Dear Xia Yu,

    Do you know that there are two special days for parents in America? One is Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, and the other is Father's Day on the third Sunday of June. On these two days, American children often give gifts to their parents or take them out for lunch or dinner. Common gifts are flowers and cards for mothers and shirts or ties for fathers. I heard that it is becoming more and more popular to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day in China. I wonder if children over there also give similar gifts to their parents. I believe that there, are many ways to show our love. Actually, we don't have to spend a lot of money. It is also a good idea to help parents to do something instead.

—June

Information card

    Mrs. Cooper is over 90, but she can still play a game of Words with Friends, a popular puzzle game app, on her iPad. She says that the Apple product(产品) has changed her life.

    Mrs. Cooper lives in a house close to Manchester Airport in London. She often uses her iPad to track the planes that fly overhead and explore(探索) the world with Google Earth.

    "I'm crazy about the planes, so I choose the Flight Tracker to see where the planes around me are going. It's a wonderful way to keep in touch with the world," she said. "I use it nearly all the hours of daylight, 2-3 hours in the morning, then again in the afternoon."

    Mrs. Cooper taught painting when she left school. She had a laptop（手提电脑）, but struggled（费力）with it. " Her problem was that she couldn't see the cursor（光标）, and her hands shake so hard that she almost can't use the mouse." said her 63-year-old daughter, Jean. "I was in America visiting my daughter, and I played with an iPad and decided to buy one for my mother."

    Jean got some apps for the iPad, so her mother could learn how to use them. "She uses it several hours a day, and is curious(好奇的) to keep up with everything new. She reads the news, sends emails and uses Face Time to make video calls to us all. We're glad that she can enjoy her life with the magic thing." she said.

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    A large numbers of emojis (表情符号) are sent online every day. Emojis are pictures used in texts and web pages. Since emojis were invented in the late 1990s, they have been used as a modern international languages.

    We like emojis for different reasons. A written message is always black and white, but emojis show meanings beautifully. Sometimes emojis also change the way we write. The more emojis we use, the fewer words we use.

    There are many emojis with different meanings. They are easy to understand. For example, a smiling face means "I'm happy". A cake with candles means "Happy birthday". When we want to say "Goodbye", we use a smiling face with a waving hand. When we are in a terrible situation but we have to laugh to cheer ourselves up, we can use a "cry laugh" emoji.

    Now emojis have great influence on us. Sometimes, emojis can be helpful to people from different countries in understanding each other. And when we are feeling exchange. Then the invention of emojis helps change the situation. For example, when we receive a smiling face from our friends online, we try to exchange our feelings by sending the same picture.

    It seems that emojis change as time goes by. However, we should be careful when we use them online.

The story of the magazine

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    When you look at the different kinds of colorful magazines in the shops (and online) today, it's easy to think that they are a modern idea. However, magazines have been around since the 18th century and they have been an important part of people's daily lives for hundreds of years.

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    One of the earliest magazines was The Gentleman's Magazine which was started in London in 1731 by a man called Edward Cave. He was the first person to use the word "magazine" about a regular publication. The word comes from the Arabic makhzan or storehouse. His idea was that his magazine was a storehouse, or place that you could keep information about many different things.

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    Magazines became more popular in the 19th century. They gave people tips to help them with their daily lives, and they often had serialized(系列的) stories which gave the readers a new episode every week. Each part finished at a very exciting point in the story. Famous writers such as Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created serialized novels for magazines.

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    One very important serialized novel was Hard Times by Dickens. It came out in 20 weekly parts between 1 April and 12 August 1854 in the magazine Household Words. This magazine was very good value and it was a cheap way for readers to buy a version of a novel.

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    Soap operas on TV today are often similar to the serialized novels. These old stories have often been made into modern films or TV series and they are still popular with modern audiences because they are so exciting.

    Have you ever thought about what our food will be in the future?

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    More land will be used for building new towns and houses for all the people. Then there will be less room for cows and sheep, so meat will be more expensive. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Instead, people will eat more fruit and vegetables. In this way, people may be healthier.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Only about 29%of the Earth's area is land and the rest is sea, so some think maybe we can get more food from the sea.

    Besides, though rice supports more than half the world's population, it needs a lot of water to grow. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Therefore, it might be impossible to grow rice in the future. Some farmers are experimenting with new crops. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}The soybean (黄豆) makes a good substitute (替代品) for rice and meat.