Walt Disney is credited for creating such wonderful things as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. However, he cannot take the credit for creating other well-loved characters, such as Cinderella and Snow White. They are almost automatically associated with Disney because Disney turned old fables(寓言) into cartoon movies.

    The original Cinderella varies very much from the Disney version we know today. It started off with the girl mourning her mother's death and going to her tomb three times a day. In addition, there were only birds that helped Cinderella; there was no such thing as a fairy godmother or helpful mice, nor was there mention of a horse and carriage.

    The stepsisters were cruel: they always threw Cinderella's food into the ashes of the fire and made her sleep on the ashes on the floor, hence（因此）her name.

    In the original story, the king's ball actually lasted for three days. With the help of the birds, the girl, beautifully dressed, danced with the prince on all three nights and the prince fell in love with her. However, she broke away from him to rush back home each night. On the last night, the prince placed soothing sticky on the stairs; as Cinderella made her escape, a shoe got stuck on it.

    Here now is where the story becomes unpleasant: when the prince went to the house looking for the girl whose foot fit the shoe, the wicked(邪恶的) stepmother told one of her two daughters to cut off her big toe to fit into the shoe. The daughter did as told. So the prince took her away to be his bride. But when they passed the tomb of Cinderella's mother, the birds called out to the prince,

    “Turn and peep, there's blood in the shoe;the shoe is too small, the true bride waits for you.”

    Realizing he had been tricked, the prince returned the daughter to her mother. The other then had to cut off part of her heel in order to fit into the shoe, with the same result. Only Cinderella's foot fit perfectly and so the prince chose to marry her. The story ends with the wedding day: as Cinderella's two stepsisters followed her, pretending to be devoted to her so that they could enjoy the king's riches, two birds flew by and plucked(啄) out their eyes. Because of their wickedness and falsehood, they had to spend the rest of their days blind.

    The original Cinderella is so different from the Disney version. Thank goodness Disney made such changes; it indeed was a wise move.

    In my bag I always carry the same essential items: my keys, my purse, some loose change, my mobile phone and my little blue vocabulary notebook. This year I am living abroad in Germany and I am trying to learn as much German as possible. I always knew that living abroad would be a great way to learn a foreign language but one thing I didn't realize was how many new words and phrases I would come across every day! I see and hear new words everywhere; the announcements in the train station; menus in cafes; on social media; on the local newspaper and of course from my German-speaking friends.

    At first I was slightly upset by the large amounts of German I didn't understand. Speaking German in Germany is definitely very different from that in the classroom; I kept on looking up new words and by the end of the day I had forgotten most of them already. It was very frustrating. After a month of worrying that I would never be able to improve my language skills, I went to the stationery shop and bought a small notebook which easily fit into my handbag or even into my back pocket! I set myself the goal of writing five new words or phrases a day into my little blue book and soon enough it became one of my most valuable language-learning tools.

    I don't have any rules about which words I write down. Most days I write down words that I learn from my colleagues at work, words that I don't understand in reading or words that I have learned from seeing them in context. For example, I have learned the names of many fruits and vegetables from looking at their labels in the supermarket (a very unexpected source of vocabulary!) and I have learned many words that I have heard on TV or on the radio. It doesn't even matter if I know how to spell a new word straight away. If I hear a word but I don't know how to spell it, I write down how I think it sounds and look it up later.

    My little blue vocabulary book is now like my close friend. We go everywhere together. Setting this small daily goal has made me feel much more in control of my language teaming and I am already seeing an improvement. I will continue to use it for the rest of my stay in Germany and also when I return to university at home in September.

    A 60-year-old homeless woman named Smokie has been sleeping outside in the dirt a few doors down from a man named Elvis Summers.

    Most mornings, she stops by Elvis's Los Angeles apartment and asks if he has any recyclable materials for her. Through these conversations, they struck up a friendship.

    One morning, Elvis saw a news article about man in Oakland who has been making tiny houses out of deserted materials. He was inspired to put off paying a few bills so he could buy the wood and hardware to make Smokie a brand new shelter. It took him five days to build it, and now, for the first time in ten years, Smokie has a place to hang the sign “Home Sweet Home”.

    “I had nowhere to really build it, so I just built it in the street outside of my apartment,” Elvis told Good News Network. “The local LAPD police have been super cool, and have told me they support it—as long as we move it to a different spot every 72 hours.”

