The kids in this village wear dirty, ragged clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts made of sticks and mud. They have no school. Yet they all can chant the English alphabet, and some can make words.

    The key to their success : 20 tablet computers(平板电脑) dropped off in their Ethiopian village in February by a U.S. group called One Laptop Per Child.

    The goal is to find out whether kids using today's new technology can teach themselves to read in places where no schools or teachers exist. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers analyzing the project data say they're already amazed. “What I think has already happened is that the kids have already learned more than they would have in one year of kindergarten,” said Matt Keller, who runs the Ethiopia program.

    The fastest learner—and the first to turn on one of the tablets—is 8-year-old Kelbesa Negusse. The device's camera was disabled to save memory, yet within weeks Kelbesa had figured out its workings and made the camera work. He called himself a lion, a marker of accomplishment in Ethiopia.

    With his tablet, Kelbasa rearranged the letters HSROE into one of the many English animal names he knows. Then he spelled words on his own. “Seven months ago he didn't know any English. That's unbelievable,” said Keller.

    The project aims to get kids to a stage called “deep reading,” where they can read to learn. It won't be in Amharic, Ethiopia's first language, but in English, which is widely seen as the ticket to higher paying jobs.

    Tim Richter and his wife, Linda, had taught for over 30 years near Buffalo, New York—he in computers, she in special education. “Teaching means everything to us,” Tim would say. In April 1998, he learned he would need a heart operation. It was the kind of news that leads to some serious thinking about life's purpose.

    Not long after the surgery, Tim saw a brochure describing Imagination Library, a program started by Dolly Parton's foundation (基金会) that mailed a book every month to children from birth to age five in the singer's hometown of Sevier, Tennessee. “I thought, maybe Linda and I could do something like this when we retire,” Tim recalls. He placed the brochure on his desk as a “reminder”.

    Five years later, now retired and with that brochure still on the desk, Tim clicked on imagination library com. The program had been opened up to partners who could take advantage of book and postage discounts.

    The quality of the books was of great concern to the Richters. Rather than sign up online, they went to Dollywood for a look see. “We didn't want to give the children rubbish,” says Linda. The books reviewed each year by teachers, literacy specialists and Dollywood board members included classics such as Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day and newer books like Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama series.

    Satisfied, the couple set up the Richter Family Foundation and got to work. Since 2004, they have shipped more than 12,200 books to preschoolers in their area. Megan Williams, a mother of four, is more than appreciative: “This program introduces us to books I've never heard of.”

    The Richters spend about $400 a month sending books to 200 children. “Some people sit there and wait to die,” says Tim. “Others get as busy as they can in the time they have left.”

For only the second time in her life, actress Olivia Holt, 15, traveled to New York—this time to catch the award—winning Disney Broadway show Newises. Adriana Palmieri, the reporter from Time for Kids（TFK）,was there with Olivia and interviewed Olivia about the experience and her career. “I think the show is inspiring other people to make a big influence on the world today,” Olivia told TFK.

    Olivia is no stranger to the stage. This young star started acting at age three, and progressed from a small stage to a hit TV show, Disney XD's Kickin 'It. But even today she gets very nervous before each show. She overcame her nervousness by staying positive. “I end up just keeping my head up and seeing where it takes me and usually, it takes me to a good place where I'm not so nervous,” Olivia said.

    Olivia grew up in Mississippi but moved to Los Angeles recently to pursue her career. “It was a big transition for me because I grew up in a small town,” Olivia said. But now, she's living her dream as an actress. When asked about advice for other aspiring actors, the young performer said, “Just stay positive and stay confident. If you know that you're powerful enough to conquer your fears and stay happy, that will lead you in the right way.”

    Olivia regularly stars on a Disney XD show called Kickin'It. She plays the fearless black belt Kim. “I think she is such an incredible girl and I look up to her.” Olivia said about her character, “She is so powerful and confident.”

From birth to death, the word kick has been given an important part in expressing human experience. The proud and happy mother feels the first signs of life kicking inside her body. And that same life——many years later—— comes to its end in a widely-used expression, to kick the bucket( 吊桶) . The expression to kick the bucket is almost 200 years old. One belief is that it started when an English stableman(马夫) killed himself by hanging while standing on a bucket. He put a rope around his neck and tied it to a beam(梁柱) in the ceiling, and then kicked the bucket away from under him.

