There is a special library in Hangzhou. A great many people visit it every day ______ it is far from the city center. It’s Xiaosong Library, started by Gao Xiaosong, a famous musician in China, in 2016.

The library has a collection of about 50,000 ______. Gao and his team chose all of them. The library creates an enjoyable environment for readers. Inside, the library provides readers ______ big space to read. Outside, the natural view (景色) ______ the readers relax. In spring and summer, there are lots of flowers around the library. Readers can enjoy a beautiful view through the big windows and often forget ______.

To make sure that the readers enjoy their reading, the library allows ______ 300 visitors in each day. Visitors ______ pay but they must reserve (预约) before coming. Gao said that opening a library was a dream for ______. “I grew up in a family of intellectuals (知识分子) and I’ve always dreamt of having a huge bookcase reaching up to the ______ of my room. This place is what I have been looking for,” said Gao.

______ plays an important part in improving the quality (质量) of life. It helps people see this world better. In such a great library, who won’t enjoy reading?

To cheer up their neighbors in lockdown (封锁), an English family from Wellington colored every brick (砖) of their home with crayons to make a “rainbow house”.

26-year-old mother Fern Taylor started the work with her daughters, Arabella and Matilda. Her husband, Marco DeFazio, then used a ladder (梯子) to finish the work. “We got the idea when I saw a post online,” said Fern. “They did half the house, but Marco said we couldn’t stop there. He got the ladder out and did the rest.”

The family used big sticks of crayons, and it took them about six hours. They started with about 40 sticks. The girls really enjoyed it. Matilda is two. She didn’t quite understand, but she did help a bit. Arabella is four, and she was a good helper. She helped for half an hour. Then the girls sat and played, and watched their mom and dad doing the work.

“Many people have stopped by our house and smiled. They have taken photos. And they have really cheered up. It’s so sweet,” she said. “People would slow down when they drive past. We have even seen an ambulance(救护车). They just stopped and said they loved it.”

This is one of the many wonderful stories that are coming out of the COVID-19 news.

How would you like to live underground? Many families in the town of Coober Pedy, Australia, do just that. Their houses, called dugouts (防空洞), are carved (挖) out of the earth. They are similar to common houses. They have kitchens, bedrooms，and living rooms, but they have few windows. Most of the light in the houses comes from lamps and overhead lights instead of direct sunlight.

People in the town build dugouts because of where they live. Coober Pedy is in a desert in southern Australia. The temperature can climb as high as 50℃ in summer. It can drop as low as zero in winter. Dust storms and swarms of flies (苍蝇) can make life miserable. Underground, though, it is always a comfortable 23℃. People don’t even need fans.

Why would people want to live in such a place? Coober Pedy is an opal-mining (猫眼石矿) town. Opals are colourful stones used for jewellery. The mines (矿) in Coober Pedy produce most of the world’s opals. Early settlers (定居者) there realized that they could avoid the harsh temperatures by building their homes underground. Today almost half of the 3, 500 people in the town live in dugouts. Restaurants, schools and other buildings are also underground. People enjoy their lives “down under”.

I’m Jack. ①Do you ever read the book The Little Prince《小王子》? When I was a child, it was my favorite book. The book was written by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I first read the book in English, but I also read it in French at school. ②The book is a beautiful story for both children and adults.

One of the main characters in the story is a pilot. His plane crashes (坠毁) in a desert where he meets the little prince. The prince comes from a planet called B612. The planet is so small that the prince can watch the sunset (落日) forty-four times in a day by just moving his chair. In the beginning, the prince asks the pilot to draw a picture of a sheep. The pictures in the book, which the writer drew, are really good. The prince says some very interesting things about life and people in the book. Every time I read the book, I find something new.

The Little Prince is Saint-Exupery’s most famous book. He used to be a pilot and had crashed in the Sahara Desert while trying to break a flying record. He wrote the book while he was living in New York. The book came out in 1943, and since then it has sold more than 140 million copies (册) around the world. In fact, it is the most popular French-language book of all time.