1 . A symbol of a booming children’s book market is a self-styled “kaleidoscope (万花筒) of creative genius for kids”, the magazine Scoop, a startup based in Dalston, east London, which the author Neil Gaiman has described as “the kind of magazine I wish we’d had when I was eight.”
Scoop is the idea of the publisher Clementine Macmillan-Scott. A year ago, hers looked like an impossible venture. But against the odds for little magazines, Scoop has survived. Macmillan-Scott said, “I really wasn’t certain we would get to this point, but we are now approaching our first birthday.” She links the magazine’s fortunes to a prosperous market and reports that “through the hundreds of children, parents and teachers we speak to at our workshops, we know that children are greedy for storytelling.”
Inspired by an Edwardian model, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Newspaperr, Scoop is a mix of innovation and creativity. Establishment heavyweights such as the playwright Tom Stoppard, plus children’s writers such as Raymond Briggs, author of Fungus the Bogeyman, have adopted its cause. The magazine has also given space to 10-year-old writers and pays all contributors, high and low, the same rate — 10p a word.
It’s a winning formula. Macmillan-Scott reports “a quarterly sales increase of roughly 150% every issue”, but is cautious about her good fortune. “It’s all too clear to us that these children are hungry for print.”
Scoop focuses on the most profitable part of the children’s market, Britain’s eight to 12-year-old readers. In literary culture, this is the crucial bridge between toddlers (儿童) and adolescents and its publisher knows it. Macmillan-Scott is committed to listening to readers aged eight to 12, who have an editorial board where they can express their ideas about the magazine. “If we don’t get these children reading,” she says, “we will lose out on adult readers. To be fully literate, you have to start as a child.”
Macmillan-Scott argues against the suggestion that reading is in decline. “If you look at our figures,” she objects, “you’ll find that children do read and that Scoop is part of a craze for reading hardback books. Kids love paper and print. They might play games on a digital device, but they prefer not to read on a Kindle. The real market for e-books is among young adult readers.” Some of her evidence is anecdotal, but her sales figures and readership surveys support a picture of eight to 12-year-olds absorbed in books.
“What our research shows beyond question,” she says, “is that children have a love for reading that’s not seriously threatened by other kinds of entertainment. Reading for pleasure is a very real thing at this age, and the worries that some adults have about children losing interest in reading are simply not grounded in reality.”
1. It can be learned from the passage that Scoop ________.| A．is aimed at teenagers in Britain |
| B．has taken a year to publish its first issue |
| C．has got its name from Arthur Mee’s newspaper |
| D．pays as much to young writers as to famous ones |
| A．conclusive | B．undeniable |
| C．defensive | D．unconvincing |
| A．Children would rather listen to stories than tell stories by themselves. |
| B．Magazines for children aged under 8 are not very common in Britain. |
| C．Scoop illustrates the power of printed books in the face of digital revolution. |
| D．Research carried out by Scoop has been questioned by those writing for children. |
| A．the market for children’s e-books remains to be explored |
| B．a child who dislikes reading won’t love reading when grown up |
| C．other kinds of entertainment have influenced children’s reading habits |
| D．it is necessary for adults to worry about children’s lack of interest in reading |
2 . Why We Still Need Newspapers
If you needed information about the past, you went to the library. If you needed information about the present or the future, you looked to the newspaper. It offers everything you need to know-news, analysis, commentary(实况转播) and practical knowledge.
The information age, which made us richer in knowledge, is now making us poorer.
During the last presidential election, however, Russian Facebook posts and Twitter blogs may have been sophisticated(复杂巧妙的) enough to affect quite a few Americans. Unfortunately, it’s going to get worse. Emerging technology can alter photographs and video without leaving obvious signs. In the future，fact and forgery(伪造) will be more indistinguishable.
While some bloggers provide thoughtful, factually accurate commentary, it is just that, commentary. Good commentary is useful, but it is not news. Similarly, websites operated by industries, think-banks, universities, governments, businesses and community groups, even when 100 percent factual, are selective in their content and biased(倾向性的) toward their own interests. Though valuable, their content presents the whole picture.
We human beings don’t really want to see the whole picture most of the time because we are motivated to seek information that we believe.
| A．Newspapers have not yet tarted to shut down in large numbers, but it is only a matter of time. |
| B．The same internet that has eased access to information is enabling the spreading of false and incomplete information. |
| C．Newspapers don’t present the whole picture either, but they take us a little closer. |
| D．But today, if you want political commentary you may go to a blog instead. |
| E．Since the dawn of mass media, newspapers, radio and television have all been used to inform and educate the public. |
| F．That’s why we must rely on trustworthy intermediaries to tell s and interpret what happened. |
