While he was at work in the grove, the birds came close to pick up the worms(蠕虫) in the fresh earth he dug up. At first, they kept their distance from him, but they soon found he was a kind man, and would not hurt them, but liked to have them near him.

They knew this by his kind eyes and voice, which tell what is in the heart. So, day by day their faith in his love grew in them.

All the birds of the grove were soon his fast friends. They were on the watch for him, and would fly down from the green tree tops to greet him with their chirp(叽叽喳喳叫).

When he had no work to do, he took bread with him, and dropped the pieces on the ground. Down they would dart(俯冲) on his head and feet to catch them as they fell from his hand.

He showed me how they loved him, He put a piece of bread in his mouth, with one end of it out of his lips, Down they came like bees at a flower, and flew off with it piece by piece,

When they thought he slept too long in the morning, they would fly in and_____________.

They went with him to church, and while he sang his hymns in it, they sat in the trees, and sang their praises.
So the love and trust of birds were a joy to the old man all his life long.

      It's Sunday afternoon. It's my son's eighth birthday tomorrow. I go into a cake shop to buy a big birthday cake for him.

      When I get there, the shop is full of people. When I am looking for a cake, I find a little boy watching the cakes for a long time. He is in poor clothes. At last he picks a cake. Then he gives money to the salesgirl and says to her, “I want the small cake.”

  “Sorry, the cake is 20 yuan, but you only pay 10 yuan.” says the salesgirl.

  “I …I have no more money.” says the little boy and he begins to cry. “Oh , my boy. Who would you like to buy the birthday cake for?” I ask.

 “My mom, madam.”

“Why doesn't she come and buy one?”

“My father left us a few years ago,” the boy says. “we don't have money. My mother has to work from morning to night every day. She celebrates my birthday every year, but she never celebrates her birthday. It's her birthday tomorrow. I want to buy a small cake for her. But I don't have enough money…”

“Oh, my boy! I'm your mother's friend,” I say. “I will buy her a nice birthday cake.”I give the money to the salesgirl and leave the shop.

A

    Tom lives in a town near New York. His father has a shop there and his mother is a doctor. Tom is seven years old this year and begins to go to school this September. It is a little far from their shop and his father drives a car to take him to take him to school five days a week. So he is never late for class and his father likes him very much.

    It is Monday today. Miss Green is teaching them to count(数数) from one to ten in the morning. Tom is study hard. Soon he can count them. Miss Green is very happy and asks, "How many people are there in your family, Tom."

    Tom stands up and says, "Two, Miss Gao."

    "Who are they?"

    "My father and my mother."

    "Oh," Miss Green is surprised(吃惊). She says "Then there are three people in your family."

    "But now I'm not at home. I'm at school, you know."

    ① My little sister is spoilt(宠坏的). She has Dad wrapped around her finger. If I had done or said some of the things that she does when I was her age, I would have been in big trouble. Not her- she's Daddy's girl. She's three.

    ②An example: Dad asked her to get his glasses from the kitchen. My sister said, “You've got legs. You get them.” When he asked again, she said, "Benny's got legs. He can get them. "Mum and Dad thought she was funny. I just thought she was rude.

    ③One night she woke Dad and said she dreamed that "Benny was fighting a witch (巫婆)."Mum and Dad let her sleep in their bed the rest of the night. I never slept in their bed- not that I would have wanted to. She is so spoilt.

    ④One time at the beach after she'd been playing in the surf with Mum, my sister shouted that an "octopus's tentacles" had bitten (咬) her. Dad laughed his head off. It wasn't that funny. She was certainly imagining. I knew that's what she thought as I'd done a project on animals for school.

    ⑤She likes to do homework when I do mine. She sits next to me and pretends to write pages of homework. It's just letters such as the letters in her name that she repeats for row after row. Mum says she's just trying to be like me but it drives me crazy when I'm trying to fix my attention on my work.

    ⑥She took her favorite book, Animalia, to Kindy(幼儿园) this morning. When dad and I collected her from Kindy this afternoon, a boy had taken her book out of her locker and was being really careless with the pages. I could tell she didn't like him having her book. I took the book off the boy and told him to treat books nicely. My sister looked very happy.

    ⑦Later my Dad told me that my sister admires me. I guess that's pretty cool.

    Jack thought himself a basketball fan. He watched quite a lot of American NBA basketball games. Not only did he watch them, he spent much of his free time playing on the court too. Then came the final year of his middle school. All of his regular teammates stopped showing up on the court because they were simply too busy preparing for the high school entrance exam to play. He was, of course, under much stress himself, like everyone else. A good exam result meant a good high school; a mediocre(平庸的) score meant a mediocre school. Much was at stake.

    However, he loved basketball so much that he still found time to play, this time with a group of guys who were said to have skipped classes(逃课) before.

    Some of his teachers started worrying about him. They asked his mother to go to school to let her know that Jack was hanging out with problem kids. When his mother returned home that day, she wanted to talk to Jack. Knowing the purpose of her visit to the school, Jack though his mother would punish him for befriending those bad guys. To his surprise, his mother was not angry with him at all. She wanted to hear her son's side of story. So Jack told his mother about what he knew of Simon and Peter. Simon's parents were badly ill; Peter's father had lost his job. They both seemed to Jack to be normal kids. Jack's mother thought for a moment, and then went on to say that she was OK with her son playing with them and that she and her son should think of ways to help these kids. Soon Jack's mother introduced some part -time jobs to Simon and Peter, which they accepted. She believed in her son and cared about those who were less lucky.

    Jack's basketball friends and he have left for different places, but they still keep in touch. He knows Peter is now a manager of a local bank. Simon is currently a freshman at a university. Sadly, it is impossible to get together to play basketball again, but whenever they get on the phone, they talk about all the time.

    At just 17 years old, Pakistan's Malala is the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Malala came to international attention when she spoke up for the rights of all children to have an education. Malala's father was a teacher who ran a school. For her early life, her family lived in the school so she was used to sitting in the classrooms before her school age. Now, she can speak three languages and loves learning.

    She grew up in Pakistan. The living conditions in her area were very poor and unsafe. Many people were hurt and many schools were closed. Especially girls were not allowed to go to school.

    Reporters from Britain told the world what was happening with the help of Malala. In 2009, 12-years-old Malala wrote 35 diaries on the Internet. She wrote about the difficulties of her life, and about her strong hope for education. Soon after that, Malala's family was chosen to be in a TV program to show ordinary children's education because both father and daughter spoke good English, and they cared about children getting an education.

    From then on, a few people hated her and hurt her. Though terribly wounded, Malala became a courageous fighter for the education rights of millions of girls worldwide. "I don't want to be remembered as the girl who was hurt, I want to be remembered as the girl who stood up," she said.

    She has now written a book about her life called I am Malala. The book shows that one person's voice has the power to inspire change in the world. In her speech, she spoke warmly about her aims for education and peace. One sentences she said one day became famous: One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can greatly change the world.