1 . Mary Lennox is a young English girl in India who is surrounded by servants. She’s a weak, selfish, and spoiled (宠坏的) child. When her parents and all their servants suddenly die from illness, she is sent to Yorkshire, England to live with her uncle, Mr. Craven.

Mr. Craven keeps his distance from Mary and soon leaves on business. She’s left to take care of herself in his big house and its gardens. As the weeks pass, Mary becomes more independent, grows stronger, and gets more respect for others. Later, she becomes friends with Dickon, a local boy and she also helps her uncle’s son—Colin, get well.

The Secret Garden’s main themes include the importance of friendship, the value of outdoor activities, and the way a healthy outlook on life can affect one’s health. When Mary first arrives at her uncle’s house, she’s a rude, selfish person. This is because she’s never had a friend her own age and has never been told “No.” Later, Dickon helps her develop empathy (同情) for others, which has had the greatest impact on her.

The natural world is key to the second of the book’s themes. At first, Mary is weak because she has never had to do anything for herself. She isn’t even capable of dressing herself without help. Colin is also weak. He stays in bed or in a wheelchair because he believes he can’t walk. The sunshine and fresh air of the gardens benefits both of them in the story.

The third important theme is the power of a positive attitude. People’s minds need nurturing (培养). An important moment for Colin happens when he determines to be a healthy person instead of a sickly one. He repeats his longing out loud and wishes hard for it to come true. Holding this idea in his mind is a key part of his recovery. It is his belief in himself and his determination to succeed that finally helps him regain his health.

2 . A great poem makes you want to get out of your chair and pace around the room.     1    . But if you haven’t developed your. poetry taste in a while, that feeling might be a little hard to tap into. Here are four tips that can help you get there.

Read aloud and out loud

When reading a poem, it is important to remember that it is not just words on a page, but is meant to be heard or read aloud.     2    . It will enhance the appreciation of the piece.

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Approaching poetry with a perspective of finding connections between the poem and one’s own life can be a valuable tool for appreciating the poem more. Connecting to the emotions, memories and even the same life experiences can help to relate more to the poem and in turn, truly appreciate it. Through this connection to the poem, we can better understand the feelings, actions and words of the poem.

Create a dialogue

More often than not, a lot of hidden or “unsaid” messages are delivered in poetry.     4    . A fruitful discussion about a poem can help readers to understand the poem more, through their different interpretations and opinions.

Write your own poem

    5    . As you write your own poem, think about the structure you want to create, the literary devices you want to employ and the emotion you want to arouse. As you write your own poem, you will see your appreciation of the original poem rise, as you gain a sense of the effort that goes into crafting a poem. In this way, it can become much easier to appreciate the poem being read.

3 . Nasugraq Rainey Hopson is an author and illustrator (插图画家). She has written short stories and made art inspired by her Iñupiaq culture. The Iñupiaq people are native to Alaska, the US. Hopson’s first and only novel to date, Eagle Drums, is set in Iñupiaq tales about a great festival. The great festival is still celebrated locally today.

In the book, the hero Pina struggles with the suffering from losing his brothers, who have traveled to a nearby mountain and never returned. Pina decides to go to the same mountain, trying to uncover the facts, where he happens to meet Savik, who gives Pina a choice: To follow him or to meet the same fortune as his brothers. Pina’s decision takes himself on a journey that exposes himself to the dances and songs that are part of Iñupiaq culture. Eagle Drums describes aspects of Iñupiaq life as a world that doesn’t exist much in the current world, such as walking in the tundra (苔原) and imagining mythological beings and talking animals everywhere. It will definitely inspire the teen magical thinking in its beauty.

Hopson wants to write more Iñupiaq stories. “We have a lot of oral history and stories in our culture,” she says. Hopson explains that Iñupiaq people use their voices, facial expressions and movements to express emotions as they tell a story. “But you can’t do that when you’re writing,” she says. “It’s very uncomfortable, in a way, to have to write down something that is a performance.” But she’s up for the challenge.

Eagle Drums is for anyone who is looking for a vivid adventure. Hopson says that when Iñupiaq kids read her work, they get excited about seeing something from their own area and their own culture. Other kids who read her work tell Hopson they’re excited about experiencing a story they’ve never experienced before in a new place. “You know, that’s the best part, hearing feedbacks,” she says.

