Jack is in bed. Mr. Smith sits beside him.

    “What kind of day do you have today?” Mr. Smith asks.

    “It is a bad day for me,” Jack answers. “I have a fight with Tom. Then the teacher calls you and tells you about it, right?”

    “Yes , part(部分) of the day is bad,” Mr. Smith says. But there are good parts, too. Now it is time to go to sleep. So tell me the best thing to you today.

    Jack is happy and he says, “After school, I go swimming. I make a new friend in the swimming pool.”

“I am happy you have a good time,” Mr. Smith says. “Think about it before you go to sleep. Now I'm going to turn off the light(关灯). Have a nice dream!”

    “Good night, Dad,” Jack says.

    Every night Mr. Smith and Jack have a talk like this.

    Every night Jack answers the same question, “What is the best thing to you today?

    Every night Jack goes to sleep thinking about the best thing. It's really a good way to end(结束) a day.”

Gemma Burford

    Gemma was born in' 1978 in a quiet (安静的) village in England. Her mother worked in a library and her father worked in a hospital. When she was a student at Oxford University, she travelled to Tanzania and met her husband, Lesikar for the first time. They got married in 2003 and had their daughter, Lucia, two years later. Now Lucia studies in a small primary school, and Gemma and Lesikar also teach her at home.

"Judy Boehmer

    Adam is Judy's first child. She now has four sons, seven daughters and a pet (宠物) dog, Bosco. Judy and her husband, Larry, live in Atlanta, Georgia, but they also have a motorhome (野营车). The Boehmers are a circus (马戏团) family and all the children are performers (演员) at the circus. The- children don't go to school, but study at home. The family travels more than 40.000 kilometres a year for their work The first show of the Boehmers was at a park in Lowa in 1989, and they now perform all over America.

    Barbie dolls always wear beautiful clothes. Do you know who makes the clothes for them? Kim Culmone from the US is a fashion designer. But unlike other designers, she only makes clothes for Barbie.

    Culmone is 48 years old. Her job is to design and make new clothes for Barbie. Culmone likes to watch fashion shows on the streets. When she sees beautiful clothes, she gets some ideas for her designs.

    Culmone is interested in the world of Barbie's clothes. Every day, she spends most of her time drawing different kinds of dresses for Barbie, and making them into real clothes.

    "I love dolls very much. When I was young, Barbie was a very important part of my childhood. I dreamed of making clothes for my own dolls." Culmone says. But it's not an easy job. She has to spend a lot of time planning for Barbie's clothes.

    "Sometimes, you think a dress is beautiful." Culmone says, "But when Barbie wears it, it looks different. Barbie dolls are a bit taller than a bottle of water."

TO DO: Let go of the list

Dear Disappointed,

    I know how you feel! For spring break, my family visited my cousins Sam and Kate. It was a long drive, so I had lots of time to make plans for the world's best vacation.

   "You have been writing for a while!" said my dad." Are you working on the next great American novel?" "Maybe tomorrow!" I joked. "Now, I'm making a list of things to do with Sam this week." Because Sam is my age. We usually hang out when we all get together, while Tex and Indi play with Kate.

    When we finally arrived, I went to find Sam." How about checking out the lake?" I said. "Nah, "said Sam." I have something more fun for us to do." "Awesome" I said, prepared to start checking off activities on my list. Sam turned on his computer." Which bat do you want to be?" Which bat?" I repeated." I got the best new computer game called Bat Adventure." Sam explained," Bats are the coolest creatures, you can learn all interesting facts about bats."

   "Um, this looks fun" I said, "but it's not exactly on my to-do list." "All the things I want to do this week." I explained, "are all outside." "Oh, that's cool." Sam said." You do your thing. And I'll just restart the game in one player mode."

    I wandered out of the room. And Kate called. "Zona, are you coming to play soccer with us?" "Sure, I guess for a minute," I said. Kicking the ball gently in Kate's direction. Kate gave the ball a huge kick. Pow! Tex ran after it.

   "Shhh," whispered Tex, pointing at a hole. We saw two little fuzzy bats! They had mousy ears and their wings were spread." Goodness!" I laughed." Let's show Sam. He knows all about bats." Sure enough. Sam was really excited about our discovery. Later that day. We all looked up bat facts on Sam's computer.

    I managed to do only a couple of things on my list that week. But I had some other great experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. So dear Disappointed, even though it's helpful to have lists, it's also good to stay open-minded. Life almost never goes exactly the way you plan. So if you are open to the possibilities, something even better can pop up out of nowhere and totally make your day.

Arizona

    On a farm lived a father and a son. The father always got up early and read books by the stove. One morning, the son came up to him and said, "Dad, I read books at night but forget most of them the next morning. What's the good of reading?"

    The father didn't reply to his question at once. He passed him a basket that was used to carry coal. He said, "Get some water from the river with the basket and then I'll tell you the answer."

    The son felt surprised but he did as his father said. He tried many times but every time the water leaked (漏掉) from the basket.

    An hour later, the son came back with the empty basket and told his father it was impossible to hold water with the basket. The father said with a smile, "Yes, you are right, my son. The basket can't hold water. But did you notice the basket was different? "The son found the dirty basket had become clean. The father continued, "Reading is like holding water with the basket. Although we can't remember all we read, we have changed while reading."

    Not many years ago, a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was 75, he gave ￡12,000 to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children's playground.

As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson remarked that he was 75 and expected to live to be 100, and the newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at 75. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky and drank some each day. "I have an injection (注射) in my neck each evening", he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of whisky.

The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was 75 and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week, Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injection.