Reading Inventory - 900s

Prendergast loved learning. Science classes made him curious about the natural world. He wondered why the farm animals got sick. He wondered why chickens had reddish feathers and why ducks laid green eggs.

He had many _____ .

• questions

• troubles

• shovels

• children

He drove through narrow streets lined with high stone walls. "You must try to picture it when the Incas ruled. Temples and palaces covered in gold. Even fake gardens with golden flowers in them!"

The Incas were _____ .

• swift

• rich

• tender

• healthy

A dog barked across the street. Kerry jumped. He had become accustomed to the silence, to the sound of the rustling wind and the dry, scrabbling dance of leaves and their shadows.

The _____ startled him.

• noise

• colors

• door

• light

: Brenda stopped taking pictures. She and the other members of the expedition stood like statues at the valley's rim. They were just below the roof of clouds that covered the valley. They couldn't believe the sight before them.

They were _____ .

• amused

• astonished

• rescued

• disappointed

Paul looked at the handsome Vagabond. It had been built for Victor and Mary Como. It was a forty-foot-long ocean-going sailboat. Soon the Vagabond would be finished. She would move out of this yard and try her wing-like sails across the water. Paul knew he and his friends could never afford anything as fine as the Vagabond.

The Vagabond was _____ .

• small

• grand

• unsafe

• funny

The racers compete for prize money, or the purse. The more rounds of racing they win, the more purse they earn. Purse is how the drivers get paid. It pays for truck repairs and for traveling from race to race.

The racers have _____ .

• families

• fans

• expenses

• heroes

A lumbering wombat came creeping out of his ground den. His short stumpy body forced a way through the underscrub, his long food-foraging snout plowing through the sandy earth in search of his favorite roots. Suddenly he stopped, sniffed; his nostrils dilated. He followed the strange new scent. Soon he came to the gully. He looked the children over, thoughtfully, not hungrily, for he was a vegetarian, an eater of roots. His curiosity satisfied, he shambled away.

He went back to looking for a _____ .

• home

• friend

• snack

• bath

In the damp, still weather of Foggy Hollow, the six Siberian snow spiders were thriving. Every day they napped, strengthened and repaired their webs, and ate what insects and such they could trap. Instinct thousands of years old awoke in them, fresh as the day they were born. The spiders knew a lot about when to be motionless. When to pounce. When to pull their legs under them and look like tufted buttons. When to drop down on a silken line and examine what might lie beneath. When to scrabble back up for safety.

The spiders were _____ .

• thirsty

• tired

• skilled

• friendly

The LSV can operate longer in combat than other scout vehicles. Scout helicopters need more than 10 hours of maintenance for every hour of flying. Scout planes also need a lot of maintenance.

The LSV is more _____ .

• reliable

• beautiful

• dangerous

• comfortable

Before long we were flying over an arm of the Great Slave Lake. Ice was showing all along the shore. Out Clint's side of the airplane I could see the open lake, vast like an inland sea. In another hour it would be noon, but the sun was pathetically low by Texas standards for the thirtieth of October.

We flew over _____ .

• water

• mountains

• cities

• deserts