This question has two parts. First, answer part A. Then, answer part B.


Part A

Which statement best summarizes a theme of the text?


A.

Lumberjacks are very resourceful.


B.

People should take good care of their pets.


C.

Legends are about larger-than-life characters.


D.

Size and strength are not important if you are determined.


Part B

Which sentence from the text best supports your answer in part A?


A.

“His blue ox, Babe, wore snowshoes to haul the wood to the surface of the snow.”


B.

“Paul could solve problems like no one else I ever knew or you ever heard of.”


C.

“He called in Sourdough Sam, a cook who made everything out of sourdough except the coffee.”


D.

“Today a lake in Minnesota is named ‘Sourdough Lake.’”


A Giant of a Man

A big burly man dressed as a lumberjack stands next to a big ox and holds an ax over his shoulder.

Back in 1913, I worked on one of Paul Bunyan’s famous crews. Let me tell you, there are many good tales about the legendary Paul Bunyan, but they don’t tell half the story. He was a giant of a man who could pick up four horses with their load of logs and turn them around on the road. He led crews of us loggers to hew trees and chop them into logs during the days when this country was growing fast.

Feeding Bunyan’s crews of ravenous loggers was a big job. Paul’s cook Big Joe wanted a griddle to cook pancakes. So, Big Ole, the blacksmith, made an immense griddle. The pancake batter was stirred in machines like concrete mixers. It was poured on the griddle with cranes.

One year, everything got buried during the Winter of the Deep Snow. It was quite a predicament. Paul dealt with the challenge by digging down to find the tops of the tall pine trees and lowering his loggers to chop logs. His blue ox, Babe, wore snowshoes to haul the wood to the surface of the snow.

Paul had a cow named Lucy. She had the appetite of a wolf. In the winter of the Deep Snow, the loggers gave Lucy a pair of Babe’s old snowshoes and green goggles. They turned her out to graze in the snow. She learned to run in the snowshoes, and she ran all over North America.

One of Paul’s loggers took a load of logs down the Mississippi River for Paul. When the logs were delivered, they were the wrong logs. Paul had to get them back upstream. Driving logs upstream is impossible, but an impossible job never stopped Paul. He fed Babe salt and took him to the upper Mississippi to drink. Babe drank the river dry, and the logs traveled up the river faster than they had gone down.

Paul could solve problems like no one else I ever knew or you ever heard of. In the Winter of the Blue Snow, Shot Gunderson was in charge of the Big Tadpole River area. He chopped his logs so that they landed in a lake. He planned to move them in the spring. To his surprise, when he tried to move the logs, he discovered the lake had no outlet to the river. He thought the whole winter’s work was lost. But Paul was always clever. He came up with an ingenious idea. He called in Sourdough Sam, a cook who made everything out of sourdough except the coffee. Paul ordered him to mix enough sourdough to fill the big water tank. Then he hitched Babe the Blue Ox to the tank and dumped the sourdough into the lake. Dough rises. As Sam said, it “riz” and pushed the logs over the hills that surrounded the lake. They rolled all the way to the river. Today a lake in Minnesota is named “Sourdough Lake.”