【推荐1】 I was fourteen, a thin, red-headed, unimaginative little tomboy(假小子）, fond of baseball. My parents were dead, k    1     in an accident a year before, and I lived with an aunt and uncle in Braeburn Heights, a suburb( 郊 区 ） of a small city in Kansas. Rudely transplanted from the life I had known-- a happy-go-lucky life in the brown hills of California-- I was l    2       beyond words. The house was strange, the neighboring children were strange. I felt dry and hard and empty inside m    3       day after day. I used to take my bicycle and r    4     out into the   country, but the country was strange, too, and ugly , all flat and dull.

And then, o    5     day I found White Creek Row. It was the town’s Hooverville( 贫 民 窟 ）, a row of shanties（棚屋）between the creek(小溪） and the railroad, little huts(简陋的小房子）l     6    the playhouse that I had built back in the hills with the children of our Mexican gardener. But to my e    7    ,   it was   romantic and   delightful as my aunt’s house in Braeburn Heights was not.

It was in White Creek Row that I made my first real f    8       in Kansas. The people l    9     in the row were   shy of me at first, as I was shy of the people in Braeburn Weights. My smart clothes, my bicycle, made me alien. And still, somehow or other, I m    10     to develop a friendship with Posy Moreno

【推荐2】I spent many years of my life pretending (假装). I told that I was happy with my job, although I knew from the first day that it wasn’t fit for me. After spending so much time     1     (hide) my true self, I finally felt that I’d had enough of that—I was really tired of pretending.

I made up my mind to stop pretending. It’s     2     (easy) to pretend than to be truly honest with ourselves. But it     3     (come) with a heavy price. If I pretend my job is satisfying, I probably     4     (not make) the necessary changes to create a new job which will bring pleasure to my life. If I pretend to be happy in a relationship when my true feelings clearly say something else, how can I improve my relationship?

These days, I’m always saying what’s true for me. When I     5     (ask) to work on a new project, I said that I wasn’t good at it because I had little experience with it. In the past, I always hid that fact and felt bad about it for days or even weeks. Pretending is costly (代价高的). It is not money we give away but peace of mind and     6     (happy). I stopped pretending from then on.

Some great stories can teach us a lot about life. Journey to the West is one of such examples.

The main lesson in this book is that people who are very different can still work well together as a team. There are     1     main characters (人物) in the story. They are so different from each other that it does not seem very     2     for them to be able to form a happy team.     3    , it is the very reason why they make a good team.

Sun Wukong, the main character in the story, is very brave but he is sometimes a little naughty. He can change himself     4     many different things, such as a tree, a bird or even a pretty girl. Zhu Bajie is lazy. He likes living with good food and women. But he has a kind heart and is always ready to help     5     when necessary. Sha Wujing is quiet and not very clever, but he has a great love for his brothers and master and always worries about their     6     . Tang Sanzang is kind and careful. He     7     a lot of people, especially the sick and poor. He is very clear about what he wants to do and always     8     the rules.

These characters experience a lot of     9     on their journey to the West. But they get it over together and     10     .