1 . Alia Baker is a librarian in Iraq. Her library used to be a ____ place for all who loved books and liked to share knowledge. They ____ various matters all over the world. When the war was near, Alia was______that the fires of war would destroy the books, which are more ____ to her than mountain of gold. The books are in every language — new books, ancient books, ____ a book on the history of Iraq that is seven hundred years old.

She had asked the government for______to move the books to a _____place, but they refused. So Alia took matters into her own hands. _____, she brought books home every night,______her car late after work. Her friends came to _____her when the war broke out. Anis who owned a restaurant   ___ to hide some books. All through the_____ , Alia, Anis, his brothers and neighbours took the books from the library, _____them over the seven-foot wall and _____them in the restaurant. The books stayed hidden as the war______. Then nine days laters, a fire burned the______to the ground.

One day, the bombing stopped and the_____ left. But the war was not over yet. Alia knew that if the books were to be safe, they must be ____ again while the city was _____. So she hired a truck to bring all the books to the houses of friends in the suburbs (郊区). Now Alia waited for the war to end and ____ peace and a new library.

2 . I remember the first day when I saw Sally playing basketball. I watched in wonder as she struggled her way through the crowd of boys on the playground. She seemed so _______ , but she managed to shoot jump shots just over their heads and into the net. The boys always tried to stop her _______nobody could.

One day I asked Sally why she _______ so much. Without a moment of hesitation she said, “I want to go to college. The only way I can go is to get a _______ . I’m going to play college basketball and I want to be the best one. I believe that if I am _______ enough，I will get one. My father has told me that if the dream is big enough，the facts don’t _______. ”

I _______ her through those junior high years and into high school. Every week, she led her team to ________. One day in her senior year, I saw her sitting on the grass, her head ________ her arms. Slowly and quietly, I ________ and sat down beside her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Oh，nothing,” came a soft reply, “I am just too short. ” The ________ told her that at 165 cm she would probably never play for a top team一still less she would be ________ a scholarship--so she should stop dreaming about college.

I felt she was extremely ________ . I asked her if she had talked to her dad about it yet. She told me that her father said those coaches were ________ . They didn’t understand the ________ of a dream.

The next year, Sally was seen by a college basketball coach after a big game. She was   ________ offered a scholarship and ________ to the college team. She was going to get the college education that she had ________ and worked toward for all those years.

It’s true： if the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.