storytown grade 5 lesson 9

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Text Structure: Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Learn how authors organize information.

Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Read, write, and learn the meanings of new words.

“Leonardo’s Horse” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230by Jean Fritz • illustrated by Hudson Talbott

• Learn the features of narrative nonfiction.

• Use a graphic organizer to keep track of the sequence of events.

“Bellerophon and Pegasus:

A Greek Myth” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246illustrated by David Austin Clar

Read a myth.

Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

• Compare texts.

• Review vocabulary.

• Reread for fluency.

• Write directions.

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Genre: Narrative Nonfiction

Genre: Myth

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Authors of nonfiction texts may organize information in a sequence text structure. In texts with this structure, the author tells events in chronological order, the order in which they happened. You can use a graphic organizer like this one to keep track of the sequence of events in a text.

Text Structure:Sequence

Knowing the order in which events happened can help you understand why they happened.

First Event

Next Event

Next Event

Last Event

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Read the paragraph below. Then look at the graphic organizer. It shows the chronological order of events telling how the Tower of Pisa began to lean.

In 1173, builders in Pisa, Italy, began construction of an eight-story marble bell tower. By the time the builders finished the first three stories, the ground under the tower had begun to sink and tilt. Workers kept on building, however, and by 1370, the tower was complete. The ground sank a little more with each passing year. Today, the Tower of Pisa still stands, but it leans 14 feet to one side.

Look back at the paragraph. What happened to the tower after

it was completed? What words and phrases about points in time

did the author use to help you understand what happened?

First EventIn 1173, builders began the tower.

Next EventAfter the fi rst three stories were built, the ground began to sink.

Next EventIn 1370, the tower was complete.

Last EventThe tower still stands, but it leans.

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It is a gesture of respect to Leonardo da Vinci’s skill that so many people have specialized in studyinghis work.

Leonardo da Vinci left behind dozens of notebooks filled with drawings and notes. They show his interest in many things, including human anatomy. He studied the way the body is put together and what makes it move. This careful study helped him capture accurate human proportion in his paintings and drawings. The notebooks also contain sketches of his inventions. One was a kind of helicopter he envisioned.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was

born in Vinci, Italy, in

1452. He died in 1519.

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gesture

specialized

proportion

envisioned

resisted

scholars

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This week, your task is to use the Vocabulary

Words in your writing. For example, you could

write about a new game or gadget you have

envisioned. Write about as many Vocabulary Words as you

can. Share your writing with your classmates.

In da Vinci’s time, most artists used traditional paint techniques. Artworks made with these techniques resisted the effects of time and weather. However, da Vinci tried new techniques and paints. Sometimes his methods were not successful, and the paint flaked off years after it was applied. Fortunately, enough of his work remains so that people today can learn from and appreciate it.

Scholars have wondered for years just who the

woman was in this painting known as Mona Lisa.

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www.harcourtschool.com/storytown

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Comprehension StrategyUse graphic organizers like the one above to show the order of events in the text.

Genre StudyNarrative nonfiction tells about people, events, or places that are real. As you read, look for

• factual information thattells a story.

• events told in time order.

First Event

Next Event

Next Event

Final Event

Narrative Nonfiction

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From the time he was a young boy in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci asked questions about everything. Because of his curiosity, Leonardo accomplished many things during his lifetime. He created some of the most famous paintings in the world. He was also known as a musician, an engineer, an architect, an astronomer, and a philosopher. However, one important project remained unfinished at the time of Leonardo’s death—a larger-than-life sculpture of a horse.

by Jean Fritz illustrated by Hudson Talbott

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Leonardo has been remembered for hundreds of years, especially for his paintings Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But not for his horse. That story was almost forgotten until 1977, when it was told in a magazine. And the right man read it. His name was Charles Dent. And Charlie loved art—reading about it, making it, looking at it, collecting it. Leonardo would have liked Charlie. They were both dreamers with big dreams. Yet Leonardo may have been envious. Charlie did what Leonardo had always longed to do. He flew, soaring through the sky like a bird freed from its cage. Charlie was an airline pilot, and whenever he traveled, he looked for art to take home.

The more Charlie read about Leonardo and his horse, the more he cared about Leonardo. When he read that Leonardo died still grieving for his horse, Charlie couldn’t stand it. Right then he had the biggest dream of his life.

“Let’s give Leonardo his horse,” he said. It would be a gift from the American people to the people of Italy.

But could he really give Leonardo his horse? Could anyone? Charlie went to see famous scholars who had specialized in the study of Leonardo. When he came home, Charlie was smiling; he could go ahead.

Leonardo da Vinci Charles Dent

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But where would he build his horse? He needed a special building, he decided—a round building shaped like a dome,tall enough for a horse. On top there would be windows tolet in the light.

Charlie didn’t know a thing about domes, but luckily he found a man who did. When at last the Dome was finished, Charlie hung the pictures he had collected on the walls and arranged other art objects around the room.

