What'll I do today if I finish all of my work?" Miss Morris just put her head on her hands and sighed. |
Reading Level: 4 Benchmark 2
Notes on my thoughts, |
Click Here for the Reading Assessment Questions
©1983 by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. All rights reserved.
Permission granted for use by OPEN and Oregon Reading Assessment purposes.