2 . Mike, a 12-year-old boy, lived in a hillside village. His neighboring village was famous because of a great discovery there. In 2003, paleontologists (古生物学家) found the bones (骨头) of the largest dinosaur (恐龙) in Europe in a field near his neighboring village.

Mike liked dinosaurs more than anything else in the world. He also believed that there was an amazing dinosaur bone under the ground of his own village. His dream was to be the first person to find it.

One summer morning, Mike was exploring (勘查) in a field near a river. He looked up to see his two friends Fern and Pepe running toward him with a colorful kite. Mike enjoyed playing with his friends and began to fly the kite with them. As he ran, he fell to the ground. “I caught my left foot on this grey object,” he said.

“A rock,” said Fern.

Mike looked at it carefully. “I don’t think it’s a rock,” he said excitedly.

“Let me pull it out,” said Pepe.

“No,” said Mike. “It’s better to leave the object right here.”

Mike and the boys ran to school to tell their teacher. The teacher called the paleontologist’s office. The next day, a paleontologist came to the village to examine the object. “It could be a dinosaur bone,” he said. Soon, many paleontologists came and more bones were found. They turned out to come from a new kind of dinosaur.

Fern asked, “What do we call this dinosaur?” “Interesting question,” said one of the paleontologists, “we’ll call it Mikesaur!”

3 . ① “Practice makes perfect” is a very popular expression. But can we take this saying literally?

②One popular view is that if a person practises for at least 10, 000 hours, he will reach “perfection”, or in other words, become an expert in a field. It was given by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book, Outliers: The Story of Success. He gave the examples of the music group The Beatles and Microsoft co-creator Bill Gates, who clearly put in over 10, 000 hours of practice before they became successful.

③However, Gladwell’s book has been said by many to be too simplistic and generalizing (概括). Anders Ericsson argued that 10, 000 hours was just an average figure. Some people may need fewer than 10, 000 hours and others may need more. He also said that practising a lot was not enough, the type and quality of practice also made a difference. Most importantly, he mentioned the importance of “deliberate (刻意) practice”. When a person practises a specific part of a skill in depth rather than as a whole, it’ll be much more effective, though it’s tiring.

④ Many other studies argue that practice alone is far from enough. In fact, a more recent study from Princeton University stated that practice only accounted for up to 26% of reaching an expert level. Many other factors (因素) such as IQ, personality, attitude, and starting age can also counted. Natural talent is an important factor, especially in sports. For instance, many baseball players in America with amazing vision can see the ball much sooner than others do. Success also depends on social factors, environmental factors, and even just being in the right place at the right time!

⑤ In conclusion, practice may not make perfect, but deliberate practice has been shown to lead us to improvement.

4 . The Hutuo River is the mother river of Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei. About 20 years ago, it was dirty and almost dried up. Thanks to the government’s work, it has become much cleaner.

Wu Wenzhong, a 58-year-old villager, lives near the river. “My friends and I often played with water, swam and caught fish in it when I was a child. I liked catching fish best,” he said. He remembers that the villagers had to cross the river by boat at that time. But as time passed by, it got dirty and started to dry up.

To remediate (修复) the river, the government do a lot of things. They clean the river up and build levees (防洪堤) . They plant trees, grass and flowers to green the riverside. They set up fences (防护栏) and put up “No Swimming” signs along the river to protect people. They stop factories from putting waste water into the river. They keep an eye on the river to make sure it stays clean for the fish, birds and people who live nearby. They also have a long-term plan to keep the river in good condition.

Now, there are more than 20 kinds of birds living around the river. It becomes a home for birds again. People can enjoy a day outdoors with the beauty of nature along the river. Wu and other villagers are happy to see the river looking good again.

The Hutuo River’s story shows that when people work together to take care of nature, good things can happen.

6 . At an early age, we start learning how to manage money by watching our parents’ spending habits. Don’t worry if we haven’t learned well how to save or spend money. The following life lessons about money can help us form good spending habits.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. As kids, we don’t often think about where money comes from. We need to know that our parents work hard to make money, and that it may be used up one day. Going to their workplaces to watch how they work is a great way to understand money is not that easy to make.

We shouldn’t spend all our money in one go. It’s important for us to have a budget (预算) . In other words, we need to think about how much money we have and what we really want to spend it on. Realizing that our pocket money can’t cover everything we want, we should make smart spending choices.

We should set a clear goal and watch our money grow. If we wish to own a new bicycle but can’t afford it, we can save our pocket money. How? Write down how much money we have in a notebook and watch it grow. After we have enough, we can buy that wonderful bicycle we’ve dreamed about! Reaching our goal will greatly satiate us.

We can talk with our parents about how money is used and where money goes. Do you know what a bank account (账户) is? If not, communicate with our parents. We can also go to the supermarket with our parents to experience how money is spent in the real world.

Without doubt, we should treat money in a right way. Actually, learning about money isn’t a hard job. From these lessons, we can get a sense of money management and right money values step by step!

7 .

9 . Here are three back covers of the books.