Yep
I remember reading it with some frustration, in 6th grade. I did look up the word cetacean (sp?), I recall, because I saw it fly by several times, and I became curious. Mostly I let stuff like that slip by without much comprehension on my part.
But the book was an awful lot of work to read. On the other hand, the more hard things you make yourself read, the better you become at reading.