Grade 10
Reading
Released Items
Spring 2001
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GRADE 10
Reading
Read the story “Growing Up.” Then answer Numbers 1 through 11.
GROWING UP
by Russell Baker
RUSSELL BAKER began his career in journalism in 1947, when he was hired by the
Baltimore Sun. In 1954 he joined the New York Times, for which he covered
the White House, Congress, and national politics. He has written his
“Observer” column for the Times since 1962. In 1979 he won the George Polk
Award for Commentary and the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary.
His columns were most recently collected in So This Is Depravity. He received
the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for biography for Growing Up.
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❧
W
ith my load of magazines I headed toward Belleville Avenue. That’s where the people
were. There were two filling stations at the intersection with Union Avenue, as well as
a grocery store, a fruit stand, a bakery, a barber shop, Zuccarelli’s drugstore, and a diner
shaped like a railroad car. For several hours I made myself highly visible, shifting position
now and then from corner to corner, from shop window to shop window, to make sure
everyone could see the heavy black lettering on the canvas bag that said THE SATURDAY EVENING
POST. When the angle of the light indicated it was suppertime, I walked back to the house.
“How many did you sell, Buddy?” my mother asked.
“None.”
“Where did you go?”
“The corner of Belleville and Union Avenues.”
“What did you do?”
“Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post.”
“You just stood there?”
“Didn’t sell a single one.”
Uncle Allen intervened. “I’ve been thinking about it for some time,” he said, “and I’ve
about decided to take the Post regularly. Put me down as a regular customer.” I handed him
a magazine and he paid me a nickel. It was the first nickel I earned.
Afterwards my mother instructed me in salesmanship. I would have to ring doorbells,
address adults with charming self-confidence, and break down resistance with a sales talk
pointing out that no one, no matter how poor, could afford to be without the Saturday
Evening Post in the home.
I told my mother I’d changed my mind about wanting to succeed in the magazine
business.
“If you think I’m going to raise a good-for-nothing,” she replied, “you’ve got another
think coming.” She told me to hit the streets with the canvas bag and start ringing doorbells
the instant school was out next day. I bowed to superior will and entered journalism with a
heavy heart.
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GRADE 10
Reading
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My mother and I had fought this battle
almost as long as I could remember. It
probably started even before memory began,
when I was a country child in northern
Virginia and my mother, dissatisfied with my
father’s plain workman’s life, determined
that I would not grow up like him. In my
mother’s vision of the better life there were
desks and white collars, well-pressed suits,
evenings of reading and lively talk, and
perhaps—if a man were very, very lucky and
really made something important of
himself—perhaps there might be a fantastic
salary of $5,000 a year to support a big
house and a car with a rumble seat and a
vacation in Atlantic City.
And so I set forth with my sack of
magazines. I was afraid of the dogs that
snarled behind the doors of potential buyers.
I was timid about ringing the doorbells of
strangers, relieved when no one came to the
door, and scared when someone did. Despite
my mother’s instructions, I could not deliver
an engaging sales pitch. When a door
opened I simply asked, “Want to buy a
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Saturday Evening Post?” In Belleville few
persons did. It was a town of 30,000 people,
and most weeks I rang a fair majority of its
doorbells. But I rarely sold my thirty copies.
Some weeks I canvassed the entire town for
six days and still had four or five unsold
magazines on Monday evening; then I
dreaded the coming of Tuesday morning,
when a batch of thirty fresh Saturday
Evening Posts was due at the front door.
“Better get out there and sell the rest of
those magazines tonight,” my mother would
say.
I usually posted myself then at a busy
intersection where a traffic light controlled
commuter flow from Newark. When the
light turned red I stood on the curb and
shouted my sales pitch at the motorists.
“Want to buy a Saturday Evening Post?”
One rainy night when car windows were
sealed against me I came back soaked and
with not a single sale to report. My mother
beckoned to Doris.
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GRADE 10
Reading
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I moaned that I had rung every doorbell in
town and knew there wasn’t a single
potential buyer left in Belleville that week.
After listening to my explanation, she
handed me the canvas bag and said, “If at
first you don’t succeed . . .”
Three years in that job, which I would
gladly have quit after the first day except
for her insistence, produced at least one
valuable result. My mother finally
concluded that I would never make
something of myself by pursuing a life in
business and started considering careers
that demanded less competitive zeal.
One evening when I was eleven I
brought home a short “composition” on
my summer vacation which the teacher had
graded with an A. Reading it with her own
schoolteacher’s eye, my mother agreed that
it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and
complimented me. Nothing more was said
about it immediately, but a new idea had
taken life in her mind. Halfway through
supper she suddenly interrupted the
conversation.
“Buddy,” she said, “maybe you could be
a writer.”
I clasped the idea to my heart. I had
never met a writer, had shown no previous
urge to write, and hadn’t a notion how to
become a writer, but I loved stories and
thought that making up stories must surely
be almost as much fun as reading them.
Best of all, though, and what really
gladdened my heart, was the ease of the
writer’s life. Writers did not have to trudge
through the town peddling from canvas
bags, defending themselves against angry
dogs, being rejected by surly strangers.
