1 . A man named Randy liked to look for big trees and old trees. He made maps to show where these trees were. He did not want to cut them down. He wanted people to take care of them.

Randy was told that there was a very tall tree on Vancouver Island. The tree was said to be 314 feet tall. That would make it the tallest tree in Canada. Randy started to find the tree.

But someone else found it first. It was found by a logger (伐木工). Loggers wanted to cut down Canada’s tallest tree and all the trees around it.

Randy made a path in the forest so people could see the tallest tree. The tree was so big and beautiful that it would bring them enjoyment. More and more people wanted to save that forest. Thanks to these people, that forest is now a park. Canada’s tallest tree is still there.

When Marco was a boy, he tried everything to get his father’s love and attention. He worked hard to earn exceptional marks and always tried to behave well. But he was so sensitive and shy that he always hid behind his hair, which he wore long around his face. To make it worse, Marco was naturally shorter than the other kids. This added to his already low self-confidence.

At 14, he and his younger sister Sandra moved in with their dad and his new wife. His father was busy and their communication was nonexistent. The only time his dad ever spoke to him was to be demanding or critical. He began to fear coming home from school every day, feeling desperately alone and isolated.

One day his father, tripped over Marco’s bike in the garage. The angry reaction left Marco in despair, thus crying out, “That’s it! I’m going to kill myself.”

“You don’t even have the guts!” replied his father.

For two days, all Marco could think of was wanting to die, but he didn’t want to prove his father was right. Angry and sad, Marco was stuck.

Two days later, his aunt called him. This seemed like a miracle. Aunt Ginette usually only called on his birthday. She said she had just seen some young teenagers participate in a public speaking contest and she thought about him. She told him she firmly believed he could perform on stage like those kids, since she had seen him do skits (幽默短剧) for the family at Christmas.

Marco was shocked. Him? In a public speaking contest, which was contrary to his shy personality? But Aunt Ginette was sure it was something he could do. Feeling her strong belief, Marco agreed.

All that winter, twice a week after dinner, he took three different buses in each direction for the three-hour round-trip to practice in the place where the competition would take place. Marco was taken by a feeling he never felt before. The hours and the obstacles no longer counted. The criticism from his father around his absence for after-dinner chores didn’t matter.

Four months later, the big night arrived.

With the championship, Marco’s new life started.

4 . I was talking to my friend Sandy about our children. Sandy had recently moved into the neighborhood with her four kids: Jane, Joe, Christopher, and her youngest, eighteen-month-old Kim. She seemed happy to have kids nearby, until she saw our dog, Sam.

Sam, our shiny black dog, loved to play with the kids and protect them. But Sandy had a fear of dogs, and she started to back away as Sam approached. I grabbed Sam’s collar and made him sit, trying to ease Sandy’s discomfort.

Sandy mentioned that she needed to get her kids ready to go to their grandmother’s house. Just then, her door opened and her kids rushed out. Sandy shouted at them to stay away from Sam.

The kids huddled (蜷缩) around their mom, looking at Sam cautiously (谨慎地). Emma, my daughter, showed the kids how to approach a dog slowly and properly. The kids were won over by Sam’s friendly nature, but I knew it would take some time for Sandy to change her viewpoint.

After that incident, we made sure that Sam didn’t go near our neighbors without me present. One day, when the kids were playing across the street, I noticed the eighteen-month-old baby heading towards a small hill. I saw a car approaching and shouted to everyone to watch the baby. Without hesitation, Sam rushed out the door and ran across the street towards the baby. He ran to the boy in time to gently push the baby away from the oncoming car. The kids cheered, completely unaware of the danger. They thought Sam had come to play.

Within a year, Sam had made friends with all the neighbors. Even Sandy started to warm up to Sam and would occasionally come over to give him a hug.

7 . When my son, Mark, was in the third grade, he saved all his pocket money for over three months to buy Christmas presents. The third Saturday in December Mark said he had made his list and had twenty dollars in his pocket.

I drove him to a nearby supermarket. Mark picked up a basket and went in while I waited and watched in the car. It took Mark over 45 minutes to choose his presents. Finally he came to the checkout counter and reached into his pocket for his money. It was not there! There was a hole in his pocket, but no money. Mark stood there holding his basket, tears falling down his face.

Then a surprising thing happened. A woman came up to Mark and took him in her arms. “You would help me a lot if you let me pay for you,” said the woman. “It would be the most wonderful gift you could give me. I only ask that one day you will pass it on. When you grow up, I would like you to find someone you can help. When you help others, 1 know you will feel as good about it as I do now.”

Mark took the money, dried his tears and ran back to the checkout counter as fast as he could. That year we all enjoyed our gifts almost as much as Mark enjoyed giving them to us.

I would like to say “thank you” to that very kind woman, and tell her that four years later, Mark went house to house collecting blankets and clothes for the homeless people in the fire. And I want to promise her that Mark will never forget to keep passing it on.

9 . For as long as she can remember, 13-year-old Lila Hoffa has struggled to express herself in writing. Her handwriting is sometimes _________ and disorganized, and she used to have trouble holding a _________. In her first years at school, her teachers didn’t _________ that anything was wrong. But that _________ when she met her third grade teacher, Valerie Holmgren.

“Mrs. Holmgren realized that there was something more going on than just the _________ writing problems,” Lila said. Lila was diagnosed with dysgraphia (书写困难症). So her teachers and her parents held a meeting to _________ what to do next. “We were all sitting around a long table,” Lila _______. And Mrs. Holmgren pulled out a _________ and opened up a speech-to-text program that _________ changed spoken words into typed text.

“This was a/an __________ moment for me because I realized all of the stories and the ideas that I had __________ in my head — there was an easy way to get them down onto __________,” Lila said. Lila now uses speech-to-text software every day. The first story she __________ was called “The Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Reading — AKA Me!”, which became a __________ the moment it was published.

If Holmgren were standing in front of Lila today, this is what Lila would say, “Thank you for noticing my __________ and noticing that there was so much more to me.”