4 . Greg Heffley is the main character in Jeff Kinney’s best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of books. Greg is a middle school student with big dreams. In his diary, he writes stories about his struggles to fit in and draws pictures to go with them.

Greg Heffley is a thin but ambitious kid with an active imagination and big plans to be rich and famous — he just has to survive middle school first. To make matters worse, Greg’s lovable best friend, Rowley seems to sail through life and succeed at everything without even trying! As details of his extremely funny — and often disastrous — attempts to infill the pages of his journal, Greg learns to appreciate true friends and the satisfaction that comes from standing up for what is right.

The first live-action movie based on Diary of a Wimpy Kid came out in 2010. Now an animated film based on the original book is about to hit screens.

“The new Diary of a Wimpy Kid is going to feel a lot different from the live-action movie,” Kinney told TFK reporter Lucy Sandor. “Parts of that first movie were reimagined. But the animated version just came to life from the pages of the book,” he said.

Humor inspires Kinney to write. Whether it’s a movie script or a book, he likes to start with jokes. “When I think of a joke, it often comes with a picture in my mind,” he said.

“Then I write. And in the end, I do the drawings.”

Diary of a Wimpy Kid will be available on Disney+ beginning December 3.

7 . I adore poetry-I still remember early lessons on haikus back in my Grade Three classroom. Poetry can be amazing. Here's three ways to bring poetry into your classroom.

Combine poetry and art

Poems often use a few words to create pictures, so they're perfect to combine with art.     1     Students can write a poem inspired by a piece of art or create a piece of art inspired by a poem, which can be especially effective when you're looking at particular styles of art-abstract art or sculpture.

    2     They can look at how poetry can be a part of public art or how words, color and shapes can be combined to create something beautiful.

Create poetry displays

Due to their shorter size, poems make wonderful subject for displays. There are a few ways you can display poetry in the classroom. For instance, if you write or explore poems on a particular theme, you can use that to create a display. Autumn poetry can be displayed on colorful trees made out of paper.     3    

Students can also use a display board to create their own poetry.     4     They can also write lines of poetry to pin up on a board to continue a poem which is being written.

Explore poetry in song

Poetry and songs are two different forms of writing.     5     They both use rhyme, rhythm and highly effective word choice to make you feel something. Students can also think about how already written songs could be set to music.

Take a moment to share some poetry with your students and open up a whole world of different rhythms, rhymes and pictures made out of words.

9 . San Francisco Park ranger Amanda Barrows, who registered in City College of San Francisco (CCSF)’s Poetry for the People class, began to place a nightstand (床头柜) in Golden Gate Park with a note “take a poem, leave a poem” in December 2022. Since then, over 100 handwritten poems have been placed in the nightstand. “It’s completely unexpected,” said Barrows. “I’m really taken aback by the outpouring of support.”

Park ranger by day and poet by night, Barrows said she began writing and attending poetry workshops in 2020. The poetry course she attended was founded by Leslie Simon in 1975. The class advocates for a focus on the neighborhood, and the cultivation (培养) and public presentation of new poems. For Barrows, the idea that she could combine her job and her hobby by bringing poetry into parks was an inspiration. Barrows asked her friends to contribute their favorite poems to the nightstand as poems that could be taken.

Armed with an old nightstand, Barrows filled the stand with pens and paper. An added drawer at the bottom holds the poems that people “donate”. The concept reminded her of Little Free Libraries, which are fixtures across the city. “I was having anxiety. I had no idea what I was going to do; then it sort of just came to me,” said Barrows. “I was inspired by the little free libraries you see in SF, where you ‘take a book, leave a book’, and thought, ‘Maybe I could do this with poetry.’”

One of the teachers at the CCSF poetry course, Lauren Muller, told The Washington Post that “people need poetry now”, which she suggested as the reason for the success of Barrows’s project.

Past student projects included writing poetry on sidewalks in chalk and placing poems on the windshields (挡风玻璃) of cars. “It’s exciting to see the work that students are doing,” Muller continued. “My hope is that this will happen across city parks… elsewhere.”