The morning of my fiftieth birthday found me, as the last twenty had, sneakily examining my chin in the looking glass, searching for a sign, any small sign, of a whisker. And, once again, as on the previous twenty birthdays, I found nothing. Absolutely nothing. It may seem strange to you that I was able to reach the age of fifty years and still have my face remain as smooth and hairless as a green melon, and you would be right. Many lads of my race begin sprouting their beards by the tender age of thirty, and nearly all of them have a full layer of short growth, known as their Bramble, by forty-five. It is all but unheard of among the Nain for a boy to reach his fiftieth year without at least some sign that his beard is beginning to grow in. But then, this is certainly not the first thing about me that the rest of the Nain in the city of Vaarn think of as odd.

Grades 9-12

870,Lexile.

Accelerated Reader AR,5.7,15.0

Reading Counts RC,6-8,5.5,22,Quiz: 41731.

Accelerated Reader AR,MG+,5.7,15.0,108964.