I receive many letters from children and can’t answer them all – there wouldn’t be enough time in a day. I’ll try to answer some of the questions that are commonly asked.

Where did I get the idea for Stuart Little and for Charlotte’s Web? Well, many years ago, I went to bed one night in a railway sleeping car, and during the night I dreamed about a tiny boy who acted rather like a mouse. That’s how the story of Stuart Little got started.

As for Charlotte’s Web, I like animals and my farm is very pleasant place to be – at all hours. One day, when I was on my way to feed the pig, I began feeling sorry for the pig because, like most pigs, he was going to die. This made me sad. So I started thinking of ways to save his life. Three years after I started writing it, it was published. (I am not a fast worker, as you can see.)

Sometimes I’m asked when I started to write, and what made me want to write. I started early – as soon as I could spell. Children often find pleasure through trying to set their thoughts down on paper, either in words or in pictures. I was not good at drawing, so I used words instead. As I grew older, I found that writing could be a way of earning a living.

Well, here is the answer to the last question. No, they are imaginary (虚构的) tales. In real life, a family doesn’t have a child who looks like a mouse and a spider doesn’t write words in her web. Although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too – truth about the way people and animals feel, think and act.

1.E.B. White wrote this passage to ______.

A. introduce his new books

B. introduce two funny stories

C. explain why he enjoys writing

D. answer some readers’ questions

2.We can know from the passage that E.B. White is a writer who ______.

A. writes very fast

B. works on a friends’ farm

C. mainly writes stories for adults

D. writes imaginary tales for children

3.What inspired E.B. White to write Charlotte’s Web?

A. That he wanted children to love animals.

B. That he was deeply impressed by a clever pig.

C. That he wanted to use his own way to save a pig.

D. That he wanted to save the animals on a farm.

4. E.B. White started to write because he wanted to ______.

A. improve his spelling

B. express his thoughts

C. show his sadness

D. make a good living

5.What is probably the last question?

When he took office, George W. Bush, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush, became the first son to follow his father into the White House since John Quiney Adams followed John Adams in the early 19th century.
Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce Bush. Although George Herbert Walker Bush began his career in the oil industry, he finally served as a congressman(国会议员), and vice(副) president and president of the United States.
At the age of two,Bush moved with his parents from Connecticut to Odessa, Texas, where his father took up the oil business. After a year in Texas, the family moved to California for business reasons. A year later, the family returned to Texas and settled in Midland, where Bush lived from 1950 to 1959.
In 1959, again for business reasons, the family moved to Houston, Texas. In 1961 Bush left Texas and went to Andover, Massachusetts, to attend Phillips Academy, aboarding school(寄宿学校) that his father had also attended.
At Phillips, Bush played basketball, baseball, and football. He was best known for being head cheerleader. In 1964 he enrolled at Yale University in Connecticut.His father and grandfather had also attended Yale. At Yale, Bush was considered an average student, but he was popular with his classmates.
Bush graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1968. Then he joined the Air National Guard and remained in the Guard until 1973. After earning his MBA from Harvard in 1975, Bush returned to Midland. Like his father, he first entered the oil industry as a “landsman(新手)”. However, Bush’s oil companies never enjoyed great success. He took more interest in politics. He helped his father to become president and in 1994 he himself was elected governor of Texas.
In the summer of 1999, Bush began to run for the president of the USA and on January 20, 2001, George W. Bush, hand raised, took the oath(宣誓) of office to become the 43rd president of the US.
【小题1】What does the writer intend to tell us in the first paragraph?

A．George W. Bush is the first son in American history to follow his father into the White House.

B．George W. Bush is the first son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush.

C．John Quincy Adams and his father were both former American presidents.

D．George W. Bush is the second one in American history to follow his father into the White House.

In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what “keeping up with the Joneses” is about. It is the story of someone who tried to look as rich as his neighbors.

The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself. He began earning $ 125 a week at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighborhood outside New York City. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbors.

It was like a race, but one could never finish his race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They moved back to an apartment in New York City.

Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich lifestyle of their neighbors. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories. He called it “Keeping up with the Joneses” because “Jones” is a very common name in the United States. “Keeping up with the Joneses” came to mean keeping up with rich lifestyle of the people around you. Momand’s series appeared in different newspapers across the country for over 28 years.

