Emily White was born seventeen years ago with so many birth problems in her body. Some of her organs, bones and muscles were out of shape. No one expected her to survive. She did make it but with her strange body figure, everyone could recognize her, even from a distance.

In Emily White’s hometown, there was a yearly outdoor performance in the school auditorium (大礼堂). It had been performed for so many years and actually had become one of the most important events of the Christmas season for many of the town’s people.

Many people tried out each year for it, but so many were turned away. It can only include the most excellent people in the field.

Emily had a beautiful singing voice. Last year she went to Mrs. Owens — her music teacher to ask to join in the performance. Without letting her sing, Mrs. Owens took a look at Amy’s body and said, “Child, you just don’t fit. Everyone would stare at you and that would make you uncomfortable. It would make them uncomfortable, too.”

Without singing a single note, Emily was sent back through the door of the choral room. Hurt and upset, she decided never to try out again. But Mrs. Owens then retired.

This year, there came a new music teacher, Mr. Buttler. He heard about Emily and suggested that she have a try.

Emily didn’t want to be rejected again, so she hesitated a little about it. As Emily struggled, the door was pushed open and Mr. Buttler called, “Emily, you’re next.” Although kind of nervous, Emily did as Mr. Buttler told her to do. Mr. Buttler sat by the piano to keep Emily company. When Emily finished her testing performance, she thanked Mr. Buttler and knew the result would be posted on the door of the choral room the next day.

Emily couldn’t sleep that night. She was suffering from the feelings that she didn’t fit and the great need to be accepted. By the next morning, her stomach was even in pain because of stress.

Paragraph 1: The next day, Emily nervously glanced at the list on the door of the choral room.

Paragraph 2: Finally, the day of performance came.

A rock is as big as a house. That’s how the guide book described Giant Rock. Dad said it was carried here by a glacier millions of years ago.

I was finally going to see it, on-snowshoes, with my three older cousins, my dad, and my uncle Don. I’d been snowshoeing before, and I liked the adventure of hiking through deep snow alongside wild-animal tracks. At the parking area, after putting on our snowshoes, we studied the map in the information kiosk(亭子). “We start here”, Dad said, “on the red path. Then we turn left onto the purple circle. That’s where Giant Rock is.” “Remember to stick together, guys,” Uncle Don said.

The path ran uphill alongside a stone wall. It was easy to follow because red markers were nailed to the trees and the snow had been packed down by other hikers. At the top of the hill, we turned onto the purple path, which wound back and forth, travelling through the hills and gullies. We settled into a rhythm, with Dad and everyone else in front and me in the back, crunch-crunch-crunching through the snow. My cousins were faster than I was, but I managed to keep up.

Finally, we reached a hill and saw the massive rock sitting alone in the forest. “It really is as big as a house” my cousin Josh said, gazing up. My cousins and I high-fived(举手击掌)each other and jogged down the slope until we stood at the base, breathless. Standing in the rock's giant shadow, I noticed the sun had dipped even lower. “Let’s head back,” Dad said after a few minutes.

Soon we were crunch-crunch-crunching our way home. I was a little behind the group when I noticed a set of animal tracks I didn’t recognize. I followed them off the path for a closer look. There were no claw marks, which meant they didn’t belong to a dog or a fox. Instead, they looked like tiny handprints and footprints. Must be a raccoon(小熊), I thought.

I looked around when I suddenly realized I was totally alone.

Reaching a crossroads, I tried to calm myself down, picturing the map again.

9 . Art has always been a polarizing(分化的)subject.Some people like realism,others like abstract.But do you know why some people value art in the millions,while others see the same piece as little more than a child’s finger painting?

Many consider art to be quite random in terms of our likes and dislikes.But according to new research,there may actually be a scientific reason behind our fondness for certain works.The answer lies in how a person’s brain breaks down the visuals(视觉效果)of a painting combined with their judgment.

To prove their theory,neuroscientist(神经科学家)Kiyohito Iigaya and his team from the California Institute of Technology(Caltech)gathered more than 1,300 volunteers and asked them to rate 825 different paintings from four different art genres(类型).

After analyzing the data,scientists found that the same groups of people tended to prefer similar aspects of the same paintings.These characteristics were then grouped into“low-level”features like color and blending,and“high-level”features like the emotion behind the painting.

From this experiment,Caltech’s system was then able to predict an individual’s specific taste in art and organize different works into one group,according to the paintings’features and volunteers’preferences.

In a second test,researchers repeated the experiment on six volunteers,showing each 1,000 paintings while inside an MRI—a machine that scans a person’s brain activity.The test revealed(揭示)that the different features of a painting are sent to the part of the brain that deals with valuing items,allowing someone to form their overall opinion.

Finally,the team repeated the first test on new volunteers.Again,the algorithm(算法)was able to accurately predict individuals’art preferences.According to Iigaya,this shows that the factors that contribute to whether a person likes an image are universal,not random.

Lesley Fellows,a neurologist at McGill University who studies value judgments,stated,“We know a lot about‘how’the brain carries out actions,but‘why’is far less well understood.”

10 . On September 11, 2001, I was in my fifth grade at Hutchinson Elementary School in New York. During the day, I ____ that something had happened at the Twin Towers. But nobody seemed to really ____ what was going on. It wasn’t until school let out that I realized something might be ____. My dad usually ____ me up, but he wasn’t there. My dad was a firefighter. His ____ was less than a mile from the Twin Towers.

When I got home, my mom told me that the Twin Towers had been attacked, and my dad had gone there to ____. Most of the rest of that day is unclear. I ____only bits and pieces, like my mom calling hospitals all over New York City, ____ to find my dad. Two days later, she told me that he was probably ____.

We didn’t learn exactly what had happened to my father until much later. We ____ that he had sent a radio message at 9:56 am, when he and hundreds of other ____firefighters were in the burning South Tower, trying to ____ as many people as possible. Just three minutes later, the tower ____. The other tower came crashing down about a half hour later.

17 years later, I still ____ my dad every day. He instilled(灌输) in me a ____ for my community, and his ____ encouraged me to volunteer with the 9/11 Legacy Advocates, a group made up of people who ____ family members on 9/11 like me.

When I look back. I don’t think only of the sad ____. I also remember the great acts of so many people, ____ my dad. I’m really ____ to call him my hero.