The summer holidays are coming up. It’s time to fill the bookshelves with quality literature for the kids. Here are some great books.

Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French

Price: A＄14.99 (for ages4+)

Josephine is a kangaroo who loves to dance. Her little brother, Joey, tells her that kangaroos don’t dance; they jump. But Josephine continues to point her toes and leap through the air. When a ballet group comes to town and the lead ballerina(芭蕾舞演员) is injured, Josephine is called upon to help save the day. Can she do it, and, more importantly, does it matter that she’s a kangaroo?

House of Secrets by Chris Columbus

Price: A＄19.99(for ages 9+)

The Walker kids — Caroline, Brendan and Nell — may have saved the world, but they can’t save their home and must leave Kristoff House. Things can’t get any worse, but then it turns out that the Wind Witch is still alive and planning an attack. To defeat her, the Walkers must return to the book world. The Walkers always help each other, but they must go it alone in their most important mission yet. And this time, if they fail, there’s no chance of coming back.

Edge of Extinction Book 1 by Laura Martin

Price: A＄16.00(for ages 9+)

If you like The Land of the Dinosaurs, you will love this book. Two hundred years ago, the first dinosaur was successfully cloned(克隆). Soon after, humans realized they’d made a big mistake… Thirteen-year-old Sky Mundy’s father suddenly disappeared five years ago. Along with her best friend, Shawn, she steps out into the world above — a world of dinosaurs — to look for him. Then she learns that everything she’s been taught has been a lie.

1. Which book will you choose if your child is five years old?

A. House of Secrets.

B. Josephine Wants to Dance.

C. The Land of the Dinosaurs.

D. Edge of Extinction Book 1.

2. What can we learn about the Walker kids from the text?

A. They live in a secret house.

B. They hate each other.

C. They are afraid of the Wind Witch.

D. They have to carry out the task alone.

3. What is the world like in the last book?

A. Animals live happily together.

B. It is full of dinosaurs.

C. Many dinosaurs attack the earth.

D. Many adults are killed by the dinosaurs.

4. The text is especially helpful for those who         .

A. are interested in raising animals

B. want to make friends during the holidays

C. plan to educate their children during the holidays

D. want to explore an unknown world during the holidays

Are you running a restaurant but can’t afford to hire waiters? Well, you could learn from this Japanese restaurant that hires monkeys for the job. In order to make them look more human, the restaurant owner even masks(用面具遮掩) their faces.

The restaurant is Kayabuki, which a traditional Japanese restaurant. They have hired a couple of monkeys named Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to work as waiters (or waitresses, we’re not sure). 16-year-old Yat-chan is the older of the two, but he moves quickly between tables as he takes the customers’ drink orders. Fuku-chan gives customers a hot towel and helps them clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan. Believe it or not, the pair is actually certified(授予执照) by local authorities to work at the restaurant. The customers like them as well, so they give them beans as tips. One customer, Takayoshi, said, “The monkeys are actually better waiters than some really bad human ones.”

Yat-chan and Fuku-chan were once the household pets of the restaurant owner, Kaoru Otsuka. But the older one started imitating him in restaurant duties, and that was when he realized they were actually capable of working there. “Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant,” he said. “It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel and he brought the towel to the customer.”

Some customers even feel that the little monkeys are just like children, or even better. 62-year-old Shiochi Yano, a regular at Kayabuki, says, “Actually, they’re better. My son doesn’t listen to me, but Yat-chan will.” Customers also say that Yat-chan is able to understand exact orders and remember them. “We called out for more beer,” said one customer, “and he just brought us some beer. It’s amazing how he seems to understand human words.”

5. What can we learn about Yat-chan and Fuku-chan?

A. They both get beans as tips.

B. Fuku-chan is older than Yat-chan.

C. Yat-chan helps customers clean their hands.

D. Fuku-chan takes the customers’ drink orders.

6. According to Takayoshi, the two monkey waiters                .

A. can understand exact orders

B. listen to him very carefully

C. can remember the regular customers

D. behave better than some human waiters

7. What does the underlined word, “imitating” in the 3^rd paragraph mean?

A. surprise    B. copy

C. laugh    D. frustrate

8. Why did Kaoru Otsuka let the monkeys work in the restaurant?

A. He couldn’t afford to hire waiters.

B. He thought monkeys worked better than humans.

C. He found his monkeys were able to work like waiters.

D. The officials encouraged him to hire the monkeys.

Amanda Moore noticed that the new student at school always sat alone at lunch. She felt bad about that. The 10-year-old girl decided to befriend Rafael Anaya, but she also noticed something else — he struggled to understand English. Instead of letting that stop her, she used Google Translate to handwrite a note in Spanish asking him to join her for lunch. Her act earned her the “Student of the Month” award for October at her school.