All that was needed was the horse.Every day Charlie could see the horse more clearly. Wherever

he went, he carried a small piece of wax or a piece of clay and made miniature models of the horse. But he needed to be around real horses. He borrowed two champion Morgan horses and studied them for months, running his hands over their bodies so he could feel where the muscles and bones were. He measured every inch of the horses just as Leonardo would have done.

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Then, in 1988, he began the eight-foot model of the horse. Over the wooden skeleton, he applied one thousand pounds of clay. To hold the horse steady, a post ran through the belly of the horse to the ground. To fill the belly, the horse was stuffed with slats of wood and plastic foam. So now the Dome had a clay horse—his left foreleg raised and bent, his right rear leg off the ground. Free. The muscles in his hindquarters were tense, his ears pointed forward, his nostrils were beginning to flare.

By 1993 the eight-foot plaster model of the clay horsewas completed and ready to be cast into a twenty-four-foot bronze horse.

For that it would have to be sent to a foundry where it could be enlarged; a twenty-four-foot clay model sculpted; then the twenty-four-foot bronze horse cast.

In 1994, however, the people at the Dome were less concerned about the horse than they were worried about Charlie. He became sick and no one knew what was the matter. Then he was told that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease and it could not be cured. He would not be alive when the horse arrived in Milan. All Charlie said was what he always said: He had never been interested in taking credit for the horse; the gift of the horse was a gesture of friendship from the American peopleto the Italian people, a salute across the centuries to Leonardo.

On December 13, Charlie’s family and friends gathered around his bedside and promised him that the horse wouldbe finished.

On Christmas morning 1994, Charlie died.

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On August 1, 1995, the horse was ready to go to the foundry. He was hoisted into a van, tied, padded, and driven off for his great adventure.

At the Tallix Foundry in Beacon, New York, his transformation began. He was enlarged and cut up into sixty separate pieces. They were laid against the wall of the foundry while the Dome people gathered to watch the pieces being put together. It was certainly a huge horse, but was it as grand as Charlie had envisioned?

The Dome friends walked quietly around the horse. They seemed uneasy.

The horse wasn’t right.Art experts were called in. They shook their heads.

No, the horse wasn’t right.He looked awkward. Out of proportion. One of his rear legs

appeared to be short. His eyes were not exactly parallel. He needed help.

Fortunately, a talented sculptor from New York City, Nina Akamu, agreed to try to fix him. But when she went to work on the twenty-four-foot horse, she found that the cementlike plaster that covered him resisted change. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fix him.

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Everyone recognized that there was only one thing to do, but it took a while for anyone to say it out loud. Yet it had to be said. Nina would have to start from scratch and make another horse. For some, the idea of doing away with Charlie’s horse was almost more than they could bear, yet they all knew that Charlie would want his horse to be as perfect as possible.

The horse would always be Charlie’s dream, but as soon as Nina went to work, he had to become her horse, too. She had studied in Italy for eleven years. Her favorite Renaissanceartist was Verrochio, Leonardo’s teacher. It waslucky that she was there to carry on withCharlie’s dream.

First Nina made an eight-foot clay horse. From it asecond eight-foot horse wasmade of plaster. Using theplaster model as a guide, atwenty-four-foot horse wasmade in clay.

Everyone went to work toget the horse exactly right.Finally he was ready to becast in bronze.

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1 Thin metal pieces called shims were stuck in the clay to divide the horseinto sections.

2 Liquid rubber was sprayed onto the horse to make

the molds.

3 Each rubber-coated section was removed . . .

4 . . . then filled with plaster.

5 Each section hardened into a plaster mold.

7 When the mixture hardened, the boxwas opened and themold removed.

6 The top and bottom of a box were filled with a mixture of sand and cement. The mold was pressed firmly intothe bottom, and the top closed, encasing the moldin the mixture.

8 The box was closed again and molten bronze was poured through a hole in the top to fill the impression left by the plaster mold.

9 After the bronze cooled, the box was opened and out came a bronze piece in the exact shape of the plaster mold.

10 One by one the bronze pieces were welded together, and the horse began to take shape.

FROM CLAY TO PLASTER TO BRONZE

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But how could such a large bronze sculpture stand on two legs? First they built a steel skeleton inside the body of the horse to support the sides, and then they inserted steel tubes in the two legs. The tubes were bolted to steel anchor plates below the hooves and embedded in concrete.

Finally, the horse was complete. Everyone stood back and looked up at him. They agreed that hewas ready for his new home.

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If Leonardo had finished his horse, he would only have had to move it from the vineyard where he worked to the front of the duke’s palace. Charlie’s horse had to cross the ocean to Italy. But he was too big.

So he was cut up into separate pieces, crated, and flown to Milan, where the Tallix people and the Dome people waited to reassemble him. Workers would crawl through a trapdoor in the horse’s belly to fasten the pieces together.

He would stand on a pedestal in a small park in front of Milan’s famous racetrack, within whinnying distance of the racing stable.

On June 27, 1999, the horse took off.