    He made this pretty time-lapse(延时的) video showing how he did it. The materials, including two locks on the front door and strong wheels for moving it around, cost him about $500.

    “I've met so many homeless people, good people,” Elvis said in an email, “Since I built Smokie's , I've had several people asking me to make them a tiny home and it's turned into much more than just the one house I wanted to build.”

Although he runs an online retail store that sells EDM clothes, he has decided to launch an ambitious project to fund more shelters. He plants to get lighter and cheaper materials—without sacrificing the strength of the house—for the next round. Rick Sassen, a branch manager, kindly donated the roof shingles and cedar supporting Smokie's house, final items Elvis couldn't afford on his own. Sassen has promised to work out a deal on future building materials for the same cause.

    Mary went out at night. She never forgot the night when she met a robber many years ago. That evening, she was invited to a birthday party which lasted until two o'clock in the morning. Without company Mary walked along the quiet street.

    Suddenly from the shadow of a dark building a tall man with a sharp knife in his right hand ran out at her. "Good evening, lady," the man said in a low voice, "I don't think you wish to die here."

    "What do you want?" Mary asked.

    "Your earrings（耳环）. Take them off!"Slowly Mary's eyes looked down. She tried to cover her necklace with the collar（领子）of her overcoat while she used the other hand to take off both of her earrings, and then she quickly threw them on the ground.

    "Take them and let me go." She said. The robber looked at her only feeling uncertain. He saw the girl didn't care for the earrings at all, only trying to protect the necklace. He realized the necklace would cost more. So he said, "Give me your necklace."

    "Oh, sir. It's not worth much. Please let me keep it."

    "Stop rubbish. Quick!"

    With shaky hands, Mary took off her necklace. As soon as the robber disappeared, she picked up her earrings and ran as fast as she could to one of her friends.

    The earrings cost 480 pounds and the necklace the robber had taken away cost only six pounds ten shillings.

    For decades, research has shown that children's book not only provide great pleasure to readers , but they can also play an important role in children's academic（学业上的）and social success. In 1974, researchers reported that sixth-grade children who had been read to form an early age developed into better readers and valued reading more than did sixth graders who had not been to, and they expected to continue reading throughout their lives. Others have determined that the more time children spend reading literature（文学作品）, the better their reading and writing abilities become. Significant increases have been found in young children's comprehension and vocabulary skills, their understanding of sentence structure and story structure as a result of their being read to form an early age, either at home or in school. Children who have access to literature and stories in their homes have been found to learn to read more quickly, and have better attitudes toward reading. Teachers who provide time for continuous silent reading, who share books and discuss book authors with children during the school day, positively those children's reading outside school. And the National Assessment of Educational Progress that children who frequently read for enjoyment out of school are better readers.

    Because children's literature is so valuable to children, it should also be valuable to their teacher. And so it's unfortunate that something that can play such an important role in children's lives is often moved into a less than important role teacher education.

    This article discusses three important issues about the position of children's literature in teacher﹣preparation programs. They are：⑴Respect for children's literature content in teacher education. ⑵The value of children's literature as a powerful educational tool. ⑶Children's literature as an important literary form.

    MOOC, a massive(大规模的) open online course, aims at providing interactive discussion and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums (论坛) that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants.

    MOOCs first made waves in the fall of 2011, when Professor Sebastian Thrun from Stanford University opened his graduate-level artificial intelligence course up to any student anywhere, and 160,000 students in more than 190 countries signed up. This new kind of online classes is shaking up the higher education world in many ways. Since the courses can be taken by hundreds of thousands of students at the same time, the number of universities might decrease greatly. Professor Thrun has even imagined a future in which there will only need to be 10 universities in the world. Perhaps the most impressive thing about MOOCs, many of which are being taught by professors at prestigious (声誉高的) universities, is that they're free. This is certainly good news for cash-strapped students.

    There is a lot of excitement and fear about MOOCs. While some say free online courses are a great way to increase the enrollment (注册) of students who are lack of resources, some critics (批评者) have said that MOOCs encourage an unrealistic one-size-fits-all model of higher education and that there is no replacement for true dialogues between professors and their students. After all, a brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. Some critics worry that online students will miss out on the social aspects of college.