As Sam slowly woke, he got a funny feeling in his stomach. He knew he would have to do something that he had been afraid to do for a long time.The school bus came on time, and he sat with his friend, Billy. They chatted about baseball. It was a great way to get his mind off what he had to do later. As they got close to the school, he could feel his heart beating. His hands were starting to sweat. He hated this!

    He entered Mrs. Owen's class. She was smiling, and saying hello to all her students as she did every morning.

    "Hi, Sam!" she said as he walked in."Hi," he said and quickly sat in his seat. Then the class began to take their spelling test. He looked at the clock. The time was near. He hoped he was not first! Mrs. Owens said it was time to begin their special day."Sam, you'll be first." Mrs. Owens said to the class, "Sam has worked very hard on his report on Hawaii, and I know it is very interesting."

    Sam nervously greeted his class. Then, he thought about the fun things he had read about surfing, volcanoes, and pineapples in Hawaii, and he started to talk. He talked in front of the whole class, and it was fun. The class clapped as he finished and Mrs. Owens was smiling. It wasn't terrible at all and he knew he would do better the next time.

    People say that George Washington, the first president of the United States, never told a lie. But it seems that the president was not without faults.

    A New York library recently found that Washington borrowed two books from the library in 1789. He would have to pay the library 300,000 dollars for being 220 years late.

    On October 5, 1789, when the first president borrowed the books form the New York Society Library, he didn't sign his name in the borrower's book. He just wrote "president" to show who had taken them out.

    The two books should have been brought back a month later but were never returned. Workers at the library realized the books were missing.

    The New York Society Library doesn't expect anyone to pay the fine. But it hopes that someone will return the books.

In 223 BC Meng Tian (蒙恬) led the army in a war against the Chu Kingdom. In those days, people wrote on silk with a kind of stick pen. The stick pen was very hard and made writing very slow. Meng Tian had to often write a great number of reports about battlefield situation to the Qin ruler. He was frustrated (沮丧的) with the difficulty of writing, so he decided to make improvements.

Between battles, Meng enjoyed hunting. One day, Meng hunted a wild rabbit. It was fat and heavy and its tail left a trail (痕迹) on the ground. Meng suddenly had an idea. He immediately tied the rabbit's tail to a stick and tried writing with it. But the rabbit's hair was too oily (多油的) to hold the ink. Meng felt very sad and threw his "rabbit hair brush pen" away into a hole in the rocks.

However, Meng Tian couldn't accept the failure and continued to spend time wondering how to improve the brush pen. A few days later, he was having a walk outside for some fresh air. By chance, he found again the rabbit hair brush pen that he had thrown away. He picked it up and found that it had changed and was now soft and wet—holding water. Meng Tian got inspiration at once. He put the rabbit hair brush pen back in the ink and found it worked beautifully on silk.

As a banker, Billy had never planted so much until he moved to the countryside seven years ago. Soon he became interested in growing and rented (租) a 30- by-30- foot land. One weekend, he planted tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants. He ended up with so many 1 that he couldn't eat them up. 2 he found a local food bank, and gave away 120 pounds of fresh vegetables in all. Moved by Billy's kindness, some people offered to help 3 .

The following year, together with several 4 , Billy planted and got 1,500 pounds of vegetables. All of them were given away to the food bank. Later he had more volunteers, rent more land and gave away more vegetables.

 Billy also 5 local school kids. On a Friday morning in May, 40 third and fifth graders walked onto one of his fields. Each of them had a spade(铁锹). They dug holes and6 put the plants in them. Although they got their clothes and hands 7 , nobody complained(抱怨).

" The activity makes kids know there are people 8 ," says Billy," and it plants the seed for giving back. When they are adults, it will be much more possible for them to 9 people around them to do something like this.

" Billy makes people want to 10 ," says Holly, a mother of two." And families love this. Billy has given us a way to raise our kids with a giving heart."

Hello!My name is Kylie Brown.I'm eight years old.I'm from London，England.I love animals very much.There is a cat，a bird and a duck in my home.

The cat's name is Kopa.He is brown and he is three.He likes sleeping.Polly is my bird.She is green.She likes singing.And what is my favourite animal？It's the duck.His name is Snow.He is white and he likes swimming.

I think Snow loves me too.He follows（跟随）me all the time when I'm at home.Every morning，he stands on the chair and wakes me up（叫醒）

An animal house lets a bad parrot go away for he likes saying bad words. Now the parrot finds a friend in Amazon's voice app at his new home.

Rocco is a gray parrot. His owner finds that he can use the voice app to play his favorite music,tell jokes and even order food.

Thanks to the app, it helps stop the clever bird from doing shopping. If not, he may really buy some strawberries, ice cream and even a cup.

Mary has the parrot now. She says she takes in the parrot after the animal house lets him out because he often says bad words.

Eric, Rocco's first owner, teaches him bad words. Now he really loves his new home. He talks with the app about 40 times a day.

And he can make different sounds. He can make the sound of a phone, a car, a clock, a door bell, and even the sound of opening or closing the door.