Beacon,New York

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September 10, 1999, was the date set for the unveiling of the statue, exactly five hundred years to the day since the French invaded Milan and destroyed Leonardo’s horse.

An enormous cloth was spread over the horse so he couldn’t be seen. Two huge clusters of blue and white balloons were attached to either end of the cloth. On the pupil of one eye of the horse, Nina had written in tiny letters Leonardo da Vinci. On the other eye she had written Charles Dent. She had put her own name in the curly mane of the horse.

Milan, Italy

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As a large crowd of Italians and Americans took their seats, the horse stayed in hiding. Speeches were made. The Italian national anthem was sung. Then the American national anthem.

Finally the strings anchoring the balloons were cut and the cloth rose into the sky.

Ahhhhhhh!At last Leonardo’s horse was home.

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Think Critically

1 How does the organization of information in “Leonardo’s Horse” help readers understand the text? TEXT STRUCTURE: SEQUENCE

2 Explain what happened after the sculpture was completed. SUMMARIZE

3 Would Leonardo have agreed with the decision to start over and design a horse that had the proper proportions? Explain. SPECULATE

4 If you wanted to design a huge sculpture for your school or community, what would you create, and where would you want the sculpture to stand? MAKE CONNECTIONS

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5 WRITE Write a note from Nina Akamu to Charlie Dent explaining why the team decided to start over with a new design. Use details and information from the selection to support your explanation. SHORT RESPONSE


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jean FritzJean Fritz was born in Hankow, China, in 1915. As a child, shekept a journal and read manybooks. As an adult, Jean Fritzbecame a children’s book author,and she has now been writing for more than fifty years. When she works on a book about a historic event or person, she first spends a lot of time researching. During her research, she often travels to the places she writes about in her books. Jean Fritz was in Italy when Leonardo’s horse was unveiled.She said, “It was one of my most exciting adventures.”

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Hudson TalbottHudson Talbott loves to travel. On one trip to Italy, he wanted to see Leonardo’s horse, but he did nothave a chance. When he retuned home, he found a message on his answering machine asking himto work on a book about the horse! He happily agreed. Hudson Talbott grew up surrounded by horses in Kentucky. He has written and illustrated more than a dozenbooks for children.

www.harcourtschool.com/storytown

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Bellerophon(buh•lair•uh•fuhn)

A prince and great horse tamer

PegasusA winged horse

AthenaThe Greek goddess

of wisdom

Chimera(ky•mir•uh)

A fire-breathing

creature

illustrated by David Austin Clar

Long ago, a young prince named Bellerophon traveled to Lycia (lish•ee•uh), in Asia. When he arrived, he learned that a horrible monster, the Chimera, was destroying the kingdom.

“Save my land and my people,” the king of Lycia pleaded.

Social Studies

Myth

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Bellerophon agreed to help, but he did not know how. An old, wise man suggested the young hero spend the night in the temple of Athena.

In his dreams, Bellerophon was given a golden bridle by the goddess. “Use this to capture Pegasus. He can help you defeat the Chimera.” When Bellerophon awoke, the bridle was in his hands.

Bellerophon and Pegasus had manymore adventures. Eventually, Pegasus flew on to Olympus alone, where he carried Zeus’s thunderbolts.

Bellerophon found Pegasus drinking by a spring. Seeing the bridle, wild Pegasus became tame. The winged horse allowed Bellerophon to slip the bridle over his head and jump onto his back.

Pegasus galloped through the air until they found the Chimera, breathing fire across the land. The creature had the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon.

Pegasus flew as close as he dared. After a brutal fight, the monster lay dead. The people of Lycia were safe.

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Comparing Texts1. The artists in “Leonardo’s Horse” decided to start over when

they saw that Charlie Dent’s horse was out of proportion. When have you had to start over on a project, and why?

2. Compare the genre of “Leonardo’s Horse” with the genre of “Bellerophon and Pegasus.” What is the purpose of each kind of literature?

3. Charlie Dent wanted to give the horse to the people of Italy as a gift from the people of the United States. Why might one country want to give another country a gift?

scholars

specialized

gesture

envisioned

proportion

resisted

Word WebsCreate a word web for each Vocabulary Word. In the outer circles, write words and phrases related to the Vocabulary Word. Explain how the words in your webs are related.

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envisioned

thought pictured

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Recorded TextListen to the first sentence of “Leonardo’s Horse” on Audiotext 2 and track the print. Note how the reader groups words together and listen for pauses. Then read the sentence aloud, matching the reader’s phrasing. Continue sentence by sentence, until you have listened to and read aloud the first two paragraphs of the selection.

Write InstructionsSelect one process described in “Leonardo’s Horse,” such as building the horse’s structure. Write instructions that explain how to accomplish this process.

Organization

✔ I used a graphic organizer to organize my steps.

✔ I made my instructions clear to readers.

✔ I used transition words, such as fi rst, next, and last.

First Event Next Event Next Event Last Event

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storytown grade 5 lesson 9

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