【推荐1】When Emanuel received an email from Professor Richard English. Queen’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the School of History, Anthropology,Philosophy and Politics, encouraging him to apply for a PhD in Politics in Belfast, it was a pinch-me moment Emanual never thought would be possible. After all, just a few short years ago, he was living on the streets couch-surfing at friends’ houses and weeding gardens to make ends meet. Now, one of the world’s leading political academics was preparing to welcome him to Queen’s University over 4,000 miles away.

Emanuel never knew who his father was and his mom was mentally ill when she gave birth to him, so the hospital took him off her and he was unofficially adopted for the first few years of his life. What followed was a childhood with uncertainty as Emanuel was passed between the adoption system and family members.

Through his high school and community college years, he moved from house to house, living with friends at times and living on the streets at others.

Determined to change all that despite his rocky start in life, Emanuel involved himself in school-doing everything he could to earn extra tuition (学费) money in his spare time. But getting accepted into university was scarcely possible because a person like him couldn’t get a regular student loan.

Fortunately, the government backed him, having created a policy allowing disadvantaged persons to access funding for higher education. He graduated from the University of the West Indies with a 1st Class Honors degree and went on to do his Masters.

Emanuel knows that his story could have been very different.

“I discovered Professor Richard English online and sent him an email honestly, not thinking he would reply and to my surprise, he did. I applied for the highly competitive Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme in order to fund my research at Queen’s. When I was told I was successful, my whole world changed.”

【推荐2】I have a special place in my heart for libraries. I have for as long as I can remember. I was always an enthusiastic reader, sometimes reading up to three books a day as a child. Stories were like air to me and while other kids played ball or went to parties, I lived out adventures through the books I checked out from the library.

My first job was working at the Ukiah Library when I was 16 years old .It was a dream job and I did everything from shelving books to reading to the children for story time.

As I grew older and became a mother, the library took on a new place and an added meaning in my life. I had several children and books were our main source(来源) of entertainment. It was a big deal for us to load up and go to the local library, where my kids could pick out books to read or books they wanted me to read to them.

I always read ,using different voices ,as though I were acting out the stories with my voice and they loved it !It was a special time to bond with my children and it filled them with the wonderment of books .

Now, I see my children taking their children to the library and I love that the excitement of going to the library lives on form generation to generation.

As a novelist, I’ve found a new relationship with libraries. I encourage readers to go to their local library when they can’t afford to purchase a book. I see libraries as a safe haven(避风港) for readers and writers, a bridge that helps put together a reader with a book. Libraries, in their own way, help fight book piracy(盗版行为) and 1 think all writers should support libraries in a significant way when they can. Encourage readers to use the library. Share library announcements on your social media. Frequent them and talk about them when you can.

【推荐3】A Writing Fool

In the seventh grade I realized I was dyslexic, which made it difficult for me to read and spell. I did really badly in my history course, so my mother said to me, “I’ll work with you for a full week. I’m going to show you what you can do if you put in the right amount of effort.” So we did. We worked on history for a full week, an extra hour every day. Then I went to school and failed the test, as always. It was really upsetting.

By the time I got to college I came to know that I couldn’t spell no matter how hard I tried. So I would sign up for extra courses. I’d be in registration lines all day. Then I would go around the first day of class and ask each professor: “What’s your policy on misspelling?” If he said, “Three misspellings is a fail,” I’d drop it.

Although I was an academic failure, I had a great time. I had many friends and I was always popular. I was a good football player, which was important in those years because I could read my name in the newspaper. I never had a day when I would think, “People don’t like me.”

In spite of my obvious weaknesses, I became successful in my career, so much so that people say to me, “So you’ve overcome dyslexia.” No. I don’t overcome it. I just learn to compensate for it. Some easy things are hard for me. Most people read 500 words a minute. I only read 200. I try not to dial a phone because I sometimes have to dial three times to get the number right. I owe my successful career to my writing instructor, Ralph Salisbury. He looked past my misspellings and gave   me   encouragement.   So   I   always   feel   confident.   When   I   write   my   books, I’m   seeing everything in my imagination. I write quickly and go like the wind.

The real fear that I have for dyslexic people is not that they have to struggle with their reading skills or that they can’t spell correctly, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school.

