Book: No Looking Back

Author: Shivani Gupta

Shivani had thrown a party one evening and awoke the next morning in hospital because of a car crash. It took Shivani years of pain, struggle and determination to regain control of her life and her body. Then tragedy struck again. As the newly-married Shivani drove to Manali with her family, a truck crashed into her car. Shivani refused to give in—she wouldn't let her injury keep her from achieving her ambitions.

Book: Courage Beyond Compare

Author: Sanjay Sharma

The 10 sportspersons in the book are champions in diverse fields like athletics, swimming, and badminton, who have brought glory to the country. They overcame their physical limitations to reach the top of their chosen fields.

Book：Face to Face

Author: Ved Mehta

Blind since the age of four, the author led a lonely childhood in India until he was accepted to the Arkansas School for the Blind, to which he flew alone at 15. America and the school changed his life, leading him to degrees at Oxford and Harvard and a fruitful writing career.

Book: This Star Won't Go Out

Author: Lori and Wayne Earl

Diagnosed with cancer at 12, Esther Earl was a bright and talented, but very normal teenager. She lived a hope-filled and generous life. A cheerful, positive and encouraging daughter, sister and friend, Esther died in 2010, shortly after turning 16, but not before inspiring thousands through her growing online presence.

    Differences are important and they should be respected. For example, many important people throughout history were considered different, such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln. They did great things, but some people thought they were strange because they had strong feelings about something. I can understand these people because I've been in that situation before many times.

    It all started in elementary school when I realized that I wasn't like everyone else. My mom says that I have a tendency to be obsessed(着迷)with certain subjects. Unfortunately, these subjects don't interest other kids of my age and they really don't interest my teachers. In fact, my kindergarten teacher said she would scream if I mentioned snakes or lizards one more time while she was teaching the days of the week. I would get into trouble for not paying attention and the teasing began.

    In the third grade, my teacher informed me that I have Asperger's Syndrome（症状）. I said, “So what? Do you know that Godzilla's suit weighs 188 pounds?”

    Later, I asked my mom, “What's Asperger's Syndrome? Am I gonna die?” She said that it's like having blinders on, and that I can only see one thing at a time, and that it's hard to focus on other things.

    People also make fun of me for knowing facts about volcanoes, whales, tornadoes and many other scientific things. My mom says that she has been able to answer many questions on Jeopardy! just by listening to what I have to say, but I've even been laughed at for being smart.

    Maybe someday I'll become a gene engineer and create the real Godzilla. I can dream, Can't I?

    Reuel Tolkien (1892 ~ 1973), the British linguist, writer. He created a fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings”, the well-known trilogy (三部曲).

    Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. When he was 4 years old, his father died and his family moved back to England. Tolkien graduated from Oxford University when he was 23 years old, and participated in the First World War. During the war, Tolkien suffered from “trench fever” and stayed in the hospital until the end of World War I. It was the days in the hospital that he began his writing career first.

    After the war, Tolkien became a linguist. He was an edition of the “New English Dictionary” of 1918 ~ 1920. However, he was more researching to Anglo-Saxon language which makes his extensive contacts in Britain and the Nordic spread all over the folklore and mythology.

    In 1937, Tolkien completed his first work “The Hobbit”. Although this was a fairy tale, it was also suitable for adults to read. Because of good sales, publishers (Allen & Unwin) convinced Tolkien to write its sequel. This encouraged Tolkien to complete his most famous works the epic (史诗) trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”. The works of writing went on for almost a year with the support from his good friend Lewis.

    At the beginning “The Lord of the Rings” was similar works for children, but after that writing style quickly became serious and dark. “The Lord of the Rings” was one of the most popular literary works in the 20th century in terms of sales and readers' evaluation. Tolkien's influence is important, for the success of “TheLord of the Rings” makes the fantasy novels of this literature genre (体裁) developed rapidly.

    Robots make me nervous—especially the ones which seem to think for themselves. I was embarrassed to admit this till I heard that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, felt the same way.

    Gates said in an interview with the social networking and news website Reddit: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent．That should be positive if we manage well. A few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern."

