【推荐2】When Stars Are Scattered

This novel by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed tells the true story of two brothers who live in a refugee (难民) camp in Kenya. Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have escaped a war in their home country of Somalia. Even though they are kids, the boys deal with many adult problems. The brothers stick together, no matter what life throws at them.

— By TFK Kid Reporter Miguel Madero

Mañanaland

11-year-old Max loves his grandfather's stories of Mañanaland, a place where dreams come true. Max dreams of making the football team and finding his missing mother. When Max discovers a secret, he sets off for Mañanaland in search of answers. On the way, he wins something more valuable than a spot on the team. I love this book by Pam Muñoz Ryan because each page is different and interesting.

— By TFK Kid Reporter Afton Campbell

Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid

15-year-old Mikaila Ulmer has created a healthy type of lemonade made with honey, which she sells all over the country. She gives away some of the money from the sale to bee conservation. In Bee Fearless, Mikaila shares her story and offers business tips. Readers will love learning how Mikaila’s business grew and what she’s doing to encourage young entrepreneurs (企业家).

— By TFK Kid Reporter Abby Rogers

Condor Comeback

In Condor Comeback, writer Sy Montgomery follows conservationists as they care for endangered California condors. They’re the largest flying North American land birds. Can scientists save the condor population? Read Condor Comeback to find out!

— By TFK Kid Reporter Jeremy Liew

【推荐3】Are you looking for a book for your little kids? If you’re, here are some good choices for you.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig

One rainy day, Sylvester finds a magic pebble (鹅卵石) that can make wishes come true. But when a lion frightens him on his way home, Sylvester makes a wish that brings unexpected results. He turns himself into a stone, and it seems all is lost. How Sylvester changes back and joins together with his loving family makes a story that is perfectly joyful.

Illustrated (为........画插 图) with William Steig’s colorful pictures, the book is loved by children everywhere.

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

In the story Blueberries for Sal, the little girl Sal and her mother go out to pick blueberries. At the same time, a baby bear and his mother are eating blueberries on the other side of Blueberiy Hill. The two young ones put their minds to eating and they end up with the wrong mother. Will each mother go home with the right little one?

Created by Robert McCloskey, this book uses a single dark blue color and block printing for the pictures. Sal and her mother are modeled after McCloskey’s daughter, Sally, and wife, Peggy.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

“Once there was a tree ... and she loved a little boy.” This is how a moving and unforgettable story begins. It was written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein.

In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk (树干) and eating her apples ... and the tree is happy. But as the boy grows older, he begins to want more from the tree. He makes money from her apples and builds houses from her branches. And the tree gives and gives and gives ...

【推荐1】David Frank started working for tips when he was 11 years old, delighting restaurant diners in New York with his magic tricks. As a teenager he would make an average of $60-70 in an evening—not bad, but he wanted more. So he started reading research on tipping, and found a study showing that servers who left a sweet at the end of the meal could up their pay. He tried handing customers a playing card at the end of his act, which he hoped would persuade them to part with more cash. It worked.

Mr. Frank's findings confirmed the notion of the tip as a sort of reward for outstanding service. For a start, economists are puzzled by the fact that so many people give tips, voluntarily handing out cash for a routine service, when it is assumed that customers generally want to pay as little as possible for what they buy. But fuzzier factors also seem to matter, like the feelings of gratitude that Mr. Frank inspired. A Survey in 2010 by Ofer Azar of Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that 85% of American tippers claimed to be following a social pattern, while 60% said they tipped to avoid guilt.

During the pandemic these fuzzy factors appear to have strengthened. Mr. Lynn observed that people have been tipping more generously even while ordering take-away food.

The presence of a pandemic or of a magician performing at one's table are just two of many factors that may affect the size of a tip. A tipper may simply be touched by the server. If a waiter squats down beside you at the table as he or she takes your order, that often brings a higher tip. Good weather may encourage generosity too. Race can be an uglier factor. A study of tips for cab drivers found that black drivers were tipped on average at a rate of 13%, while white drivers got 20%.

【推荐3】How do you spend your Sunday? For many, this traditional day of rest and churchgoing has become a day to shop, but it may be taking a toll on happiness. Researches from Depaul University tracked church attendance and levels of happiness among some Americans. Those people live in states that had cancelled so-called blue laws which once required most shops to stay closed on Sundays.

