It was Saturday morning. Kate got up early and had breakfast quickly. She was so excited. She was going to the zoo with her family today! There was a new kind of animal in the zoo. It was called sloth (树懒) and it was from South America. Kate never saw a sloth before. She could not wait to see it.

    When Kate and her family got to the zoo, there were already lots of people around the sloth. The sloth was staying in a tree! It looked so cute! Kate looked at the animal for about ten minutes, and then she asked, “Are you sure it is alive (活的), Dad? I don't see it moving at all.” “Of course it is alive,” her father said. “But a sloth can only move really slowly.”

    Kate's family went to see some other animals. Then they went back to the sloth after lunch. Kate looked at the sloth carefully. It was really at a different place, near the place where it stayed in the morning. “You are really lazy, Mr. Sloth,” Kate said. “I think you should do more exercise. It is good for your health.”

    Jenny is a good Canadian girl. She is 1.7 metres tall. She has a round face. Her eyes are very big. She likes vegetables very much，so she is not fat. She likes red，and it's her favourite colour. She looks very nice in red clothes. Jenny studies in China. She likes reading. She borrows books from the library every week. She is good at Chinese. She says Chinese is very interesting. Our classmates all like her very much.

    Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh(1853-1890) killed himself by shooting himself in the chest(胸膛).

    This is what van Gogh himself told his brother, the doctors and the police just before he died.

    However, in a new book Van Gogh: The Life, two Pulitzer (普利策奖) Prize-winning authors, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, argue that van Gogh may have been murdered. They believed that the artist was protecting a 16-year-old boy named Rene Secret, who shot him accidentally.

    Van Gogh's statement that he shot himself was accepted because he had been mentally unstable(精神状况不稳的) for two years. He suffered from psychotic(精神病的) attacks and imagined things that were not really happening. Art critics (评论家) believe that his unstable mental state is shown in his work, describing his style of painting as shaken. Some of his most famous paintings, such as The Starry Night, were produced during this period.

    Van Gogh is among a number of creative minds who suffered from mental health problems. In fact, mental illness is so common among famous creative figures that scientists have studied whether there is link between creativity and insanity(精神错乱). Research began in the 1970s, but the idea that an unstable mind could be linked to creative genius(天才) was already around in ancient Greece.

    Some scientists believe mental illness, in its more manageable state, gives artists creativity. Research has found that doing creative activities can also be therapeutic(有疗效的) for people suffering from mental illness. Painting, writing, or making something can be a positive way for people to express their thoughts.