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    If ever a drink were invented to satisfy the thirst of social media, this may be it.

    With its fantastic name, bright pink and blue twist topped with a pillow of whipped cream, Starbucks' new Unicom Frappuccino(独角兽星冰乐) practically asks to be posted on social media.

    And a glimpse at Twitter shows Unicom Frappuccino is indeed gaining attention.

    So what's in it? As Starbucks describes it: “A sweet dusting of pink powder, mixed into a Frappuccino with mango syrup and layered with a pleasantly sour blue drizzle. It is finished with vanilla whipped cream and a sprinkle of sweet pink and sour blue powder topping.”

    A look at the ingredients reveals a list less fantastic. The pink powder is actually sugar and "Fruit and Vegetable Color.”

    Starbucks advertises the drink “^,as rare as a unicorn." But unicorn food is actually a thing. The BBC reports, it's fashionable to post pictures of rainbow colored food which reminds of the fairy tale creature.

    Rainbow sushi, anyone?

    As for the Unicorn Frappuccino, Lori Aquino said the drink caught her eye on social media. Then people at work were talking about it. “I saw it was coming out today, so I decided to try it,” Aquino said at a Washington D.C. Starbucks. “I'll probably put it on Snapchat or Instagram.”

    She bought one to share with her two coworkers.

    And the opinion?

    “It's kind of nasty,” Aquino said.

    Letitia Winston agreed: "Nope. That will not be something I come looking for."

    But Moriam Animashaun was more forgiving. "It's not bad,” she said, “It's just really sweet.”

    A 16-ounce medium, or a grande in Starbucks speak, comes in at 410 calories, 59 grams of sugar and 16 grams of fat.

    One thing the women agreed on was the drink's appearance. “It's pretty," said Animashaun.

    “It looks nice," agreed Winston.

    And in the age of likes, snaps and tweets, the fantasy image may be all that matters.

    The Unicom Frappuccino is available April 19 through April 23 at participating stores in the United Stales, Canada and Mexico.

    A day in the life of 18-year-old David Lanster is full if typical teenage stuff: school, baseball practice and homework. And then he starts cooking. “Some nights I'm up until 1:00 a.m. making pies, or even later if we're cooking beef,” said the student at Ransom Everglades High School in Florida, US.

    For the past year, Lanster and Kelly Moran, his classmate, have been hosting fancy dinner parties at Lanster's parents' home. Their meals have 17 courses and are all made by them. Their guests used to give them gifts to thank them until the pair decided to do something nice for charity（慈善）. “We got some really great Miami Heat tickets, a nice watch, and many kitchen gadgets（小器具）,” Lanster said. “But we wanted to make this something positive for people other than us.”

    Lanster and Moran focused on Common Threads, a charity that aims to teach kids in poor communities to cook and make healthy eating choices. The young cooks ask their guests to give however much they want as payment for their meals. It all goes to Common Threads because Lanster's parents cover their food costs. After their last 12-person event, Lanster and Moran gave $1,600 to the charity.

    Now, they're taking their show out of the kitchen and on the road. They have started to organize private dinner parties with a similar model: the host pays for the ingredients, and the guests make a donation to a charity of their choice.

    Without formal training, Lanster said he had been interested in cooking since he helped his mom in the kitchen when he was very young. He learned how to cook by reading cookbooks and watching TV programs. Outside the kitchen, the two are busy preparing their college applications. Neither of them is sure what they will do in the future, but they're promised their parents that they will leave professional cooking alone until they finish school.

    A cancer-stricken British teenager said on Thursday she had been moved by messages of support from around the world after writing an online “Bucket List” of things she wanted to do before dying.

    Alice Pyne, 15, created an Internet blog in which she described her fight against a cancer of the white blood cells. “I've been fighting cancer for almost four years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn't look like I'm going to win this one,” she wrote.

    For her list, at the site www. alicepyne. blogspot. com, she has included making everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor (骨髓捐赠者), swimming with sharks, meeting boy band Take That and getting a purple iPad computer.

Messages of support and offers of help quickly flooded her webpage and it became one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter.

     “Oh dear! And I thought that I was just doing a little blog for a few friends!” she wrote after her site attracted huge attention. “Thank you so much for all your lovely messages to me.”

    Alice, who lives with her family in the northwest English town of Ulverston, said the manager of Take That had arranged for her to see the band after reading her blog. A group of local lawmakers have also made efforts with the Anthony blood cancer charity to encourage people to join its stem cell (干细胞) projects.

Hobbies Help Cure Addiction to the Internet

    While some parents have expressed concerns about the amount of time their children spent surfing the Internet during the summer break from school, it wasn't a problem for Yin Qiming.

    Instead, the 37-year-old Shanghai resident and his daughter divided their vacation between cyberspace and the 8-year-old's other interests.