    Well, maybe I don't have to worry about my computer and kitchen equipment yet. After I use them I can always pull the plug. But in the future, machines might find a way to prevent us from switching them off. There's a terrible thought!

    Maybe the problem with computers too clever for us is not that they are evil like some we've seen in sci-fi movies. What could put us in danger is that they might be too efficient. That's what philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University believes. He says that machines are indifferent to humans and in pursuit of their own goals，the destruction of people might be just additional damage. Bostrom gives us an example: A machine which might have its only goal to produce as many paperclips as possible might look at human bodies as extra material for paperclips and go after you. Because it is, well, a machine, it would not take pity on you.

    It's a good thing that American writer Isaac Asimov thought about how far robots can go and left us his three rules of robotics. They state that a robot may not hurt a human being or allow the human being to come to harm.

    I'm glad my machines at home are "dumb". All my cleaner wants to take over is the carpet in my living room. Let's hope they don't create an appliance which wants to take over the world!

Larry was on another of his underwater expeditions(探险)but this time, it was different. He decided to take his daughter along with him. She was only ten years old. This would be her first trip with her father on what he had always been famous for.

    Larry first began diving when he was his daughter's age. Similarly, his father had taken him along on one of his expeditions. Since then, he had never looked back. Larry started out by renting diving suits from the small diving shop just along the shore. He had hated them. They were either too big or too small. Then, there was the instructor. He gave him a short lesson before allowing him into the water with his father. He had made an exception. Larry would never have been able to go down without at least five hours of theory and another similar number of hours on practical lessons with a guide. Children his age were not even allowed to dive.

After the first expedition, Larry's later diving adventures only got better and better. There was never a dull moment. In his black and blue suit and with an oxygen tank fastened on his back, Larry dived from boats into the middle of the ocean. Dangerous areas did not prevent him from continuing his search. Sometimes, he was limited to come to a cage underwater but that did not bother him. At least, he was still able to take photographs of the underwater creatures.

    Larry's first expedition without his father was in the Cayman Islands. There were numerous diving spots in the area and Larry was determined to visit all of them .Fortunately for him, a man offered to take him around the different spots for free. Larry didn't even know what the time was, how many spots he dived into or how many photographs he had taken. The diving spots afforded such a wide array of fish and sea creatures that Larry saw more than thirty varieties of creatures.

Larry looked at his daughter. She looked as excited as he had been when he was her age. He hoped she would be able to continue the family tradition. Already, she looked like she was much braver than had been then. This was the key to a successful underwater expedition.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard, fishermen watched their markets dry up. Restaurants-normally major fish buyers-closed or cut back orders significantly. Fishermen weren't sure if they were going to get paid for what they fished.

Meanwhile as people lost jobs, food banks started to see a great demand for services. Things were getting desperate, with long lines for food assistance in many states.

Out of these dual crises, a new idea was born. Food assistance programs across the country have started connecting with local fishermen to stock up on local seafood, many for the first time. And the arrangement seems to be helping the fishermen, the economy and those in need of healthy food.

According to Catherine D' Amato, CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, the network usually keeps four or five weeks of food on hand in case of emergencies. The pandemic hit, and "we found ourselves below one week of stock and going down rapidly," she says. That's because the food bank normally distributes about I million pounds of food a week, and that became 2.5 million pounds of food a week, D' Amato says. While Congress and the states have increased funding and donations for food banks during the pandemic, it hasn't been enough.

"For many years, we have been wanting to be able to work with organizations in the fishing industry," D' Amato says. But it's complicated. Fishermen catch a lot of big fish, and food banks who might take it need the products to be cut small and easy to use for customers. It also has to be fish they know and recognize. The barriers have been too high in many places to make it work. But this spring, the state department of agriculture connected the food bank with some grant makers. They talked to some local fishermen about developing a traditional New England fish soup.

The grants paid fishermen for their catch and provided money for a local manufacturer to process, freeze and deliver the soup to food banks in family-size servings. The soup is helping to feed families and keep fishermen fishing. The fishermen hope to sell it in stores soon, and Damato hopes to purchase more soup and expand into new seafood products for her customers.