【推荐2】James is five years old now. His father is a worker and his mother works in a shop. They live outside the town. His parents go to work in the morning and come back in the evening. The boy has to stay at home alone. There are more than ten children around his house, but some of them are too young and the others have to go to school. So the boy has few friends and he feels sad.

Last month the Hunts moved to the house next to theirs. James went to visit them on the first day. Mr. and Mrs. Hunt were kind to him and they have a four-year-old daughter named Kate. The boy made friends with her at once and her parents were happy. The two children play together when their parents are at work. And James no longer feels lonely.

It was cold yesterday. It snowed hard and the children couldn’t play outside. And they stayed in Kate’s room. At first they looked at the picture—books and then Kate found a coin in a box. They began to play with it. The girl put it into her mouth and she swallowed (吞) it. After half an hour Mrs. Hunt called her husband at once and then took the girl to the hospital.

“The Hunts must be poor, I think.” James said to his parents after supper.

“Oh? Why?”

“Kate swallowed a coin and they tried to get it out!”

【推荐3】Deanna Stellato-Dudek retired in 2001 because of injuries. But this week, she achieved the unthinkable. With her partner Maxime Deschamps, the 40-year-old former retiree defeated athletes less than half her age and became the oldest woman to win a World Figure Skating Championship. Even more remarkable, she did it in the pairs event, in which the top women are thrown across the ice, lifted over their partners’ heads with one arm, and tossed(抛)more than 10 feet in the air.

Stellato-Dudek had an impressive junior career as a singles skater, winning the 1999 — 2000 International Junior Grand Prix Final and receiving the silver me dal at the 2000 World Junior Championships.

However, by 2001, a few significant injuries led to her decision to retire at age 17. For the next 16 years, Stellato-Dudek lived a relatively normal adulthood. She became a successful aesthetician(美学家)and got married. She was no longer attempting risky triple(转体三周的)jumps on international ice.

But the feelings of unfinished business kept disturbing her — whether she had quit the sport too early and whether she had more to achieve in skating. So she tried on her old skates and attempted the impossible — learning how to become a pairs skater in her 30s and returning to competitive ice.

Her efforts paid off, and now Stellato-Dudek and her partner are unlikely world champions at ages 40 and 32. Stellato-Dudek said she hoped the historic victory inspired everyone, even non-skaters, who might think it was too late to pursue and achieve their goals. “I hope it encourages people not to stop before they reach their potential,” she told reporters after winning the title Thursday night.

Stellato-Dudek is not done. Her next major goal is to compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics at age 42.”She is a fighter,” her partner said. “For her, it’s the Olympics every day.”

【推荐1】The announcement that Indhu Rubasingham is to be the artist director of the Royal National Theatre (NT) in 2025 has been met with cheers, within the industry and without.

Workmates at the Kiln theatre in Brent, where Rubasingham has been director since 2012, describe her as inspiring, risk-taking and tough. Rufus Norris has called her “an exceptional artist who I respect and admire hugely”.

Rubasingham may be the NT’s female artistic director and the first person of colour in the role, but her own achievements contribute to her position. From a theatre with just 292 seats, she has commissioned (委托) and created productions of international quality. There has been Florian Zeller’s trilogy The father, The Mother and the Son and her production of Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden. A recent success is Ryan Calais Cameron’s civil rights story Retrograde.

Rubasingham is not new to National Theatre: as Norris says, “it’s a place she knows well, having directed successfully in each of the three theatres”. However, it’s a big leap from the 292 seats of the Kiln to the challenges of NT, with 2,450 seats, plus outreach, educational and digital programs. All this has to be done against the worst financial (金融的) situations since the NT was founded in 1963．Today, any director of a national arts organization in the UK faces a hard time, with the financial black hole left by the pandemic (疫情).

Rubasingham, however, is all about the artists: the play-writers and actors and many other creative talents who make her theatre what it is. That’s the special talent she brings to this position. She herself has described it as “the best job in the world”.

【推荐2】Beatrice De Lavallette was just 17 years old when she was seriously injured and lost both of her legs from the knee down.

The teen spent the next several months in intensive physical therapy, working hard to regain her mobility and independence. She appreciated her family for supporting her and assuring her that life would go on during those dark days.

Her beloved horse, DeeDee, was especially helpful in her recovery. Beatrice grew up in an equestrian (马术的)   family. She started riding when she was just a kid, competing in dressage (盛装舞步) by the time she was 12. When her therapist brought DeeDee to the hospital parking lot one day, Beatrice knew her love of horses and riding was the way forward.

“There are no real words to describe that day, but it was the start of my new life,” Beatrice wrote on her website. “A few days later, my occupational therapist drove me to the stables (马厩). I was lifted up onto DeeDee. Someone had to hold onto me, I had no muscle tone or control, but I knew I could do this.” Eager to get back to her “real life”, Beatrice began the challenging task of relearning how to ride. Her muscle tone was gone, so was her sense of balance, but she eventually regained the strength to ride without assistance.

In April 2017, Beatrice was finally able to return to competitions at a show. Now, six years after the accident that almost killed her, Beatrice was selected to represent Team USA at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games!

DeeDee had retired from competing, so Beatrice rode her new horse, a Dutch warmblood named Clarc. The two of them earned fifth place in the grade II individual category and sixth in the freestyle! “My being here shows that literally anything is possible,” she said. “I know it’s kind of the usual thing to say, but it’s true. Just go for it.”