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    Larry is going to be a pilot. He wants to fly an airplane. But Larry is not a rich man. He doesn't have an airplane. He has only a chair. Larry ties 45 big balloons to his chair and then sits in the chair. The chair goes up.

    For a few minutes, everything is fine. The view from the chair is beautiful. Larry can see houses and trees below him. He is happy. He is flying!

    The chair goes up very high. Larry is afraid. “I don't want to go very high,” Larry thinks. “I want to go down a little.” With a small gun, Larry shoots 10 balloons. Then something terrible happens. Larry drops the gun, and it falls to the ground. Larry can't shoot more balloons. The chair goes up and up.

    Larry is three miles above the ground. Airplanes are flying over him. Larry has a small radio. “Help! Help!” he says into the radio. “I'm flying in a chair, and I want to come down!” People hear Larry, but they can't help him.

    Larry flies in the chair for 45 minutes. Then the balloons begin to lose air, slowly the chair comes down, and Larry is back on the ground. He is not hurt.

    Lots of people make it as their aim to get to the top of Mount Everest. Mark is one of them. The difference between Mark and other climbers is that he lost both his legs when climbing New Zealand's highest mountain, Mount Cook. He was caught in a big ice hole and he had to have his legs cut below the knees after he was saved. But that couldn't make him lose heart, who has become the first person with man-made legs to reach the top of Mount Everest.

    From the top of the world's highest mountain, Mark called his wife to say he made it. His wife, Anne got the phone when she was sleeping. She couldn't hear him clearly on the phone. She was unable to say when he reached the top but thought it was around mid-day. She also said his "legs" didn't work well sometimes, so her husband was carrying a spare leg and repair tools.

    Mark used to be a mountain guide before his accident. He said it was not important that no one like him had ever reached the 8,850-meter mountain.

    "I'm not doing this to be the first. I have been climbing most of my life and I just feel Mount Everest is really a great aim. I want to send a message that I can do anything better. "

    For a 6-year-old kid, what he or she wants most may be delicious food and enough playtime. Sometimes we think children only have some simple wishes. ______ , a 6-year-old girl in the kindergarten(幼儿园) surprised her teacher.

    An Internet user Katt has a little sister called Peyton. Last week, Katt shared her sister's teacher's note(便条) online.Mrs. Petree shared Peyton's act of kindness(善良). It really touched many people's hearts. Here is the thing. Peyton did very well in class and the reward(奖赏)she chose was to sit with a friend at lunch. The teacher thought for sure who Peyton would choose. But Peyton picked a little boy who never got picked for anything. What a surprise! Mrs. Petree said kids learned to be kind when they saw Peyton's kindness. After that, other kids started to play with the boy. The boy is very different now and he's more and more outgoing

    After reading the note, Katt thought her little sister was great and that she would make the world better one day.

    This year the US will honour(纪念)one of the country's most famous writers-Mark Twain(1835-1910).Most readers know that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but how many know where the pen name "Mark Twain" came from?

    The answer shows Clemens' colourful early life before he became a writer. "Mark Twain" was the cry shouted on a ship when the ship entered a part of a river that was two fathoms(6 feet) deep. "Twain" is an old-fashioned way of saying "two". Twain trained as a ship pilot on the Mississippi river for two years, a time that he wrote about in the humorous Life on the Mississippi(1883).

    The famous river would become an important theme in many of his works-who could forget the journey of Huck and Jim along it in his most famous book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(1884).

    With little education, he had to teach himself how to write stories. Whenever possible, he would go to public libraries. There he spent much time reading and thinking, which greatly helped him with his writing.

    On the other hand, his life experiences gave him wonderful material to write about and attract readers. Twain wrote in a style that has been called "local colour" because it shows great knowledge of local people and their customs.

    The gift is very clear in the two books for which Twain is still celebrated today: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876) and its follow-up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which many people call "The Great American Novel".

    The most amazing invention in his book is the voice of Huck himself. Huck did not enjoy schooling. It shows in the way he uses language, in a spoken style. Only a master like Twain could copy the way a young southern boy talked so well.

    Hello, I'm Jenny Brown, I'm 12. This is a photo of my family. Who are they? Can you guess? Yes, they're my parents. My mother's name is Jane Brown and my father's name is Jack Brown. My cousin Mary is in the photo, too. She is 8. Her telephone number is 548—3674. My sister Linda is in the middle of the photo. Where(在哪里) am I? I'm the girl in a yellow jacket. My telephone number is 976—8431.