Writers did not have to ring doorbells. So
far as I could make out, what writers did
couldn’t even be classified as work.
I was enchanted. Writers didn’t have to
have any gumption at all. I did not dare tell
anybody for fear of being laughed at in the
schoolyard, but secretly I decided that what
I’d like to be when I grew up was a writer.
“Go back down there with Buddy and
show him how to sell these magazines,” she
said.
Brimming with zest, Doris, who was then
seven years old, returned with me to the
corner. She took a magazine from the bag,
and when the light turned red she strode to
the nearest car and banged her small fist
against the closed window. The driver,
probably startled at what he took to be a
midget assaulting his car, lowered the
window to stare, and Doris thrust a
Saturday Evening Post at him.
“You need this magazine,” she piped,
“and it only costs a nickel.”
Her salesmanship was irresistible. Before
the light changed half a dozen times she
disposed of the entire batch. I didn’t feel
humiliated. To the contrary. I was so happy I
decided to give her a treat. Leading her to
the vegetable store on Belleville Avenue, I
bought three apples, which cost a nickel,
and gave her one.
“You shouldn’t waste money,” she said.
“Eat your apple.” I bit into mine.
“You shouldn’t eat before supper,” she
said. “It’ll spoil your appetite.”
Back at the house that evening, she
dutifully reported me for wasting a nickel.
Instead of a scolding, I was rewarded with a
pat on the back for having the good sense to
buy fruit instead of candy. My mother
reached into her bottomless supply of
maxims and told Doris, “An apple a day
keeps the doctor away.”
By the time I was ten I had learned all my
mother’s maxims by heart. Asking to stay up
past normal bedtime, I knew that a refusal
would be explained with, “Early to bed and
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise.” If I whimpered about having to
get up early in the morning, I could depend
on her to say, “The early bird gets the
worm.”
The one I most despised was, “If at first
you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This was
the battle cry with which she constantly sent
me back into the hopeless struggle whenever
Adaptation of excerpt from Growing Up by Russell Baker, copyright © 1982 by Russell Baker.
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GRADE 10
Reading
Now answer Numbers 1 through 11. Base your answers on the article “Growing Up.”
1
�
Read this sentence from the passage.
My mother reached into her bottomless supply of maxims and told
Doris, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
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What does maxims mean?
2
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�
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A.
explanations
B.
ideas
C.
sayings �3
D.
stories
Which word best describes Russell’s approach to selling magazines?
A.
ambitious
B.
argumentative
C.
defensive
D.
passive �4
Which word best describes the tone of the story?
A.
discouraged
B.
dramatic
C.
reflective �
D.
sarcastic
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GRADE 10
Reading
4
�
READ
THINK
EXPLAIN
What is the conflict between Buddy and his mother? How is it resolved? Use details
and information from the story to support your answer.
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5
�
Read this quote.
Writers did not have to trudge through the town peddling from
canvas bags, defending themselves against angry dogs, being
rejected by surly strangers.
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What does surly mean?
A.
distracted
B.
ordinary
C.
penniless
D.
unpleasant �4
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GRADE 10
Reading
6
�
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7
�
READ
THINK
EXPLAIN
Why was the author afraid to mention his new career choice to his classmates?
A.
He was embarrassed that he quit his sales job.
B.
He was worried that his mother would find out.
C.
His friends would want to read his composition.
D.
His friends would reject writing as a serious profession. �4
How are Doris and her mother similar? Use details and information from the story
to support your answer.
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Buddy expects to perform better as a writer than as a salesman because he
A.
succeeds in pleasing his mother.
B.
is excited about inventing stories. �2
C.
is aware of his need for employment.
D.
acknowledges his weak business skills.
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GRADE 10
Reading
9
�
What conflict is revealed when the author writes, “My mother and I had fought
this battle almost as long as I could remember”?
A. the author’s lack of interest in sales versus his mother’s desire for a better
life �1
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B.
the author’s determination to spend money versus his mother’s advice to
save it
C. the author’s dreams of becoming a writer versus his mother’s plans for him
in business
D. the author’s struggle for success versus his mother’s disappointment in his
performance
10
�
Why did the author’s mother urge her son to sell magazines?
A. She needed her son to earn additional income.
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B.
She recognized salesman-like qualities in her son.
C. She wanted her son to follow in the footsteps of his father.
D. She thought her son needed business skills to earn a good living. �4
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GRADE 10
Reading
11
�
READ
THINK
EXPLAIN
Why, as a child, did the author strongly dislike the saying “If at first you don’t
succeed, try, try again”? Use details and information from the story to support your
answer.
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GRADE 10
Reading
Read the story “Cosmic Speed Trap.” Then answer Numbers 12 through 19.
COSMIC SPEED TRAP
Capturing cosmic rays will help physicists figure out their origin
By Steve Nadis
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I
n October 1991, a
mysterious intruder
shattered the calm of a
Utah desert. Ever since that
night, investigators in the
town of Dugway have been
asking the usual questions:
What was it? Where did it
come from? How many
others are on the way?
