Jed and Matt were walking home from school. It was the first really cold day of winter. "The 1 on the river is hard!" Matt shouted. "Let's take a shortcut (捷径) across. "

    Jed made a face. "It started to freeze," said Jed. "I don't think it's 2." "You're afraid of everything," said Matt with a laugh. "3 you want to walk all the way to the bridge, go ahead.  I'm going to 4 here." Then he ran toward the river. Now Matt was near the middle of the river. "Are you still 5, Jed?" he laughed. "Look how 6the ice is." Matt jumped up and down a few times to 7 his point.

    Crack! Loud sound filled the air. Matt looked down. In all directions, the thin ice was8away from his feet. Another crack, and Matt was in the river! "Help!" Matt screamed. His wet clothes pulled him down.

    Jed felt the ice, 9 testing the area around him. Using the feet, he pushed 10 slowly toward the hole in the ice. Gripping (抓牢) the ice with his feet, Jed took hold of Matt's 11.

    Little by little, he dragged (拖) Matt out of the water and then across the ice. After what seemed like hours, they reached the 12.

    A police car came up to them. Officer Crane helped Matt into the car. After hearing the story, Crane said, "Well, Jed, it sounds like you are a 13. Maybe I should call the newspaper. Someone from the paper can come and take your picture and write an article. "

    "Good idea," said Matt.  He was feeling a lot  14.  "I have never had my picture in the paper."

    "I was talking about 15 picture," said Crane.  "He is a hero."

A

    How do you win a Nobel Prize for writing? Here's the secret from a previous winner: make it short, keep it real, and work hard.

Canadian author Alice Munro, 82, was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature. She is known for her short stories about personal relationships of ordinary people, usually women.

    Munro was born into a farming family in Ontario. The family was very poor. Munro did a lot of physical work as a young girl. She decided to be a writer at the age of 12. Now Munro turns her hard childhood into great writing ideas. The story Dear Life, for example, opens with a description of the neighborhood in which Munro grew up. Also, she talks about her poor relationship with her mother in many of her stories, such as Lives of Girls and Women and Friend of My Youth.

    Since she published her first book in 1968, Munro has won many awards, with the Nobel Prize as her biggest honor. But Munro doesn't see herself as a talented(有天赋的) writer.

    “I'm the opposite of a writer with a quick gift. I don't grasp it very easily at all, the‘it' being whatever I'm trying to do,” she said.

    Do you dream of becoming an author while sadly admitting you are not that talented? Munro has a tip for you: use notebooks and write a lot.

    “I have lots of notebooks that contain(包含) this writing,” she said. But it helps her sort out (整理) her mind. “Stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them.”

    A poor farmer had a friend who was famous for the wonderful apple trees he grew.

    One day, his friend gave the farmer a young apple tree and told him to plant it. The farmer was pleased with the gift, but he did not know where to plant it.

    He was afraid that if he planted the tree near the road, strangers would steal the fruit. If he planted the tree in one of his fields, his neighbours would come at night and steal some of the apples. If he planted the tree near his house, his children would take the fruit. Finally he planted the tree in his woods. But without sunlight and good soil(土壤), the tree soon died.

    Later the friend asked the farmer why he had planted the tree in such a poor place. "What's the difference?" the farmer said angrily and then told what he had thought.

    "Yes, "said the friend, "but at least someone could have enjoyed the fruit. Now you not only have robbed everyone of the fruit, but also you have destroyed(毁掉) a good apple tree!"

    Laurence Kim Peek was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on November 11, 1951. It was clear from an early age that he was not like other children. A medical scan(扫描) showed that the two halves of his brain were not connected in the usual way. As a result, Laurence developed an amazing memory. He started to read when he was two. He used to read books and put them back on the shelf upside down to show that he had finished them. He remembered everything he had read.

    He memorized quite a lot of information subjects such as History, Geography, Sports, Music and Literature. He also had an unbelievable ability with numbers and dates.

    To read more quickly, he read the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye. By reading the two pages at the same time, it took him less than an hour to read a whole book. By the age of 30, he had memorized around 12,000 books.

    However, he did not develop so well in other areas. He could not walk until he was four, and he had problems putting on his clothes and shoes His social skills were poor, and he was extremely sensitive(敏感的) about meeting new people. In 1984, Peek and his father met Hollywood film writer Barry Morrow. Morrow was fascinated by Peek and began to write a new play about Peek's experiences. The result was Rain Man in 1988, a film that won an Oscar for Best Picture. This changed Peek's life. He got used to being the centre of attention. He self-confident (自信的). He appeared on TV and travelled around the country with his father to develop awareness(意识) of his condition. Sadly, Peek died of a heart attack in 2009.