People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are “Joneses” in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.

1.Some people want to keep up with the Joneses because they ________.

A．want to be as rich as their neighbors

B．want others to know or to think that they are rich

C．don’t want others to know they are rich

D．want to be happy

2.It can be inferred from the story that rich people like to ________.

A．live outside New York City                 B．live in New York city

C．live in apartments                       D．have many neighbors

3.Arthur Momand used the name “Jones” in his series of short stories because “Jones” is _____.

A．an important name                      B．a popular name in the United States

C．his neighbor’s name                    D．not a good name

Just as the teacher hands out the spelling test, you see Jeff pull out a small piece of paper with a lot of small words on it. Jeff hides the note into his hand but soon takes it out again. While he's taking the test, you see him looking back and forth between the teacher and his paper. There's no mistaking it — he's cheating.

Cheating can happen in a lot of different ways. When people cheat, it’s not fair to other people, like the kids who studied for the test or who were the true winners of a game.

Many people like the action of cheating. It makes difficult things seem easy, like getting all the right answers on the test. But it doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing the material and it won’t help on the next test—unless the person cheats again.

Some people lose respect for cheaters and think less of them. The cheaters themselves may feel bad because they know they are not really earning that good grade. And, if they get caught cheating, they will be in trouble at school, and maybe at home, too.

Some kids cheat because they’re busy or lazy and they want to get good grades without spending the time studying. Other kids might feel like they can’t pass the test without cheating. Even when there seems to be a “good reason” for cheating, cheating isn’t a good idea.

If you were sick or upset about something the night before and couldn’t study, it would be better to talk with the teacher about this. And if you don’t have enough time to study for a test because of swim practice, you need to talk with your parents about how to balance swimming and school.

A kid who thinks cheating is the only way to pass a test needs to talk with the teacher and his or her parents so they can find some solutions together. Talking about these problems and working them out will feel better than cheating.

1.The author thinks that when kids cheat in class, _______.

A．it is unfair to other people

B．it does harm to their heath

C．teachers should punish them

D．teachers shouldn’t stop them at once

2.Some students like cheating mainly because _______.

A．the material in the test is very difficult

B．they want to do better than the others

C．cheating can make hard things seem very easy

D．they have little time to study

3.The fifth paragraph mainly tells us ______.

A．cheating isn’t a good idea

B．why kids cheat in the test

C．some kids can’t pass the test without cheating

D．some kids don’t spend time studying

4.We can learn from the passage______.

A．cheaters are often thought highly of

B．people show no respect for those who cheat

C．parents whose kids cheat are often in trouble

D．kids cheat in the test because of swim practice

5.Those who cheat are advised to ______.

A．spend more time on school than on sports

B．find good solutions instead of cheating

C．try hard to be intelligent rather than lazy

D．ask their classmates for good methods of study

完形填空
I had my first job at the age of thirteen , when a friend of my mother who owned a bookshop hired me for six hours a week to help her in the shop . I was very  36  to earn my own pocket money and my parents   37 interfered (干涉) with how I spent it , even when I was spending it  38  .They believed that by earning money ,spending it ,and learning from the  39  ,I would become more mature (成熟的)and  40  in how to handle work ,relationships with others ,and money.
Like many  41  parents ,my parents also let me and my brothers do things about which they  42  a great deal .When I was sixteen ,for example ,after I finished high school and before I entered university ,I wanted to spend the summer months traveling around  43  .My mother was against the idea of my traveling alone at such a young age, but my father felt that it would be a great  44  for me .In the end , my father won the  45  on the condition that I limited my traveling to France ,my mother’s home, where I had many uncles, aunts and cousins  46  through the country who could  47  shelter and help if I needed them .
Three years later ,my younger brother decided to  48  a year off after his first year in university and travel through the United States and the Caribbean. Again my mother was very worried and not  49  to see my brother leave school, but my father encouraged him and my brother spent a (n) 50  year working his way on trains and ships to  51  his passage to different ports and cities, and discovering many fascinating places and people.
These kinds of experiences are probably  52  for children in many countries but in the US they are fairly common. Most parents start  53  their children at a young age to do small things by themselves .By the time they have finished high school, many American kids have already had  54  jobs and traveled around the US or other countries on their own , have selected the university they plan to attend , maybe even have decided on their future  55 ,and so on .