1 . His Refresh

For me, change is in the air. The snow is thawing in the town where Susan and I are living. We both got vaccinated (I’ve never been so happy to have type I diabetes, which qualified me for early shots). And by the time you read this, our daughter will have been married, surrounded by family, on a Mexican beach. Hooyah! This is the spirit of change. In this issue, you’ll find new sections meant to delight you as much as tossing rice at your grinning daughter.

A knowledge quiz. Sharpen your pencils. Brain Games now features “Fact or Fiction” (page 117) to test your recall and worldliness in equal measure. I scored six and got the bonus question only by cheating and consulting 13 Things on page 40.

A new health section. You already our sister site, thehealthy.com. Now we’re curating its content into The Healthy (page 53), full of advice, first person narratives, and medical news.

Where, OH Where? There’s nothing like seeing a gorgeous photograph shot somewhere in the country and wanting —no, needing to know where the heck it was taken. We turn that irresistible sensation into a visual quiz (page 38).

Smile-inducing news. RD editors here and around the world are always finding never-before-seen examples of charity and ingenuity. We’re rolling them into A World of Good (page 18).

Animal stories! Because who can resist? To continue the celebration of our animals’ ability to bond, Best Pet Pals (page 44) will spotlight one priceless submission to your heart’s content.

________ Finally, on page 1,we’re creating a brand-new section, hoping to offer you a friend who brings fun ideas to your kitchen table, who helps everyone laugh and cry together about what makes us all human.

Write to let me know if you have got a flashing idea for the name of this section. And thanks for reading.

1. What may this article be from?

A．Novel.

B．Newspaper.

C．Magazine.

D．Instruction book.

2. If you are confident of your knowledge of pet, and want to check your scope, which section will you mostly read?

A．A knowledge quiz.

B．A new health section.

C．Where, OH Where?

D．Animal stories!

3. If you are writing to give a name for the new section mentioned in the last paragraph, which of the following you may submit?

A．Fun Guy in Kitchen of Fantastic Food	B．A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World
C．Hooyah to Humor and Human	D．Ideas to Laugh and Cry

2 . 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

2. The word “anecdotal” (in Para 6) is closet in meaning to ________.

A．conclusive	B．undeniable
C．defensive	D．unconvincing

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

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.

4. Macmillan-Scott is most likely to agree that _______.

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

3 . Richard and Judy's book club has transformed sales figures for dozens of novels, and turned modest publishing successes into triumphs. And now the husband and wife team have turned literary talent spotters too, with competition for potential authors that could make a star of a grandmother and doctor from Bournemouth.

    1     She beat more than 4,000 other viewers who were asked to submit a summary and the first chapter to the show's Hot to Get Published contest. Her manuscript temporarily entitled The Olive Renders, was described as a love story of courage and saving from sin told by a young woman who writes from a dystopian（反面乌托邦的）future. Ms. Aziz said winning gave her “the luxury of having time to finish writing my novel” without worrying about money. Ms. Aziz, who was born in Yorkshire, has worked as a shop assistant, dental receptionist, factory packer, singer and cleaner, but her only experience of writing was as a news reporter for three years.     2    

    3     It comprised Joseph O'Connor, whose book Star of the Sea increased rapidly in sales after crazy reviews on Richard and Judy, Amanda Ross, the head of the television company which makes the show, and Maria Rejt, publishing director for Pan Macmillan, which will publish the winning story.

In a surprise move, Pan Macmillan also offered the three runners-up the chances to be published，with advances of E 20,000 each: Alison Penton Harper, 40, a mother of two from Northamptonshire; Rachel Zadok te Riele, 33, from South Africa, a waitress who lives in south London; David Fidimore, 60, who is married with two children and has with two unpublished novels and numerous short storied.     4    

A．Christine Aziz, 52, who left school at 15 with a single O-level in English, on the Channel 4 show's competition and will receive a 50,000 advance for her first novel.

B．The Channel 4 show's competition was funded by the publishing company Pan Macmillan.

C．Ms. Aziz said the money would be enough to support the rest of her life

D．Five aspiring authors made it on to the shortlist for judging by a panel.

E．She did not like the pressure of journalism, but now she must complete the work and prepare herself for sales and marketing treatment usually reserved for bestselling authors.

F．Ms. Rejt said the shortlist reflected “an extraordinary range of talent from the extremely commercial to the beautifully literary”.

4 . 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.

    1     Movie times? The theater website. Jobs? LinkedIn. Restaurant reviews? Yelp. Science breakthroughs? Glzmodo. com. Travel recommendations? Trip-advisor.com. If you want information on companies, politicians, sports teams, events, etc., you go straight to the source-websites-and skip the intermediary(中介), the newspaper.

The information age, which made us richer in knowledge, is now making us poorer.     2     In the past, the technical and visual quality of online material was a reliable indicator for determining legitimacy(合法性). Most people were not taken in by emails from “wealthy Nigerian princes” thanks to their extremely bad grammar and spelling.

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.     3    

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.

    4     The breadth and depth of the news coverage guided by professional standards that limit bias, however imperfectly, ensure readers are exposed to information that they are not looking for or expect to see.

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.