Classic Is Never Gone

    Every year hundreds of films areproduced, yet how many are forgotten after six months? Movies come and go, as throw away as popcorn bags left on the floor of a cinema. But of those few films that people do remember, there is one that is truly “evergreen”(常青).

Whether you are young or old, or where you are in the world, the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind never seems to become unpopular. Last year the film celebrated its 75^th birthday.

    The movie comes from a best-selling book of the same name by US writer Margaret Mitchell. Hollywood was soon interested in turning the novel into a movie.

    The story is set in the periods before, during and after the American Civil War (1861-1865). It is about relationships between members of high-class families living in the south of America.

    The Civil War period piece highly rewarded the time and effort of the film makers who worked on it. Over twenty years, nostudio went beyond it in making the most money of any film ever made. It's the kind of movie that every studio dreams of making.

    More and more children play computer games for a long time. Most parents feel quite worried about that. But in fact, not all games are bad for kids.

    There is a popular game called Mole Manor（摩尔庄园）on line now. In this game, it is a world of the kids. Children can do what they want to do there. They can buy what they want and even the pets. Almost every player has one or two pets called Lam. The players can buy something for Lam and they also want to give them some food to eat. Sometimes kids must wash their pets to keep them clean. At that time, they are the parents themselves. That helps them know how much their parents do for them. There are many other games for kids in Mole Manor. Kids can be a policeman here. They can also be a teacher to help the Lams to learn more.

    Get the kids to play for only half an hour on line. Don't hate all computer games and you can be a good parent.

    Were you the first or the last child in your family? Or were you a middle or an only child? Some people think it matters where you were born in your family. But there are different ideas about what birth order means. Some people say that oldest children are smart and strong-willed. They are very likely to be successful. The reason for this is simple.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} So this child is very likely to do well. An only child will succeed for the same reason.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Middle children don't get so much attention, so they don't feel that important. If a family has many children, the middle one sometimes gets lost in the crowd.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} He or she is the baby. Often this child grows up to be funny and charming.

   Do you believe these ideas of birth order too? A recent study saw things quite differently.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}. They didn't take many chances in their lives. They usually followed orders and seldom made their own decisions. Rules didn't mean as much to later children in the family. They went out and followed their own ideas.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

   ①  Hi, I'm Mary Brown. Look at this photo. Two girls are in it. They are my sisters, Linda and Jane.

  ②   Hi, I'm Harper Seven Beckham. I'm an English girl. Harper is my first name. Seven is my middle name. Beckham is my last name. Here's my family photo. This is my father David Beckham. That is my mother Victoria Beckham. Those are my brothers Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz.

  ③   My name is Kimi. I'm not English. I'm Chinese. My father is Lin Zhiying. His English name is Jimmy. My mother is Chen Ruoyi. Her English name is Kelly. Oh, Angela and Cindy are my good friends.

  ④   Who am I? I'm Cindy. My Chinese name is Tian Xinchen. Tian Liang is my father. Ye Yiqian is my mother. Tian Chenyu is my brother.

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    Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835, in the state of Missouri. When he was four, his family moved to the town of Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was a port on the Missippi River, and Clemens loved to watch the big steamboats going up and down the river. He said that all the boys in his school had one ambition in life: to work on a steamboat!

    His father died when he was just 12 years old, and Clemens then went to work for a printer to help support his family. He travelled around, and worked in many different cities. But when he was 22, he achieved his ambition—he got a job working on a steamboat. He sailed up and down the wide Missippi River until the American Civil War began.

    He then moved around America, and tried several jobs. He was a soldier, and a silver miner. Then he started working as a writer for a newspaper. It was at that time that he decided to use a pen name for his stories, and he chose the name "Mark Twain".

    The name is interesting. It comes from his days on the steamboats. He used to throw a piece of rope into the river. There was a heavy weight on the end of the rope, and the rope had some marks on it. He used the rope to find how deep the river was. Then he shouted out, "Mark One" or "Mark Twain", meaning "Mark Two". Each mark was about two metres, so when he shouted "Mark Twain", it meant that the river was deep enough for the big boat.

    In 1865 Clemens wrote a story about a jumping frog. The story and the writer became famous. In 1867 he toured Europe. He married when he returned, and lived for most of the rest of his in Harfort, Connecticut. He wrote many books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he wrote in 1876. He also gave many lectures, and became a very famous and popular man.

    Once two of his friends decided to write to him, but they had lost his address. So on the envelope they just wrote "Mark Twain, God knows where". Several weeks later, they received a replay from the writer. It just said, "He does!"

    Samuel Clemens died in 1910. He is considered to be one of America's most important writers.