EXCERPT #1
When Clary Fray witnesses three tattoo-covered teenagers murder another teen, she is unable to prove the crime because the victim disappears right in front of her eyes, and no one else can see the killers. She learns that the teens are Shadowhunters (humans who hunt and kill demons), and Clary, a mundie (i.e., mundane human), should not be able to see them either. Shortly after this discovery, her mother, Jocelyn is kidnapped. Jocelyn is the only person who knows the whereabouts of The Mortal Cup, a dangerous magical item that turns humans into Shadowhunters. Clary must find the cup and keep it from a renegade sector of Shadowhunters bent on eliminating all nonhumans, including benevolent werewolves and friendly vampires.
EXCERPT #2
It's the late summer of 1793 in Philadelphia, and fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook helps her widowed mother and her grandfather run a coffeehouse. Mattie resents her strict mother and dreams of expanding the coffeehouse and becoming wealthy. But her mother seems determined to find a wealthy young man to marry Mattie off to. But all of Mattie's concerns soon seem petty when an epidemic of yellow fever begins to spread throughout the city. Mattie's own mother falls ill and sends Mattie and her grandfather to stay on a farm in the countryside, where she hopes they will be safe. But they are turned away and forced to return to Philadelphia when a doctor mistakes her grandfather's cough for yellow fever. Mattie comes down with the fever and nearly dies, but is nursed back to health in a temporary hospital. But she and her grandfather return to the coffeehouse to find that Mattie's mother has vanished. They try to settle back into a normal routine, but a sudden tragedy soon leaves Mattie on her own. Now, in a world turned upside down, in a ghost city a shadow of its former self, Mattie must keep herself alive and care for a little girl orphaned by the epidemic.
EXCERPT #3
There was not floor, just bubbling lava hundreds of feet below. We stood on a rock ledge that circled the cavern. A network of metal bridges spanned across it… Creatures moved around the platform—several strange, dark shapes, but they were too far away to make out details…. There was a rush of movement and excited voices coming toward the cart. I got ready to uncap Riptide…. I jumped up, my bronze sword springing to life in my hands, and found myself facing a bunch of … Their bodies were sleek and black like sea mammals, with stubby legs that were half flipper, half foot, and humanlike hands with sharp claws.
EXCERPT #4
Chase and his father were in Florida speeding down a road along the Gulf of Mexico. Chase’s father had one hand on the steering wheel of their 4x4 truck. In his other he held a travel mug of black coffee. Chase’s job was to replenish the mug from the Thermos at his feet, which he had filled four hours earlier in the weather-battered fifth-wheel trailer they were pulling. His father called the fifth-wheel the Shack. It was where they lived. It was nicer on the inside than the outside. The rough exterior was the result of a hailstorm in Oklahoma two weeks ago. Chase had been inside the Shack when it hit. The worst part had been the sound. His ears had rung for twenty-four hours after the ten-minute pounding. When he’d opened the door, the ground had been covered in golfball-size ice pellets for as far as he could see. A mile away a farmer had been killed running from his John Deere combine to his house. He should have stayed inside the combine.
EXCERPT #5
It was Second’s voice. Jonah saw Andrea looking down, he saw the surprise register on her face as she realized that she was still holding Second’s Elucidator.
“I planned for this, too,” Second continued. “This is a pre-recorded message, set to be triggered if you were sent forward in time. I knew what JB would do. If you hold on to your friends’ hands and press the glowing button, you can all go back to 1600.”
EXCERPT #6
Free from the indomitable onslaught of the golem, the injured imps converged on Grandma, who placed herself in front of Kendra and Seth. Holding a pouch in one hand, Grandma swung it so that it scattered a twinkling cloud of dust. As the imps reached the cloud, electricity crackled, hurling them back. A few lunged into the cloud trying to force their way through it, but electricity flared brighter and sent them tumbling. Grandma spread more dust in the air.
EXCERPT #7
It was April, and outside in the dark the rain whipped against the windows of our tavern, making a sound like muffled drums. We were concentrating on our dinner, and everybody jumped when the door slammed open and banged against the wall, making the plates rattle in their racks. My brother Sam was standing there, wearing a uniform.
Oh my, he looked proud.
"Sam," my mother said. We hadn't seen him since Christmas.
"Shut the door," Father said. "The rain is blowing in." That's the way Father was do right first, and then be friendly.
But Sam was too excited to pay attention. "We've beaten the British in Massachusetts," he shouted.
EXCERPT #8
Tally Youngblood was waiting for darkness.
She could see New Pretty Town through her open window. The party towers were already lit up, and snakes of burning torches marked flickering pathways through the pleasure gardens. A few hot-air balloons pulled at their tethers against the darkening pink sky, their passengers shooting safety fireworks at other balloons and passing parasailers. Laughter and music skipped across the water like rocks thrown with just the right spin, their edges just as sharp against Tally's nerves.
Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.
Tally took off her interface ring and said, "Good night."
"Sweet dreams, Tally," said the room.
She chewed up a toothbrush pill, punched her pillows, and shoved an old portable heater -- one that produced about as much warmth as a sleeping, Tally-size human being -- under the covers.
EXCERPT #9
Just about everybody who'd ever seen Will Tyler play said the same thing—that he could fly on a football field.
He was definitely flying now.
Ball tucked firmly in the bend of his arm, open field in front of him. A slight wind at his back. Not that he needed it.
At midfield he made an effortless cut to his left, switching the ball from his right hand to his left in the process.
Will did it without even thinking, did it on instinct, one more move that nobody had to teach him. Not even his dad, who'd been a star running back in this same town, on this same field.
Back when the field was in much better shape. And the town was, too.
EXCERPT #10
First I find out that my boyfriend is cheating on me. Then he’s pegged as the #1 suspect ina murder. And now he’s depending on me to clear his name. Seriously?
As much as I wouldn’t mind watching him squirm, I know that he’s innocent. So I’m brushing off my previously untapped detective skills and getting down to business. But I keep tripping over dead bodies, and I’m still no closer to figuring out who did it. And what’s worse: all signs seem to point to me as the killer’s next victim.
I really need to pick a better boyfriend next time.
EXCERPT #11
The theory of natural selection explains how a population changes over many generations in response to its environment. In fact, members of a population tend to be well adapted to their environment because natural selection is continuously taking place.
EXCERPT #12
A histogram is a special kind of bar graph that display the frequency data that has been organized into equal intervals. The interval covers all possible values of data, therefore there are no spaces between the bars of the graph.
ANSWER KEY
Excerpt 1 – Fantasy (City of Bones , Cassandra Clare)
Excerpt 2 – Historical Fiction (Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson)
Excerpt 3 – Fantasy (Percy Jackson, Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan)
Excerpt 4 – Adventure (Storm Runners, Roland Smith)
Excerpt 5 – Science Fiction (Torn, Margaret Peterson Haddix)
Excerpt 6 – Fantasy (Fablehaven, Brandon Mull)
Excerpt 7 – Historical Fiction (My Brother Sam is Dead, James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier)
Excerpt 8 – Science Fiction (Uglies, Scott Westerfeld)
Excerpt 9 – Realistic Fiction (The Underdogs, Mike Lupica)
Excerpt 10 – Mystery (Deadly Cool, Gemma Halliday)
Excerpt 11 – Informational (Science Textbook)
Excerpt 12 – Informational (Math Textbook)