Literary non-fiction

Studying travel writing 4.3

Rework text

This piece of travel writing by Laurens Van Der Post is a complex text with some difficult sentence structures and vocabulary. Rework the text so that it is suitable for young children. You will need to:

1Edit the text down to about 150 words – use Word Count in the Tools menu.

2Alter some of the complex sentences into compound (joined by ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘but’) and simple sentences.

3Change some of the descriptive vocabulary (adjectives, similes, metaphors) so that a younger reader can understand it.

4Keep a clear sense of place and people and try to make sure the tension is still obvious.

Original text
Your version (rework this copy)
There was no wind any more. There was no cloud in the sky. I have never known such stillness. The only sound was the sound of one’s blood murmuring like a far sea in one’s ears: and that serene land and its beauty, and the level golden sunlight seemed to have established such a close, delicate, tender communion with us that the murmur in my ears seemed also like a sound from without; it was like a breathing of the grasses, a rustle of the last shower of daylight, or the swish of the silk of evening across the purple slopes.
Suddenly Karramba touched my arm. We could hardly believe our eyes. A very big male leopard, bronze, his back charged with sunset gold, was walking along the slope above the pool on the far side about fifty yards away. He was walking as if he did not have a fear or care in the world, like an old gentleman with his hands behind his back, taking the evening air in his own private garden. When he was about twelve yards from the pool, he started walking around the pool in circles examining the ground with great attention. Then he settled slowly into the grass, like a destroyer sinking into the sea, bow first, and suddenly disappeared from our view. It was rather uncanny. One minute he was magnificently there on the bare slope and the next he was gone from our view …
We waited attentively. About five minutes passed: not a sound anywhere, except this remote music of all our being. I was lying with my ear close to the ground when I heard a new sound that made my heart beat faster: it was the drumming of hooves far away. It was a lovely, urgent, wild, barbaric sound. It was getting louder and coming straight for us. I caught a glimpse of Michael’s face, shining with excitement. The drumming of the hooves came towards us from somewhere behind the far slope, like a great Pacific comber, like a charge of Napoleon’s cavalry at Waterloo, and then out of the midst of this drumming, this surf of sound, there was thrown up like a call on a silver trumpet, or the voice of an emperor born to command, a loud clear neigh. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard, and it established itself in all my senses like the far silver fountain that I had once seen a great blue whale throw up on a South Atlantic horizon after a storm. Now, as the sun tinted the horizon, the wave of sound rose towering into the air and then crashed down on to the summit of the slope opposite us. A troop of about forty zebra, running as if they has never known walking, the rhythm of their speed moving in waves across their shining flanks, charged over the crest and made for the pool where the leopard lay.

When you have finished, save your work to your work folder using Save As in the File menu. To print out what you have done, click Print in the File menu, select Current page and then click OK. To return to the CD-ROM, close Word by clicking Close in the File menu.