It takes a lot of skills and hard work to set a world record in pumpkin-carving(雕刻南瓜). Steve Clarke, a sixth-grade teacher from Pennsylvania, is a famous carver(雕刻师). Clarke has set many world records for carving pumpkins quickly. When he competes, he must cut our two eyes, two eyebrows, a nose, a mouth, and two ears as fast as possible. But Clarke knows something else about pumpkin-carving. It's easier to get a record than to keep it.

    He took the title in 2000 when he carved a pumpkin face in 74.8 seconds. That time was 19 seconds faster than what Jerry had set. From then on, Clarke broke his own records five times. In 2006, he set his best time in Florida. His winning time was 24.03 seconds!

    The only problem is that someone finally beat that mark. On October 7, 2010, David set the new record with 20.1 seconds. Clarke was not able to break that record this year, but he has planned to break the record. After Halloween, he will go to local pumpkin farms to practise designs and new skills.

    Clarke is popular because of his super pumpkin-carving skills. In 1999, he carved more than 30 pumpkins at the Halloween party for then vice-president Al Gore.

    A baby giraffe is born 10 feet high and usually lands on its back. Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a new-born giraffe learns its first lesson.

    The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she puts herself directly over her child. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She throws her long leg and kicks her baby, so that it's sent sprawling (四脚朝天).

    When it doesn't get up, what the mother has done is repeated again and again. The struggle (挣扎) to rise is important. As the baby giraffe grows tired, the mother kicks it again. Finally, it stands for the first time. Then the mother giraffe kicks it off again. Why? She wants it to remember how it can get up. In the wild, a baby giraffe must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with its group, where there's safety.

    Another writer named Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying great people, writing stories about such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.

    Stone was once asked if he had found something unusual about these great people. He said, “I write about people who sometime in their life have a dream of something. They're beaten over the head, knocked down and for years they get nowhere. But every time they stand up again. And at the end of their lives they've realized some small parts of what they set out (着手) to do.”

One day, five blind men were walking along, when suddenly they bumped into something very big in front of them. Each one put out his hand and touched it. The first man thought it was a tree —it was tall and round. The second man felt something tall and wide and rough(粗糙的) and said, “Aha! This must be a wall !” The third man touched a very long smooth thing. He guessed this was a spear (矛).Then the fourth man said, “I feel cool. There must be a fan up there. Oh, yes! Here it is!” He touched something big and round that was moving. What did the fifth man find? Well, he started shouting that he was being chased(追赶) by a snake.

    Each man was sure he knew what he had touched, but they were wrong. They finally understood the mystery when the big thing attempted （尝试）to move, and they felt silly because everything they had touched belonged to an elephant.

    My holiday with grandma and grandpa is great! They lived with us in New York, but they moved to Ariz when I was five. Dad usually visits them. He is sending me to stay with them for a two-week holiday.

    This is my first time to travel by myself. On the plane, I study the picture from grandma. It's a picture of an old village and the village is on top of a tall hill. It looks high, and I am not sure I can climb so high.

    Grandpa meets me at the airport. When we drive away from the city, I look at the beauty of the place new to me. Soon we get to my grandparents' village. We are so high up, I feel like a bird!

    Grandma is waiting for us at the door of a building. "Joe, this is called a „pueblo'. The buildings are made from stones（石头）and earth（泥土）," she says.

    Grandma and grandpa's rooms feel cool after standing under the hot sun. Grandma says that the stones keep the rooms cool. After dinner we take a walk outside.

    I really like meeting the people here. One man helps me make an earth vase（花瓶）for Mom.

    The children ask me to their ball games. Sometimes I help grandpa and his friends work on the farm.

    I feel I am part of a big family in our village in the sky. It is hard to leave my grandparents when my two weeks are over.

    I caught a very bad cold last weekend and had to stay at home for a whole week. The nurse in the hospital took my temperature, I had a fever. The doctor told me to take both some Chinese and some west medicine. He suggested that I should stay in bed and have a good rest.

    When he asked me what probably caused（引起）the cold, I told him the whole story.

    Last weekend, I was studying for an exam. Father said to me, "You look stressed out, son. You really need to relax. Let's go fishing in the countryside!"

    "Harrah!" I shouted.

    The next morning, we got up very early. Mother told us that it was going to rain and she suggested that we should take our raincoat with us but we were too excited to remember that. We took a train and arrived at a lake in the countryside. A few hours later, it began to rain! Soon, it began to rain cats and dogs. We had to go back home.

    When we arrived home, we were wet through. Mom asked, "Did you catch any fish?"

    "No, we didn't. But we caught cold!" Dad answered.