Read the article "House Made of Newspaper—Read All About It!" before answering Numbers 1 through 7.

**House Made of Newspaper—Read All About It!**
by Patricia Bridgman
Photographs by Edna L. Beaudoin

From the street, this building in Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, looks like a regular house or maybe a log cabin. The only hint that this house is different is the sign that says Paper House. Step onto the front porch and things really start to look odd. Those shiny, brown shingles have words on them. And pictures.

"Elis Stenman started building the Paper House in 1922," says the owner, Edna Beaudoin, who is Stenman's grandniece. "He was an engineer. He also loved newspapers. He read five of them every day."

Stenman thought it was wasteful to throw away old newspapers. (This was in the days before recycling centers.) Instead, he used them to build a vacation house in Pigeon Cove.

To start the project, Stenman "hired a carpenter to build wooden rafters, beams, and floors," Edna says. He also had electricity and running water installed in the house, but there was no heat and no bathroom. (The family used an outhouse; it was not made of paper, but the toilet paper, of course, was.) Edna says that after all this was completed, Stenman "sent the carpenter away and used paper for the rest."

Each shingle is made of carefully cut pieces of newspaper glued together with flour-and-water paste. The shingles have been varnished many times to keep out the wind, snow, and rain. The newspaper pieces are so discolored that they're hard to read at first. Stand close. Look hard. You'll see ads for flapper dresses, 150-dollar fur coats (which would cost several thousand dollars today), and 50-cent shirts.

The door is one of the few things here made of wood. Step through it and you'll see that the ceiling, walls, and furniture are made of newspaper. When the house was completed in 1924, the Stenmans decided to fill it with paper furniture. This kept them busy for the next eighteen years.

"The furniture is made of little logs of rolled-up paper," Edna says, "but it is full-sized and as strong as wood furniture." The paper logs are 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick and generally three to ten inches long. To make them, "Mr. Stenman took a piece of wire, like a coat hanger, and bent it at one end to form a handle," Edna says. "He'd lay the wire across a strip of newspaper and turn the handle to roll the paper tight." If you've ever seen someone roll back the lid of a can of sardines, you'll understand how the log-maker worked.

Out of these paper logs, the Stenmans created paper chairs, a table, a bookcase, a cot, a settee, and covered a couple of working lamps. Even the fireplace is paper—on the outside. "The inside is brick," Edna points out, "so it's actually very safe." She keeps a fire extinguisher on hand, just in case.

The real piano that Edna used to bang away on as a child is covered with newspaper stories about Admiral Byrd's trips to the North and South Poles in 1926 and 1928. The grandfather clock is made of newspapers from the capitals of each of the forty-eight states. (This was in the 1930s—before Alaska and Hawaii became states.) The desk shows articles about Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, and the cabinet that holds the old-time radio has stories about Herbert Hoover's run for president in 1928.

When all of the furniture was made, Elis's wife, Esther, made curtains from magazine covers as a finishing touch. She also rolled some strips of paper into colorful beads and folded others into German Christmas stars.

In all, over 100,000 newspapers went into the Paper House and its furniture. Still, millions of newspapers have been published since the Stenmans completed their project. Does Edna ever think about adding more newspapers to the house or papering her own house, which is just next door? Not really. She has enough work as it is, running the Paper House as a museum. And in her spare time, she has plenty to read.

"House Made of Newspaper" by Patricia Bridgman from Spider magazine, May 2006. Text copyright © 2006 by Carus Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of The Cricket Magazine Group, a division of Carus Publishing Company.

**Now answer Numbers 1 through 7 on your Answer Sheet. Base your answers on the article "House Made of Newspaper—Read All About It!"**

Before explaining when, why, and how the Paper House was built, the author first:

A. describes how the Paper House looks from far away and up close.
B. explains how Edna Beaudoin became the owner of the Paper House.
C. gives directions on how to get to the Paper House in Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts.
D. provides background on what happened to old newspapers before there was recycling.