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Animal Themes
Mammals
Polar Regions

Narwhals

Narwhals
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.13

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    belly-up, commodity, narwal, narwhale, narwhals, neutralize, orcas, undeveloped, deter, dorsal, alleged, counter-clockwise, flukes, narwhal, unpleasant, pods
     content words:    Middle Ages

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Other Languages
     Spanish: Los Narvales

Narwhals
By Vickie Chao 		  
1     In the Middle Ages of Europe, there was one animal that nobody had ever seen, but everyone wanted to own it. That legendary creature -- called the unicorn -- looked like a white horse with a long horn on its forehead.
 
2     People loved the unicorn for a very good reason. They believed that its horn possessed a magical power. If brought near poisoned food, the horn would bleed. If waved over a tempered dish, the horn would neutralize any kind of poison. The myth made a unicorn's horn a very valuable commodity. Rich people, like members of the royal families, were willing to pay dearly to own it.
 
3     The problem, as you may have guessed already, is that unicorns are imaginary creatures. They don't really exist. So what did those rich people buy? Well, they spent their fortune on narwhals' teeth!

Paragraphs 4 to 8:
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