【推荐1】Sometimes you just want to get away. Your older brother and his friends are constantly camped in front of the TV, your baby sister won’t stay out of your room, and you want some time for yourself.But when you get it — maybe at a friend’s house for an all-weekend DVD marathon or on spring break at Disney World — you’re surprised to find yourself missing the chaos(混乱） at home a bit. What’s that all about?     1    When you’re homesick, you might feel nostalgic（怀念的）for familiar things like your family, friends, pets, house, or neighborhood. Homesickness isn’t only for kids.    2    Teens might get homesick when they leave home for the first extended period of time, like during a vacation with a friend’s family. Familiar surroundings, people, and routines provide people with a sense of security and comfort.    3    Those homesick feelings are completely normal.    4    Others may feel physical symptoms, like stomachache or headache, or even become truly depressed. Most of the time, once the new surroundings and people become more familiar, feelings of homesickness go away. If you have additional stress in your life — like a divorce or a death in the family — homesickness can be more intense(强烈的).Almost everyone has felt homesick at some time.    5    It means you have family and friends worth missing and a place you want to return to when your adventure away from home is over.

【推荐3】For much of my childhood, my mother filled in the evening hours doing something for someone else. Sometimes she knitted（编织）hats for babies, and at other times, she cooked chicken soup for sick neighbors. Therefore, I wasn't surprised when one evening my mother announced she had undertaken a new project.

"I am going to telephone seniors, "said my mother. "Every night? But you don't even know these people. ""It doesn't matter, "she said. "What's important is that I listen. "I was sixteen years old and couldn't understand why my mother was willing to spend her evenings talking to strangers. She had friends and my two older sisters to call if she felt lonely. "They will talk your ear off. Some people didn't even stop to catch breath, "I said.

My attitude didn't decrease my mother's enthusiasm for the project. That evening, she settled on the sofa and dialed. For a while, I listened as she asked the woman on the other line about her day and what she had eaten for dinner. When she finished the call, I said, "Why do you care whether she had cookies or rice pudding for dessert?" My mother grasped one of my hands and gave ita slight squeeze. "I'm the only person she talked to today. "

It took me more than thirty years to fully understand the meaning of that statement. Now, as my mother is nearing eighty, I find myself thinking about those nightly calls she used to make. I am often the only person who telephones my mother, and sometimes I'm the only person she speaks to all day. I ask her what she cooked for dinner, but mostly I just listen as she describes a walk she took, or how her dog Lucky stole foods from the refrigerator. I realize that my mother's calls were lifelines that ensured housebound seniors remained connected to the world. Without her, their world would have been empty.

【推荐1】Next week, Pushpa Nagaraj will appear for her 720th exam. But she won’t be taking the exam for herself. Since 2007, she has helped hundreds of visually challenged students take exams by acting as their scribe (抄写员), reading them the questions and then writing down the answers they give.

When Ms. Nagaraj was growing up in Bangalore, the IT capital of India, her father lost his job after a back injury. The family suddenly found itself struggling. She thought she’d have to drop out of school. Luckily, her mother managed to raise enough money to educate her through high school. Today, she’s a project coordinator for an IT firm.

One day, as she was helping a few visually damaged children cross the road, it struck her how difficult even everyday tasks could be for them, let alone finishing their education. Ms. Nagaraj wanted to help those children.

In India, most children with sight challenges do not have access to specialized schooling. Even for those who attend mainstream classes, timed exams — key for Indian educational institutions, where scores are especially important — present additional difficulties. “Many of them balk at the thought of writing exams and drop out,” says Ms. Sundararaman, a local education expert. “And so, their education comes to a sudden stop, midway.” Having a scribe can be the difference between passing and failing.

Over the past 12 years, word about Ms. Nagaraj’s work has spread — so much that she now gets requests from people from all over India. She has also set up a network of volunteers that posts requests through a WhatsApp group.

Ms. Nagaraj is keenly aware of ongoing challenges, chief of which is that, every once in a while, she has to refuse requests from students to give them the answers during exams. Another challenge is to expand the circle of scribes. Despite these, she is very grateful for having the opportunity to help others. “I have no complaints. Actually, I feel very blessed,” she says.

【推荐2】Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your dreams become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably finish what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren’t written until the deadline.

I’ve been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working toward her master’s degree (硕士学位) in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student (技校学生). They’re called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.