Rafael had moved to Temecula, California from Mexico at the beginning of the school year. He often cried after returning home from school because he felt so lonely. Amanda didn’t know that when she wrote the letter. She simply knew that he spoke Spanish and that he was lonely. She spent the afternoon carefully writing a letter. When she got home, she couldn’t wait to tell her mother, Kimber Kinard, about the letter, wanting her to proofread(校对) it.

But Kinard felt confused, because she didn’t understand Spanish, either. So Amanda helped her use the app to understand it. Kinard was excited and tearful because she thought it was the nicest thing. The note read: “Would you like to sit with me today? Look for me and I will show you where I sit. We can chat or simply tell interesting stories.”

The next day, Amanda handed the note to Rafael. He gave her a hug. But it wasn’t until their maths class that he said “yes” to lunch. The two have been sitting together ever since.

The note helped Rafael feel more comfortable and encouraged him to work harder on his English. He really wants to learn English to talk to Amanda.

The two use gestures and Google Translate to communicate now, but they hope it will become easier when Rafael’s English improves. And Amanda is learning some Spanish.

9. When Amanda wrote Rafael the note, she             .

A. asked her teacher for help

B. sensed Rafael’s loneliness

C. knew Rafael often cried after school

D. knew Rafael had moved to Temecula from Mexico

10. The note to Rafael             .

A. moved Rafael’s mother to tears

B. was written to arrange an appointment

C. was written to ask him to eat with Amanda

D. was translated by Amanda’s mother

11. We can learn from the text that Rafael             .

A. agreed to Amanda’s invitation at once

B. wrote back to Amanda in English using Google Translate

C. was encouraged by the note to improve his English

D. was encouraged by Amanda to communicate with other students

In Mountain View, California, there’s a new pizza shop — Zume Pizza. It has robots and algorithms(计算程序) running the shop. Their job is to solve a familiar problem: it’s football night and you order a ham and mushroom pizza for you and your friends. It arrives later than you’d hoped and it’s cold.

Zume co-founder Julia Collins says, “Pizza is not meant to sit in a cardboard box. The best pizza comes right out of the oven.”

In reality, people tend to order pizzas instead of eating them in a restaurant. Most pizzas are delivered in a cardboard box and are not hot when they arrive, so they don’t taste that good. Zume’s solution is a delivery truck which is equipped with 56 mini-ovens.

Here’s how it works. A customer places an order on the app. Inside the Zume factory, a team of mostly robots puts the 14-inch pizza into its own oven. Whether the truck has five pizzas or 56, it needs just one human worker — to drive and deliver them to your doorstep.

“She doesn’t have to think about when to turn the ovens on or off,” Collins says. “She doesn’t have to think about what route to take or whom to go to first. All of that is controlled by our algorithm.” Four minutes before the truck is scheduled to arrive at a doorstep, the algorithm starts the oven(or ovens) to finish cooking that order. Each pizza is then put into a special pizza box, which is not made of cardboard. The driver then parks, cuts the pizza with a special knife and delivers it hot.

When you call a pizza store and are told “It’ll take an hour,” you hang up and it doesn’t get your business. Because Zume is run mostly by robots, it doesn’t have that problem. This week, Zume is beginning to use trucks to deliver to real customers in Mountain View.

12. Which pizza tastes best, according to the text?

A. One that is made by a factory.

B. One that is right out of the oven.

C. One that is delivered to your home.

D. One that is packed in a cardboard box.

13. How does a customer order a pizza from Zume?

A. By making a call.    B. By using an app.

C. By contacting some robots.    D. By stopping a delivery truck.

14. What does the underlined word, “it”, in the last paragraph refer to?

A. Zume Pizza.    B. The truck.

C. The robot.    D. The pizza factory.

15. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A. The Most Popular Pizza Shop    B. An Advanced Delivery System

C. How to Make Pizza More Delicious    D. Robots Guarantee Better Pizza

Homework is a good thing. It helps you practice what you’ve learned during the day and establish study habits that will be important in college. ___16___ What you need to do is take control of your homework.

Set a good mood for studying.

Create a good study area with all the things you will need (for example, a dictionary, pens and textbooks).

Know where to start in your study.

Make a list of everything you need to do in order so you cannot use “I don’t know where to start.” as an excuse. Don’t over-schedule yourself. ___17___ Study at the same time every day.

Even if you don’t have homework, use the time to review your notes. ___18___ What’s more, you’ll become good at using time in this way.

___19___

Do you ever feel like you cannot stay awake to read something? Keep your mind from wandering by taking notes, underlining sentences, discussing topics with others.

Celebrate your achievements.

___20___ However, if you have some problems about the amount or type of the homework, you should talk to your teachers.

A. Take advantage of your time.

B. Get more involved in your study.

C. Try to find the best methods that work for you.

D. If you do that, it will be easy for you to fail to stick to your study plan.

E. Once you achieve your goal, offer yourself some reward for it.

F. It can also help you prepare for your classes and get a sense of progress.

G. If you accept homework as part of your day, you’ll deal with in more easily.