HomeMy WebLinkAboutRead Aloud Book Gr. 2-Lesson 26Stop and think for a moment. Do you have an extraordinary talent?
Something that no one else can do? You just might have a special skill that
could get you into the book Guinness World Records. Many ordinary people
are surprised to fi nd they are talented enough to be a record holder. They are
also surprised when others hear about their records and start to see them as
important popular fi gures.
Some people don’t set out to have a world record. For example, Charles
Osborne got the hiccups in 1922, and he continued to hiccup for sixty-eight
years! He now holds the record for the longest attack of hiccups. Jeanne
Louise Calment was born in 1875. She would live for another 122 years and
become the oldest person ever.
Other people set out to earn incredible records. Mark Sinclair of Bramley,
England, ran marathons on all seven continents. A marathon is a twenty-six-mile
race. At twenty-four years of age, he was the youngest person to ever do
this. Temba Tsheri climbed to the top of Mount Everest, which is the world’s
tallest mountain, when he was only sixteen years old. And Michael Perham, at
fourteen years of age, became the youngest person to sail a boat alone across
the Atlantic Ocean.
Then there are record holders who have superior skills in sports. Pele, a
Brazilian soccer player, scored 1,280 goals from 1956 to 1977, setting a world
record. Free diver Tanya Streeter broke the world record when she dove
underwater to a depth of 525 feet.
Some people do sensational things as a group. In 2004, a group of 15,851
people in Ontario, Canada, lay down at the same time and made a record
number of snow angels. In 1998, 1,508 people gathered in Edinburgh, Scotland,
and juggled for at least three minutes, setting the world record for the most
people juggling at once. There was even a group of kids in South Africa who
watched movies for almost sixty hours straight. That set a record, too.
Do you have any ideas about how you could be in the book Guinness World
Records? Maybe your class can dream up something tremendous to do together.
COMPREHENSION Which words help you understand how amazing the
world records are? What world record would you want to hold?
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Paul Bunyan was a gigantic, heavy baby. It took fi fty storks to deliver him to
his parents. After the storks arrived at the Bunyan house in the deep woods of
Minnesota, they were so tired they had to rest for a month.
“Oh my!” Mr. Bunyan said as he looked at baby Paul, who towered over
their house. “What are we going to do?”
“We need to get to work,” said Mrs. Bunyan, smiling.
Mr. Bunyan was a lumberjack. He cut down a whole forest of trees to make
a crib for Paul to sleep in. When he fi nished, the crib was as big as twenty train
cars. It took the strength of forty horses to pull the immense baby into his bed.
Mrs. Bunyan knit the wool from a hundred lambs into a blanket. And later,
the fi re department came with a tanker full of warm milk for Paul. After dinner,
Paul yawned so enormously that he caused a tornado down in Kansas. Then
he fell asleep.
“Well, that’s that,” said Mr. Bunyan to Mrs. Bunyan. “Let’s go to bed.”
Soon the whole Bunyan family was sleeping—but not for long. Late that
night, there was a mighty cry. It was baby Paul wailing. People could hear
Paul’s crying from Maine to Texas.
His mother rushed outside to see if she could soothe him. Paul just kept on
crying. His parents didn’t know what to do. Finally, his mother had an idea.
“This baby needs to be rocked back and forth,” she told Mr. Bunyan.
“You’re right!” he shouted. “I know just what to do.”
He ran into town to get some help and brought back a hundred people. They
tied two hundred ropes to Paul’s crib and started dragging it to Lake Superior.
It was extremely hard to drag the crib. Paul was crying so loudly, they all had
to stuff cotton in their ears.
The townsfolk pushed Paul’s crib into the water. Mr. Bunyan had built that crib
so well that it fl oated just like a boat. Ships looked like miniature toys next to the
crib. Waves came in and out, rocking Paul back and forth until he fell asleep. Mr.
and Mrs. Bunyan knew they would have their hands full with this baby!
COMPREHENSION In what ways does the new baby change the lives of
Mr. and Mrs. Bunyan? Which words help you understand Paul Bunyan’s size?
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