When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”, I was shocked. “Hey, he’s a good kid,” I wanted to say. “And smart, really.”

I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don’t often make school honor rolls (光荣榜).

But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who work in clean shirts in offices don’t have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was about $ 800. “Hey, I can fix it,” said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.

My son, with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts from a junk yard, and ability from vo-tech classes. The cost was $ 25 instead of $ 800.

Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbors and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don’t need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.

【推荐1】Harry Potter is one of the most famous characters in the world. He is the main character of a series of books that have become a worldwide success. He is an English boy who has magical powers and discovers them when he goes to a special school for wizards. There are seven novels in the series, and the seventh in J. K. Rowling’s Potter series was published on July 20th, 2007. Some 3,500 fans queued for half a mile outside Waterstone’s flagship branch in central London on the night of July 20th, with an expected waiting time of four hours.

Parents and teachers are very happy about the books because children are spending more time reading than playing video games or watching television. It is incredible to see children waiting outside bookstores at night with their parents to buy the books. Some of the books are heavy and thick, but children don’t seem to mind. They rush inside the store when it opens and grab one or more copies. The books are sold out immediately, and parents sometimes fight with each other to buy the last one.

This has never happened to a book before. In the past, we saw kids or their parents running into a store to grab the latest popular toy like Cabbage Patch Kids. Harry Potter books have outsold these dolls, and they have set a world record as the best and fastest selling books in history. Large parts of the books are about Harry trying to understand his new identity and making the choices that come along with it, Harry Potter’s choices and problems are common problems that all young people have as they grow up.

【推荐2】Young sunflowers turn and swing every day. New findings add to evidence that the plants are animal-like.

Harmer, a professor in the University of California at Davis’ Department of Plant Biology, carried out a series of experiments on sunflowers in the field, in pots outdoors and in indoor growth chambers.

By staking plants so that they could not move, Harmer showed that he could destroy their ability to track the sun. He also noticed that sunflowers prevented from moving were not as tough and leafy as those that were free to move. When plants were moved indoor with a settled overhead light, they continued to swing back and forth for a few days.

The indoor plants did start tracking the “sun” again when the apparent source of lighting was moved across the room. The plants could reliably track the movement and return at night when the artificial day was close to a 24-hour cycle, but not when it was closer to 30 hours.

When sunflowers track the sun, the east sides of their stems grew more rapidly than the west sides. At night, the west sides grew faster as the stem swung the other way. The team identified a number of genes that were expressed at higher levels on the sunward side of the plant during the day, or on the other side at night. A plant growth-regulating hormone, called auxin, appears to be a key driver.

The “dance” to the sun cycle obviously slows when the sunflower matures and its flowers open up. At that point, the plants stop moving during the day and settle down facing the sun in the east.

“Bees like warm flowers.” Harmer said, adding that the bees are cold-blooded, so landing on a warm flower saves them energy and perhaps feels really good.

“The morning warmth changes the flowers in a way to make them more appealing to insects, perhaps causing them to release more attractive scents earlier in the day.” he said. “We’re currently testing this idea.”

【推荐3】When Ma Hu was chosen for a baseball training camp in Beijing, the 12-year-old didn't have the slightest idea how baseball was played or even what a baseball field looked like.

The son of a migrant worker in Ningxia, northwest China didn't have enough warmth of family. In the past, he was a headache for the teachers at school, acting up in the class and fighting with classmates during break time.

"I was lost at the street crossing and got picked up by the camp people" is how Ma describes how he came to join the training camp run by the Power Baseball Angel project. It was launched by Sun Lingfeng, former captain of the men's national baseball team, in 2015 to provide professional training to children from poor households and remote areas.

When Ma joined the camp, it had only 16 boys. They were told those who could get into the national top three would qualify for college admission. Other good players could join professional baseball teams. Still others could work at the base, leaching the newcomers.

Ma, now 15, has become a professional baseball player with a bright future. His story, including his early days when he fought with his teammates and ignored the coaches instructions, is part of an award-winning documentary Tough Out on the young baseball players at the camp, which was released in December 2020.

The documentary focuses on the team of underprivileged and abandoned children who struggled to learn a new sport and build a new life for themselves while fighting low self-esteem（自尊）and pursuing their dreams. It is dedicated to people who work hard silently, seize every opportunity and refuse to admit defeat.