    Another old expression that comes from England is to kick over the traces. Traces were the chains（链子） that held at horse or mule to a wagon(货运马车)or plow. Sometimes, an animal refused to obey and kicked over the traces.

    Kick around is an expression that is heard often in American English. A person who is kicked around is someone who is treated badly. Usually he is not really being kicked by somebody's foot. He is just not being treated with the respect that all of us want. A person who has kicked around for most of his life is someone who has spent his life moving from place to place. In this case, kicking around means moving often from one place to another. Kick around has another meaning when you use it with the word idea. When you kick around an idea, you are giving that idea some thought.

    There is no physical action when you kick a person upstairs, although the pain can be as strong .You kick a person upstairs by removing him from an important job and giving him a job that sounds more important, but really is not.

    Still another meaning of the word kick is to free oneself of a bad habit, such as smoking cigarettes. Health campaigns urge smokers to kick the habit.  

    "Stop making excuses for him. Mom," I said. "But maybe he is feeling unwell..." Mom said. "Maybe nothing." I interrupted. I had been tending Mom since her health began to decline and this would be the first time in a year that my husband and I had a night out together. Jerry had promised to stay with Mom. But again he let us down. And more often than not, his drinking had a lot to do with it. His irresponsibility upset me.

    I remembered our happy growing-up years in a small town in West Virginia. With good family education. Jerry had been a kind kid. He was only 15 when Dad died. Unlike him, I got over the sorrow soon, but he started drinking. Soon he began hanging out with bad guys.

    Jerry and I didn't see each other often, but we talked on the phone. Usually, though, we ended up fighting. When Mom came to live with us, Jerry dropped in regularly at first, but after a while his visits became sporadic. He explained he couldn't handle seeing Mom in such a bad condition. Another excuse, I thought.

    One day I went to see the doctor about my back. It had been aching for months. "I can't find anything wrong with you physically," the doctor said. "But I can tell you're very tense. Is something bothering you?" I poured out my story about Jerry. "Do you think he's likely to change?" he asked. I shrugged."Probably not." "But, you can," he said gently.

    Me? Why did I have to change? He was the one who constantly let us down. But what had I done? Maybe the doctor was right. I couldn't love his behavior, but I could love him—the way 1 did when we were little. As I walked intothe house I sensed a relief.

    Jerry died young due to drinking. I miss him. But Pm grateful I was given the opportunity to show him I lovedhim—as he was, not as I wanted him to be.

Reading a book and watching a film are two very different experiences, but expectations can be high when a film of a favourite book is made. There are very many times I have been disappointed by a film of a book I love. So maybe highly regarded books do not always make good films. It is safe to say that great movies may be made from not particularly good books.

The source material may be anything from classic novels, short stones, comic books and stage plays, as well as non­fiction such as biography and autobiography, even those written by ghostwriters. All can work well, but why do many adaptations and indeed remakes fail with both cinema audiences and critics?

A key question is obviously how close to the original the film is. Since a typical film is only around two hours long, it becomes a question of what to leave out, and how to script the dialogue. Sometimes there may be changes to the plot, additions and even different endings to please producers, directors and test audiences. I, like many people, have often left the cinema feeling "the film is not like the book".

Another problem area is the cast. Whether suitable actors are found or not can mean the difference between success and failure. Readers of the book use their imaginations to visualize characters and have very definite ideas about how characters look and sound. This is where I think many film adaptations fall down.

Some books are just too difficult to film for technical reasons, although movies like The Life of Pi are changing this perception. The impact of CGI technology has had a huge impact on the movie industry and allowed the previously unfilmable to become a reality.

 Sometimes authors are very involved in the process and many may even be the screenwriters. This can actually be a bad thing because they may be too close to the material and find it difficult to adapt. At other times they are not the screenwriters, and there are instances where writers have been very unhappy with the film versions of their work. Roald Dahl and Stephen King are examples of this. Even more extreme was novelist J. D. Salinger who made sure no film versions of his popular novels could ever be made. In this situation, it is clear viewers will not be disappointed.