The “intruder” was not
your typical UFO. It was a
cosmic ray, one of countless
particles—protons or
heavier atomic nuclei—that
continually bombard Earth.
High-energy cosmic rays are
the most energetic particles
in the universe, and the
1991 “visitor” was the
swiftest and most energetic
object ever detected. The
record-setting cosmic ray, a
proton with an energy of
3 x 1020 electron-volts, hit
our atmosphere while
traveling at virtually the
speed of light. “It was
moving closer to the speed
of light than anything we’ve
seen before . . . except light,”
explains University of Utah
physicist Eugene Loh, a
member of the Dugway
investigation team. With that
velocity, the single proton
weighing just one-trillionth of
a trillionth of a gram packed
the wallop of a tennis ball
flying at about 100 miles an
hour.
The source of highenergy cosmic rays is one of
astronomy’s long-standing
puzzles, and the 3 x 1020 eV
particle has so far defied
efforts to find its roots.
“Normally a particle that
energetic is like a tracer
bullet; you should be able to
trace it back to the ‘gun’ that
shot the bullet,” Loh says.
“We’ve been trying to trace it
back, but it seems to have
come from nowhere.” It
doesn’t point to an obvious
source, he explains, such
as a known “hot” or
active—that is, radiationspewing—galaxy.
Scientists hope to
solve the mystery of highenergy cosmic rays by
snaring thousands of them
in a mammoth speed trap
of sorts called the Giant
Array. The driving force
behind the project is
James Cronin, a Nobel
Prize-winning physicist
from the University of
Chicago. He proposes to
erect vast networks of
cosmic-ray detectors in
both the northern and
southern hemispheres,
each spanning an area of
5,000 square kilometers.
Each network consists of
two kinds of detectors.
One type of detector,
located in the network’s
center, will probe the night
sky, looking for the telltale
flashes of fluorescent light
Peppy particles: Scientists want to know whether high-energy cosmic rays
come from black holes or somewhere else altogether.
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GRADE 10
Reading
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that occur when a highenergy particle slams into
the atmosphere, creating
billions of “secondary”
particles that rain through
the sky and excite nitrogen
atoms along the way. Some
of these secondary particles
survive their passage to the
ground. A fraction of these,
in turn, might be intercepted
by the second batch of
detectors—4,000
“scintillators” that emit tiny
light flashes when hit by a
charged particle.
The entire system will
cost about $50 million to $60
million, Cronin estimates.
He’s spent the better part of
three years trying to sell the
idea while lining up
participating research teams
in the United States, China,
Japan, England, France,
and Australia. An
international team, hosted
by Fermilab in Batavia,
Illinois, and supported by
the National Science
Foundation; the United
Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural
Organization; and private
sources, expects to
complete a major design
study in July. If the
necessary funding comes
through, the team plans to
have the cosmic-ray
detectors up and running by
the turn of the century.
Excerpt from “Cosmic Speed Trap” by Steve Nadis, reprinted by permission of OMNI, � 1995, OMNI Publications
International, Ltd.
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GRADE 10
Reading
Now answer Numbers 12 through 19. Base your answers on the story “Cosmic Speed Trap.”
12
�
Which statement does the article support?
A. Cosmic rays are a key to comprehending other parts of the universe. �
B.
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Travel outside the solar system is threatened by mysterious particles.
C. Finding the source of cosmic rays means re-examining the laws of physics.
D. Searching for mysterious particles may increase understanding of other
life forms.
13
�
Besides traveling at almost the speed of light, what made the “intruder” unique?
A. its duration
B.
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its energy �
C. its size
D. its weight
14
�
What does “eV” stand for?
A. electron-volt �
B.
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energy variation
C. extraterrestrial vehicle
D.
15
�
extreme velocity
Which of these could make use of data gathered from a cosmic-ray detector?
A. a plan to investigate a comet
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B.
a listening device to track intersellar probes
C. a formula to calculate near-light-speed travel
D. a project to map radiation sources in the night sky �
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GRADE 10
Reading
16
�
READ
THINK
EXPLAIN
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You are an assistant to James Cronin, the physicist mentioned in the article. Prepare
an argument he can use to convince Congress to approve the funding needed to
complete plans for the Giant Array. Use details and information from the article to
support your argument.
For a full and complete response, consider these points.
• what is needed and what can be gained from the Giant Array
• how much it will cost and whether Congress will have to pay
for everything
• when results can be expected
• some possible objections to the proposal
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GRADE 10
Reading
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19
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This article would probably be useful for someone doing research on
A.
new UFO theories.
B.
stellar map-making.
C.
the search for space dust. �
D.
the effects of radio waves.
What topic in the article does the picture represent?
A.
the speed of light
B.
the presence of cosmic rays �
C.
the path of the tracer bullet
D.
the center of the Giant Array
The Giant Array of detectors would find high-energy cosmic rays by
A.
tracking specific flashes of light. �
B.
mapping variations in Earth’s rotation.
C.
scanning Earth’s surface for atmospheric residue.
D.
measuring how fast light bounces off a telescope.
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