Lipman Wilson is a student at North Street School. She recently helped her teacher make some sports meet certificates (奖状) and give out prizes to the winners during the sports meet.

Today book clubs are very popular. There are many good reasons for you to join a book club.

    15     The more time you spend reading, the more your reading skills will improve. A study shows that while reading books to prepare for a book-club meeting, students read more smoothly (流畅地).

    16     Joining a book club might help you with this problem. Book-club members are more likely (可能的) to finish reading a whole book. If you don’t read the whole book, you won’t be able to talk about the book at the meeting.

Book clubs let you experience different kinds of books. In many book clubs, members take turns choosing the book for the group to read. This could mean that you will read a book that you may not pick for yourself. Reading about new topics makes you learn more.

    17     When members talk about the books they read, they may have different ideas. Then they may have interesting discussions. Being in a book club allows members to share their opinions and think about the opinions of others.

    18     The members of a book club may come from different schools. By spending time with them at book-club meetings, you will get to know all of them and make new friends.

One day, Joe watched a video at school. It was about a factory. The factory made a lot of ________ and put it in a river. People living near the river drank the polluted water and many of them got ________. The needed medicine and made visits to doctors.

But the video wasn’t all bad news. It ________ ways to pick up rubbish and why it’s important to do this. It said everyone can make a different to the ________.

Two days later, Joe walked through a park. He saw lots of rubbish in the lake there. He thought of the ________ and decided to clean the lake. He told his grandfather about his ________. His grandfather said, “It’s a tradition (传统) in our family to help people. That’s why we ________ food every month. I’m ________ that you can help people by cleaning the lake.”

Cleaning the lake would involve (需要) lots of work. Joe decided to ________ a group to help him. He asked his family and friends to join him. They worked hard together. Six weeks later, there was no rubbish in the lake. ________ they were tired, they were happy that they did something for the environment.

In the early 19th century (世纪), many people in Britain were moving from the countryside to cities to work in factories. Life was difficult for these people. Most factory workers had to work long hours and lived in small rooms. They weren’t very happy with city life and missed their farms in the countryside.

Richard Vaughan Yates was a factory owner. He worried about his workers. So he decided to provide his workers with a green space near his factory in Toxteth in south Liverpool. There his workers could enjoy plants, just like they did in the countryside. He paid the famous gardener (园艺家) Joseph Paxton to build Britain’s first town park, Princes Park. And Princes Park opened in 1842. Then, the next year, Birkenhead, a town near Liverpool, paid Paxton to build another park, Birkenhead Park, and it opened in 1847. Finally, factory workers in Liverpool had places near their homes to relax after a hard day at work.

Soon other towns and cities in Britain learned about Liverpool’s parks. By 1990, many big towns and cities in Britain had one park. The famous architect (建筑师) Rogers said “parks are one of Britain’s great creations (创作)”. It’s hard to disagree with him. With parks, we can have a break from the stress of our lives. And that’s very important.