Bill is a good boy. He is seven years old, and he likes going to school. But he cannot get up early.

    He always wakes up until (直到) nine or ten o'clock in the morning.

    His mother doesn't want him to be late for school, so she buys an alarm clock for him. She says to Bill, "You must get up when you hear the clock ring." "Yes, Mum," Bill answers. From then on, when he hears the clock ring at six o'clock in the morning, he gets up quickly.

    One day his mother forgets to wind up (上发条) the clock. And the next morning, Bill doesn't get up on time. It's time for breakfast, so his mother goes to wake Bill up, Bill is in bed and his eyes are open. "Why don't you get up?" his mother asks, "You tell me that I must get up when I hear the clock ring, so I am waiting for the clock to ring," Bill said.

    I live on the twelfth floor of a building. One afternoon I was coming home from a friend's house. It was just after four o'clock. I got quickly into the lift and pressed Button(按钮)13.

    The lift started to go up, but very slowly. And then, halfway up, it suddenly stopped between two floors. I couldn't understand it. I pressed all the buttons from 1 to 14.I called for help very loudly. But nobody answered.

    Then suddenly the lights went out, and I was alone in the dark. I started to cry and beat the walls of the lift. I cried and cried until I had no voice left. Then, I felt hopeless, and pressed all the buttons with my hands. And at the same time, there was a bell far away. It rang and rang. It was the fire alarm. I thought the whole building was on fire. I said to God quietly, "Just get me out of here. I'll never be bad again."

    Just then, I realized the lift was moving very slowly. On the ground floor it stopped, and the door opened. A man was standing there. "How long have you been there? It is good that you pressed the alarm bell. But haven't you learned to read at your school?" He pointed at a small piece of paper on the wall beside the lift. It said:

    "Attention: This lift will be stopped for repairs between 4 p.m. and 5p.m. on Thursday, March 13."

    Daniel sat in the back seat of the car and he was very excited. It was his first trip to Disney World, and he couldn't wait to get there.

    At first it wasn't too bad. He played some car games with his brother Emmit and his parents. They played number games. They also read out all the letters on the license plates(牌照) from different states. Then Daniel felt bored and slept for a while. But he couldn't sleep for a long time, and they were still far away from Disney World.

    "Are we—"

    "No, Daniel." said his father." Please try to be patient. You chose(选择) the vacation place this year. We told you it would be a long trip."

    "Yeah, but this is so boring!" said Daniel.

    "I think Daniel is right," said Emmit."It's a boring trip."

    "You want to hear about a boring trip?" asked Dad." When I was about your age, Daniel, Grandma and Grandpa took your aunt Jan and me to Disney World. About halfway there, the car ran over a nail(钉子) and we got a flat tire(瘪了的轮胎).Luckily we had one more at the back of the car, but it took a long time to change the tire. So when we finally arrived at Disney World, it was already dark."

    Once there was a boy who was afraid of the dark. He thought that when it was dark his bedroom was full of monsters. But there came a time when he was too old to be allowed to keep sleeping with the light on.

    The first night he was so frightened that he couldn't fall asleep because he kept thinking about the monsters in his room. So he got up and went over to his wardrobe to get a torch. But when he opened the wardrobe door he came face to face with a monster, and he let out the loudest scream(尖叫)in the world.

    However, the monster didn't jump out to eat him as the boy had always imagined. To the boy's surprise, the monster took a few steps backward, grabbed(抓挠)its hair and started crying！The monster cried for so long that the boy's shock and fear slowly went away. He calmed the monster down as much as he could, and started talking to him, asking him why he was crying and what he was doing there.

    The monster told him he lived in the wardrobe, but almost never went out, because he was afraid of the boy. When the boy asked him why, the monster told him the boy's face with two eyes, ears and a nose seemed to him the strangest thing he'd ever seen. The boy felt exactly the same way about the monster who had a huge head with many mouths and a lot of hair.

    The two of them talked so much that they became quite friendly, and they realized that both of them had bee afraid of the same thing:t he unknown. To lose their fear, they had to get to know each other.