I was 15 when I walked into McCarley's bookstore in Ashland. As I was looking at all the books on the   1   , the shop owner asked if I'd like a job. I needed to start   2  money for college, so I said yes. I worked after school and during the summer for the lowest pay, and the job helped pay for my first year of college. I would do many other jobs and I   3   made maps for the US Forest Service. But selling books was one of the most satisfying.

    One day a woman asked me for books on cancer. She seemed   4  . I showed her almost everything we had at that time in the  5and found other books we could order. She left the store less  6 . I've always remembered the  7 I felt in having helped her.

    Years later, as a TV reporter in Los Angeles, I   8   a child who was born with his fingers connected(jointed together). His family could not   9   a corrective operation, and the boy lived in shame, hiding his hand in his pocket.

Luckily, I  10   persuading(说服) my boss to let me do the story. After my story was broadcast, a doctor and a nurse called,    11  to perform the operation for free.

    I visited the boy in the recovery room soon after the operation. The first thing he did was to hold up his repaired 12and say, “thank you.” I felt a sense of   13  .

    In the past, while I was at McCarley's bookstore, I always felt that I was working for the   14 , not the store. Today it's the same. NBC News pays me,   15  I feel as if I work for the TV viewers, helping them make sense of the world, not the TV station.

阅读下列短文,从每小题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中选出一个最佳选项。

    The idea for the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came to Joanne Kathleen Rowling in 1990. It took her seven years to finish writing it. During those seven years she had a number of jobs, including one job as an English teacher.

    Rowling sent the book to four publishers (出版社) before one of them bought it. She was very happy to sell her book because it was her life's dream to be a published writer. Before she sold her book, Rowling was living in a small apartment with her daughter and was so poor that she could not afford heat in the winter.

    Harry Potter became very successful with children and adults in England. The book also really took off in the United States. After her second and third books were published, the three Harry Potter books filled the top three places on many newspapers' lists of best-sellers. Then the books were made into popular movies. Without question, Rowling's life had completely changed, in just three years.

    Harry Potter books have now sold more than 30 million books around the world and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. In 1997, Rowling was earning ￡70 a week.

    By the end of 2001, she had earned over ￡150 million, making her one of the most successful female writers of all time.

    My father is tall and has short gray hair. He wears glasses with heavy black frames(框架). Today I find a picture of him in 1986. What a surprise! In the picture, he's 15 years old. He's short and he has glasses with small round frames. He has long black hair and it's really straight. He's wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt with the word “love”. I'm 15 years old now. I'm of medium height and I have short hair. My hair isn't black, it's brown. My dad thinks it's strange, but my friends think it's great. I wear glasses, but my glasses have square(方的)， red frames. They are so cool. I never wear blue jeans. I like big, baggy pants and long T-shirts. Most of my T-shirts have pictures of my favorite actors or singers on them.

    Police aren't sure how else to explain it. But when a policeman walked into an apartment on Thursday night to answer a 911 call, a cat was lying by a telephone on the floor. The cat's owner, Gary, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

    Gary said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons(按钮)to call 911. He said he couldn't get up because of great pain from his chest(胸口). He also couldn't reach the medicine on the table.

    The policeman, Patrick, said police got a 911 call from Gray's apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out. That's why Patrick found Tommy next to the phone.

    Gary got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure (压力). He trained him to call 911, but unsure if the training would work. The phone in the living room is always on the floor, and there are 12 small buttons including a speed dial (快捷键) for 911 right above the button for the speaker phone.

    "He's my hero(英雄)." Gray said.

    Sammy looked out of the classroom window at a bird in a tree. He saw a worm (小虫) in the bird's mouth. "Wow!" he whispered as he looked at the bird eating the worm.

    "Sammy!" his teacher Mr. Maxwell said loudly.

    Sammy jumped and knocked his science book off his desk. Everyone in the class laughed and Sammy blushed. This was the third time today he had been caught not paying attention to the science lesson. It was just so easy to get distracted (分心的) when people read aloud from the science textbook!

    It wasn't that Sammy didn't like science. He loved to learn about machines, Earth and animals. He even thought bugs and plants were great. He wanted to go outside and see how a snake lived. He wanted to watch plants growing from the ground as they did last month. He just didn't want to read about these things.

    Sammy thought Mr. Maxwell would surely understand. "There was a bird with a worm in its mouth..." Sammy began. Then he saw the furious look on his teacher's face. Sammy decided that he had better stop talking before Mr. Maxwell became any angrier.

    Karen lived with her parents in the Karoo Basin of South Africa. The Karoo was famous for plant and animal fossils(化石) ,Karen's father was a paleontologist(古生物学家) ,and Karen enjoyed looking at the dinosaur bones in his office. She hoped to discover her own dinosaur someday.

    Every summer, Karen's father invited paleontologists from around the world to the Karoo. As they hiked through the dry land, he would show them fossil samples(样本) within the layers of sedimentary rock(沉积岩) and ash.

    This summer, Karen asked her father if she could go along on the hike. He agreed, but he asked her to stay close by. As they drove to the trail(小径) ,Karen's heart beat quickly with excitement. There were so many places to visit.

    The hike was interesting, but Karen was too curious to stay on the trail. Without asking, she ran down into a nearby ravine(峡谷) and looked among the rocks, Then, he heard her father's voice calling to her. She ran up the side of ravine. Suddenly, she spotted something white and shiny. "Dad!" she shouted excitedly.

    Karen's father stood at the top of the ravine with the other people. They looked worried until Karen pointed to the shiny object. All the paleontologists examined it. They nodded to each other in surprise. It was the skull(骨头) of a dinosaur nobody knew about! The paleontologists took pictures and shook Karen's hands. Her father smiled, "Karen." he said. "You are now the youngest paleontologist in the Karoo!"