C

      The British King George was quite naughty (淘气) when he was a child. He spent all his pocket money on toys. His grandma, the Victoria Queen, worried about that. One day, George went out to play and he wanted to buy a toy horse in a shop. But the toy horse was 25 pounds and George had no money at that time. So after he went back, he wrote a letter to his grandma,"Dear granny, I would like to buy a toy horse. Will you send 25 pounds to me?"

       However, his grandma wrote back to him, "You have got too many toys, and I will not give you the money to buy toys any more. Now you should learn to save up."

       A few days later, his grandma got the second letter from George,"Dear granny, thanks for your letter. I sold it to a collector (收藏家) and bought that toy horse with the money."

A

    Today is Sunday, April 15th, everyone in Sheep Village（羊村）is very busy. What does he/she do?

    I'm Nuan Yangyang. I write a letter to my friend at one o'clock in the afternoon. Then I do my homework.

    I'm Fei Yangyang. I want to be strong（强壮的），so I go to the sports club to play sports in the morning. I go home at three ten in the afternoon.

    I'm Lan Yangyang. I like eating. I have breakfast at home. I have lunch in a restaurant. But the food isn't good, I don't like it.

    I'm Mei Yangyang. I go to a clothes store at nine in the morning. The clothes there are on sale, so I buy a nice skirt.

    I'm Xi Yangyang. I take the bus to the English club at ten sixteen in the morning. There I help two kids learn to speak English.

    Miss Mitra didn't want to be a Sunday school teacher any longer. The students there were all rude and never listened to her. "I give up." She shouted at the students. "Cool." Rick said. He was the most impolite kid in this school. Two months later, Miss Betty Ray came to the school. She looked young. The students thought that she wouldn't stay very long.

    "Have any of you ever been out of state?" She asked in a friendly tone. A few hands went up.

    "Anyone has traveled to California?" One hand went up as the disrespectful(无礼的) laugh reduced.

    "Anyone visited outside the country?" No hands went up now. The silent kids were puzzled.

    Betty took a map of the world from her bag.

    "What else do you have there? Lunch?" Someone cracked.

    Betty smiled lightly and answered, "Cookies for later." "Cool," Rick quipped(困惑的).

    Then she pointed at a place on the map, "I was born here, and I lived here until I was about your age."

    "Is that Texas?" Someone asked.

    "No. Quite a long way from here. It is Mumbai in India."

    Betty fumbled again in her bag, this time pulling out some old wrinkled pictures along with a box of chocolate chip cookies. They passed the pictures around, viewing each with great interest.

    The kids studied them as they bit into the sweets.

    The hour quickly slid by as she told them her stories about faraway places and what the people were like there and how they lived.

    "Wow, this is as exciting as TV!" One young girl told her.

    Sunday after Sunday, Betty came to class, tying her lessons to their everyday lives. She told the kids how they could make a difference right now. The students grew to love her.

    Betty taught that Sunday school class for thirty years. At last, her hair grew into a natural gray.

    Every now and then, she received a letter from a former student. There was a doctor, a research scientist, a homemaker, a businessman, and many teachers among them. One day she pulled out a blue envelope from her mailbox. And there was a photo in it. Squinting her eyes, she smiled at the man in the photo, still seeing the boy in him. Standing in the rubble(瓦砾), in the city of Delhi, India, he came to help the homeless people in the earthquake. Some words were written in the upper part of the photo, "Because of you, I am here now."

    Science fiction is a popular kind of writing, and many people think of Jules Verne(儒勒·凡尔纳) as the father of science fiction. He was born in France in 1828. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but from his early 20s Verne decided to become a writer. At first he wrote plays for the theater. Then, in 1863, he wrote a story called Five Weeks in a Balloon. The success of this book encouraged him to write more stories such as A Journey to the Center of the Earth(1864) and From the Earth to the Moon(1865).

    In the 19th century, many people were interested in science and inventions. Jules Verne wrote about scientific subjects in his stories and, as a result, they were very popular. Verne's writing included many predictions(预言) for the 20th century and many of them came true. He described space flight, movies, and air conditioning, a long time before they appeared. These books were very successful and they made Verne rich.

    Jules Verne's books have been the subjects for many movies. 20, 000 Leagues under the Sea was a successful movie for Walt Disney. It was the first time that Disney movie had used real actors instead of cartoon drawings. Around the World in Eighty Days is another famous movie based on one of Verne's books. The main character is an Englishman called Phileas Fogg. For him, the most important thing is to be always on time!