1 . In the old-fashioned town of Willowbrook, two friends named Emma and Liam shared an intimate bond. They were inseparable and spent every moment together, laughing, exploring, and creating unforgettable memories.

One cold winter morning, as the first snowflakes gently fell from the sky, Emma woke up with a stuffy nose and a sore throat. She tried to brave it and get ready for school, but her body felt weak and achy. Unwillingly, she called Liam to let him know she couldn’t make it to school that day.

Liam was concerned when he heard the tiredness in Emma’s voice. “Don’t worry, Em. I’ll take care of everything at school for you,” he assured her. Feeling grateful for Liam’s understanding, Emma forced a smile and replied, “Thank you, Liam. You’re the best friend anyone could ask for.”

After school, Liam hurried to Emma’s house, carrying a meal he had prepared for her. He knocked on the door, and Emma’s mother welcomed him with a warm smile. “Oh, Liam, you’re such a thoughtful friend,” she said.

“I brought some soup and tea for Emma. I hope it will make her feel better,” Liam replied, some concern in his eyes. Entering Emma’s room, Liam found her curled up under a blanket, looking pale but relieved to see him. “Hey, I brought some comfort food to cheer you up,” he said, setting the food on her bedside table.

Emma’s eyes lit up, and she smiled weakly. “You didn’t have to, but thank you. This means the world to me,” she whispered. Sitting by her side, Liam kept her company, chatting softly and making her laugh despite her illness. The warmth of their friendship enveloped the room, bringing a feeling of comfort to Emma’s tired soul.

As Emma regained her strength, she realized just how lucky she was to have a friend like Liam. His unwavering presence and kindness had made her recovery easier and brighter. Their friendship grew stronger with each passing day, and from that moment on, they knew they would be there for each other through thick and thin.

Golden Girl

When your mother enters her ninth decade, you make a point of being a little extra careful for any signs of decline—memory loss, repetition and the like.

Thankfully, my mother has been blessed with good health, and her mental state seems to have remained alright. But when she got inked at such an advanced age, I had to wonder.

My mother looks just like many grandmothers, short, slightly fat and white-haired. She’s rosy-cheeked and jolly, and when she laughs her eyes almost seem to disappear behind her fleshy cheeks. She comes from an old, traditional family. She was a career civil servant. In short, she didn’t do crazy suff.

That all changed a few years ago. She began to surprise my older brother and me with what she described as “independence.” At the time, we merely saw them as examples of irresponsibility and possibly age-related questionable judgment.

In early 2015, the year she turned 75, she informed us she’d booked a seven-night trip to Turkey. Alone. Because she had never been. Of course, that was astonishing. There was no way my brother and I could allow that. A shaky little old lady wandering the streets of Istanbul on her own, not speaking a word of Turkish, with no knowledge of the laws and customs of the land—it was out of the question!

She paid no attention to us. Off she went. When she returned, she told us it had been a wonderful success. As it turns out, she had barely spent any time alone after hiring a taxi driver to show her around Istanbul for a few days. He took her to open-air markets, parks, and restaurants. He introduced her to a rug(小地毯)seller named Mustafa, “a lovely fellow,” and she bought some rugs. The seller had taken her address details and promised to ship the rugs home. The seller and my mother apparently struck up quite a friendship and she had told him to please drop by if he were ever in Canada. My mother beamed as she told this story.

We couldn’t believe how naïve (幼稚) she had been and sat her down to explain that she had been tricked.

“Mustafa dropped by for a cup of tea as we used to drink a lot in Turkey.” my mother told my brother and me.

Throughout our lives, we have encountered a lot of people that have influenced us in some sense. Their effect may be for one day or a lifetime. Often, you don’t realize how much influence someone has made on you until a particular moment. The man who made a big influence on me was my father.

Three months after turning fourteen, my life was great. I was getting settled into a high school; my grades were already getting better and I was making friends.

One day, when I got back from school, I went to the sitting room and saw my parents having a conversation. They came up to me and asked me to take a seat, because they wanted to say something very important. I soon found out that my dad’s liver(肝脏) was failing and he needed an immediate transplant(器官移植). I was surprised and bewildered(不知所措的) because my father looked all right. He worked, and he didn’t seem ill. My parents said I shouldn’t be afraid, because it was going to be all right. Four months had gone by, and my father had yet to get a new liver. It looked as if his body was steadily worsening, but he kept saying, “Dear, everything will be just fine.”

It was becoming difficult for me and my family. My father had to give up work, and my mother was the sole breadwinner(养家糊口的人). I had to bear the responsibilities of cleaning up the house making food, and looking after my father when my mother was at work. I had to limit my time with my friends, because my father started coming in and out of the hospital. My concentration on the subject was beginning to slip away. So were my grades. Two days before my school spring break, my mother got a phone call from the hospital, saying my father had an accident and was in hospital. What surprised me was that my father wasn’t injured at all. Then the next day, my mother got a phone call from the doctor saying that there was a liver that matched my dad’s body and that he needed to get to the hospital immediately.

6 . A five-­year-­old dog named Kelsey has been praised as a hero for helping to save the life of her owner who slipped in the snow and broke his neck.

The man, Bob, was alone when he left his farmhouse on New Year’s Eve to collect firewood.Expecting a journey of only several meters, Bob was wearing just long johns (衬裤), a shirt and slippers when he went outside, although the temperature was around －4℃.

After the accident, he was unable to move in the snow. Fortunately, Kelsey came to his assistance.

