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Middle Ages

Medieval Books

Medieval Books
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.16

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    parchment, penmanship, scholarly, scribe, well-known, scribes, original, monastery, manuscript, literature, carbon, various, medieval, writing, fonts, design
     content words:    Middle Ages

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Medieval Books
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Making copies of a book today is not a big deal. Thousands or even millions of copies can be made almost as easily as one copy.
 
2     Making even one copy of a book in the Middle Ages, however, was a very big deal. It required the work of skilled craftsmen working for as long as a year to make just one copy.
 
3     Books in the Middle Ages were usually made of parchment. Parchment is animal skin, and it had to be prepared before it could be used to make a book. First, the skin was cleaned and soaked in lime. Then it was stretched on a frame to dry.
 
4     A scribe who wanted to copy a book would buy this dried parchment. Then he would cut it into the right shapes and sizes for the pages. Next each page would be carefully lined. First, small dots would be poked along both sides of the page to space the lines evenly. Then, the lines would be ruled with a pointed stick.

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