The research found that allowing stores to open on Sundays was linked with a reduction in church attendance among white women, which led to a reduction in happiness. Among black women, the cancel of the blue laws had no measurable effect, although that may be because the sample size was too small to draw any statistically meaningful conclusions.

But the finding was true only for women. For men, the cancel of blue laws didn’t seem to influence church attendance or levels of happiness. Since the end of blue laws, women are about 17 percent less likely to report being “pretty happy, and more likely to report being “not happy” according to the study. A professor of economics at Depaul said, “People know there is a connection between religiosity and happiness, and our paper tends to provide more conclusive evidence that religiosity among women does affect happiness. ’’

So why would Sunday shopping make women less happy? Part of the reason may be that some of the women were required to work on Sundays after the end of blue laws. Or the reduction in women’s happiness may be linked to the behavior of their children, once Sunday shopping is allowed, many of whom may start hanging out at shopping malls on Sundays. Or it may simply be that the attraction of shopping is more powerful than the longing to attend church, even though it brings less happiness.

【推荐2】A diet rich in fruit and vegetables and incorporating a daily glass of wine can protect the brain against dementia, a study suggests. Sticking closely to Mediterranean eating habits, which also include plenty of nuts, seafood, whole grains and olive oil, has been linked to a 23 per cent lower risk of dementia.

Based on data gathered on 60,000 people via the UK Biobank, a medical database set up in 2006, the researchers scored participants’ diets for how closely they matched the ideal Mediterranean diet on two scales.

Using one, those whose eating habits were the best match were 23 per cent less likely to develop dementia than those whose diets least fit the pattern. A diet with a perfect score would involve more than four tablespoons of olive oil, at least two portions of vegetables and three of fruit per day as well as a glass of wine. It would also include at least three servings of legumes, 90 grams of nuts, and three servings of fish or shellfish a week. The ideal diet would also involve very little red or processed meat, avoiding too many sweetened drinks, butter, margarine or cream.

The second scale used similar criteria and a close match on that was linked to a 14 per cent lower risk of dementia. The findings, published in the journal BMC Medicine, appeared to show a “protective effect regardless of someone’s genetic risk”.

Dr Susan Mitchell, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said, “There is a wealth of evidence that eating a healthy, balanced diet can help reduce the risk of cognitive decline. But the evidence for specific diets is much less clear-cut.” She pointed out that the study only drew on data from people with white, British or Irish ancestry. She said, “While there are no surefire ways to prevent dementia yet, a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, along with plenty of exercise and not smoking, all contribute to good heart health, which in turn helps to protect our brain from diseases that lead to dementia.”

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【推荐3】Human activity has shrunk the size of wild animals the world over, and yet recent research has found many mammals (哺乳动物) living near cities have become steadily larger,   both in length and in weight.

“That wasn’t what we expected to find at all,” says Robert Guralnick, who studies biodiversity informatics at the Florida Museum. Expanding urban environments grow much hotter than natural habitats (生长环境), and warmer temperatures usually benefit mammals that have a smaller, more energy-saving figure — a principle of biology known as Bergmann’s rule.

As the world grows warmer, some scientists have worried that mammals living near cities are supposed to grow smaller, possibly reducing their fitness as a species and, no doubt, the fitness of being threateners (威胁者), too. But even with climate change, that might not happen. As it turns out, there’s another factor in determining a mammal’s size that might compete with or even go beyond temperature, and that is food.

In and around cities with large populations, where high-energy human foods are more widely available and hunters are fewer and farther in between, new research discovered that most of the mammal species studied appear to be growing in size, not shrinking. According to careful measurements of more than 100 species from North America, gathered from museum collections over the past 80 years, the main reason is not a city’s temperature. Instead, the greatest increases in weight and body length appear to lie among those mammals that live near the most humans, regardless of how hot their surroundings are.

As climate change grows worse, there is, of course, the possibility that that might change, but at least for now, it seems that wolves, deer, bats, and other mammals in North America could be affected more by city populations than city climates.

If we want to preserve the mammals that exist today for the future, it’s important that we know how human civilization is shaping their size, behavior and well-being. In a rapidly changing world, that knowledge could mean the difference between ongoing life and dying out.