“I was shouting for help, but my nearest neighbor is about 400 meters away, and it was 10:30 p. m.,” Bob explained. “By the next morning, my voice was gone and I couldn’t yell for help, but Kelsey didn’t stop barking.”

Kelsey’s companion kept him warm by lying on top of him. She licked his face and hands to keep him awake. “Kelsey kept barking but never left my side,” Bob recalled. “I knew I couldn’t give up and that it was my choice to stay alive.”

Bob spent 20 hours in the freezing cold. When he finally lost consciousness, his dog kept barking. Finally, hearing the barking, Bob’s neighbor discovered him at 6:30 p. m. on New Year’s Day and called the emergency services at once. When Bob arrived in hospital, his body temperature was below 21℃. However, doctors were surprised to find that he didn’t have any frostbite (冻疮). They believed it was because of Kelsey’s determination to keep him warm. Dr. Chaim Colen, the doctor who treated Bob, said, “His dog really saved him.He was very fortunate.”

Bob said he was very grateful to both Dr. Colen and his Kelsey. “They saved my life. They are truly heroes!”

As the school dress-up party was just around the corner, the school hall was full of children dressed in different shapes and colors. Some walked in as princes and princesses, some stepped in as superheroes and some made their dramatic entrance as astronauts and historical figures. But one little girl, whose name is Ellie, walked in, hiding her face and hoping nobody would take notice of her grey pants and white T-shirt.

Ellie wanted to dress up as a princess that year. Her dad had promised her a few months earlier that her costume would turn heads. But, her dad was so busy with all kinds of work that he forgot the small important things while dealing with the big important ones. When Ellie’s dad forgot to save up for her princess costume for the school dress-up party that year, she wasn’t mad at him. However, she couldn’t hold back her tears when the mean kids from her class started making fun of her. “What are you supposed to be dressed as? Ugly Ellie?” one of the boys laughed loudly. Ellie covered her ears and cried as she heard the kids crying out her latest name and laughing over and over again. Every face around her was unkind and indifferent to her sadness, making the poor girl feel more unconfident and alone.

“Follow me! Ellie!” an older voice whispered to her. It was Mr. Borges, her art teacher. He was trying to tell her something. The girl managed to escape the crowd of children and walk past them, closely following her teacher. “Wait here!” Mr. Borges told Ellie and walked away. A moment later, he returned and Ellie couldn’t help but wonder why Mr. Borges was holding a few rolls of toilet paper.

“What’s that for?” Ellie asked, confused.

What Mr. Borges did meant everything to Ellie.

8 . My name is Alice. Early last year, I was troubled by an anxiety that crippled (削弱) my ability to do anything. I felt like a storm cloud hung over me. For almost a year I struggled on, constantly staring at this wall that faced me. My perfectionist tendencies were the main root of this: I wanted to be perfect at whatever I did, which obviously in life is not possible, but it consumed me.

One day, I attended a presentation (报告) by wildlife conservationist Grant Brown at my high school. His presentation not only awed (使惊叹) and inspired me, but also helped create an inner desire to make a difference in the world. I joined a pre-presentation dinner with him and that smaller setting allowed me to slowly build up my courage to speak one-on-one with him—an idea that had seemed impossible. This contact was where my story began.

A month later, Brown invited me to attend the World Youth Wildlife Conference. Looking back, I now see that this would be the first in a series of timely opportunities that my old self would have let pass, but that this new and more confident Alice enthusiastically seized. Shortly after I received his invitation, applications to join the Youth   for Nature and the Youth for Planet groups were sent around through my high school. I decided to commit to completing the applications, and soon I was a part of a growing global team of young people working to protect nature. Each of these new steps continued to grow my confidence.

I am writing this just six months since my journey began and I’ve realized that my biggest obstacle (障碍) this whole time was myself. It was that voice in the back of my head telling me that one phrase that has stopped so many people from reaching their potential: I can’t. They say good things come to those who wait; I say: grab every opportunity with everything you have and be impatient. After all, nature does not require our patience, but our action.

10 . Sara Hinesley, who is 10, doesn’t understand why it is so remarkable that she won a national handwriting competition.

Sara, a third-grade student at St. John Regional Catholie School in Frederick, Maryland, won the 2019 Nicholas Maxim award for her cursive (草书的) handwriting.

She paints and draws, and sculpts clay. She can write in English and some Chinese. When she learnt to write in cursive this year, Sara said, she thought it was “kind of easy”. This is all despite the fact that Sara was born without hands.

To write, Sara holds her pencil between her arms and then focuses on the shapes of letters, each point and curve. “Writing in cursive feels like creating art work,” Sara said. “I like the way the letters are formed. It’s kind of art.”

Sara has never worn a prosthesis (artificial arms), and when she is offered help or a tool that might ease some tasks — such as cutting paper with scissors — she rejects it, said her mother, Cathryn Hinesley She has this independent trend where she just knows that she can do it and she'll figure out her own way. She is beautiful and strong and mighty just the way she is, and she just lives that way. She really does. She moves through life in this way that you never really see her as having a disability because she has a “can do, I-can-solve-anything attitude”

“Sara is an evidence of strong will and the human spirit,” Cathryn said. “Every day I am amazed at the things she is capable to do and that she chooses to do. She doesn't attempt to find her way to avoid s difficulty. She finds a way to finish the task.”

Sara received her national award — a medal — at an award ceremony on June 13, where she was also given a $500 prize. She is the first student from St. John’s to ever receive the Nicholas Maxim award.