    “My daughter has many hobbies and I and her mother respect her choices, so we accompany her to classes she enjoys, such as learning to play the drums and drawing,” he said.

    “She loves to play outside with her friends, so she doesn't think the Internet is a must-have thing in her life.”

    Yin added that he rarely imposes a time limit on his daughter's online activity.

    “She sometimes uses WeChat (a popular instant-messaging tool) on my mobile phone, but only to contact her mother,” he said. “Once she has her own plans every day and realizes that the internet is just a part of life, she won't become addicted to it.”

    Li Lin, a primary school teacher from Liaoning province, expressed a similar opinion.

    “We do some homework online, including reciting stories, and the children use the Internet frequently every day of their lives,” she said, noting that the children's online activity is limited to 30 minutes a day at school.

    “We should make better use of the Internet to provide children with more knowledge and help them to grow up,” said Li, who has a 10-year-old son.

    The key to preventing children, especially those at primary and middle schools, from becoming addicted to the Internet is to limit the time they spend online and to ensure that they know cyberspace cannot replace traditional forms of communication, she said.

    Mao Feizhu, a psychologist from Fujian province in southeast China, said people overestimate the influence of the internet.

    “Many people, even some parents, believe the Internet plays a big role in our daily lives, and many things can be completed online, but that's not completely right,” she said.

    “We can use social applications to talk or play basketball games, and even share what we are thinking about, but sometimes it's impossible for our emotions to be accurately reflected in this way. What children need is emotional communication and real physical exercise. After all, love cannot be bought on the net,” she said.

    Perhaps, the best way to stop young netizens spending too much time online is to encourage their other interests but also accompany them when they go online: “We should use the Internet, not become its slaves.

    Literature is an important part of a total language arts program at all grade levels because of the many benefits it offers.

    Literature provides pleasure to listeners and readers. It is a relaxing escape from daily problems, and it fills leisure moments. Making time for recreational reading and using high-quality literature help to develop enthusiastic readers and improve achievement. Developing a love of literature as a recreational activity is possibly the most important outcome of a literature program.

    Literature builds experience. Through reading, children expand their horizons through vicarious(引起共鸣的)experiences. They visit new places, gain new experiences, and meet new people. They learn about the past as well as the present and learn about a variety of cultures, including their own. They discover the common goals and similar emotions found in people of all times and places. Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly, Giff, a hard survival story, is set in Ireland during the potato hunger of I845,and Patricia Polacco's The Butterfly, deals with Nazis, resistance, and Jewish persecution(迫害)during World War II.

    Literature provides a language model for those who hear and read it. Good literature exposes children to correct sentence patterns, standard story structures, and varied word usage. Children for whom English is a second language can improve their English with the interesting context, and all children benefit from new vocabulary that is woven into the stories.

    Literature develops thinking skills. Discussions of literature bring out reasoning related to sequence; cause and effect; character motivation; predictions; visualization of actions, characters, and settings; critical analysis of the story; and creative responses.

    Literature helps children deal with their problems. By finding out about the problems of others through books, children receive insights into dealing with their own problems, a process called bibliotherapy. Children might identify with Gilly, living angrily in a foster home in Katherine Paterson's The Great Gilly Hopkins, or with Mary Alice, a city girl forced to live with her grandma in a "hick town" in Richard Peck's A Year Down Yonder.

    In beautiful rural Montana lies the town of Livingston. Around half the students in the Livingston School District qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, according to local educator Rachael Jones, known as "Farmer Jones". She is the director of the Livingston Farm to School program, which uses the district's two greenhouses and four gardens to grow food that supplements school meals while offering kids hands-on lessons. Jones said, "In many places around the country, if you can't pay for your school meal, you don't eat. Well, here, we don't turn anyone away."

    The town's school district and community members started the program eight years ago. It's part of the National Farm to School Network, which aims to increase access to local food and nutrition education across the country. Jones, who attended public school in Livingston as a kid, has headed up the local program since 2014. Farm to School enriches curriculums in all of the schools through garden lessons, cafeteria and kitchen lessons, and classroom lessons.

    Research has shown that healthy school meals can enhance academic performance, including improved test scores. Though the Farm to School program is not aimed solely at lower-income students, Jones said, "Such kids are more likely to eat lunch provided by the school. Eventually she wants to get healthy, affordable meals on the plate of every child in Livingston.

    It is important for kids to understand where their food comes from. That's a life changing experience for them. Jones said," When I grew up a big force in my life was my grandma Ethel. She taught me from a really early age the value of growing my own food. I worked in her gardens with her and somehow, through all of those experiences —eating her tomatoes and canning pickles with her —it really built up my trust and knowledge in food systems. I'm so thankful for her!"