Millions of people have seen Disney films and TV programmes. They have made friends with all the Disney heroes: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, and Peter Pan. Millions more have visited Disney Parks. Probably no other company has pleased so many children. It is not surprising that it has been called a dream factory.

    Walt Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois. Then his family moved to Missouri. He grew up on a farm there. At the age of 16, Disney began to study art in Chicago. Four years later, he joined the Kansas City Film Ad Company. He helped make cartoon advertisements to be shown in cinemas.

    In 1923, Walt Disney moved to Hollywood, California to join his brother Roy.  He wanted to be a film producer or director. But he failed to find a job. So he decided to make animated films. In these films, drawings are made to move in a lifelike way. We call them cartoons. Disney wanted to bring his pictures to life.

    Disney opened his first company in the back of an office. For the first, several years, he had to work hard for a living, but he believed that cartoon films could be popular.

    Mickey Mouse was drawn with a group of circles. The public first saw Mickey Mouse in a film called Steamboat Willie. Walt Disney himself provided the voice for Mickey Mouse. The film was produced in 1928. It was a huge success. Mickey Mouse appeared in hundreds of cartoons during the years that followed. He became known all over the world.

    “Reading makes a full man,” novels written by famous writers help us to know more about our history, culture and many other things.

    Jane Austen was one of the most well-known women writers of the world. She was born in England in 1775. Jane liked reading and writing. She wrote a number of famous novels in her life. Among them, Pride and Prejudice written in 1779 was the most popular.

    Ernest Hemingway, an outstanding American writer and reporter, was born in 1899. His life experience had a great influence on his writing style. Hemingway lived in France and Italy between the 1920s and 1950s. Most of his books such as The Sun Also Rises were written at that time. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954 mainly because of the novel The Old Man and the Sea.

    July is the time for some students to say goodbye to their mother schools. Every time it comes, I will think of my old deskmate, Xiaowei. She is the most unforgettable classmate in my junior high school life. It has been many years since I graduated, but she is still in my mind clearly.

    Xiaowei was a lovely girl with long black hair. On hot days, her hair was sometimes seen to be tied up. She was always wearing a sweet smile. She was an artistic(文艺范的)girl who showed up before me every day. She loved reading novels and drawing.

    She liked reading different kinds of novels, especially on history. She could finish reading a historical novel as thick as our Chinese textbook at an amazing speed.

    Whenever she had free time, she would take out a drawing note and start drawing cartoons with a pencil. She drew from characters' heads to eyes and to faces, but the characters were always long-haired and wide-eyed. One day I couldn't help asking," Why don't you colour them?" She answered simply, "Because I don't have enough time." She kept her works as a secret and never talked about them with others. When we were told that she had won a prize in the drawing competition in her group, my classmates felt surprised.

    There is a folk song called My Old Deskmate, which is sung widely among people of different ages. It was created because the creator, Gao Xiaosong, had never forgotten his deskmate. Whenever I hear it, I will think of Xiaowei. How are you, my old deskmate?