1 . My parents said that I started reading tomato soup labels when I was two. But my earliest________are of The Poky Little Puppy, comics I found on the bookshelf. I quickly moved on to the library. I_________Little House on the Prairie and absolutely anything by Judy Blume.

I don’t know whether I read because I was curious or I was curious because I read. Probably________I do know,________, that books were my refuge (避难所). They gave me________and comfort when life was confusing or uncertain. They were a(n)________and a shelter. Books transported me to places I never________and exposed me to ideas I had never considered. I preferred Watership Down to hide-and-seek with the neighbor________. My father worried that I was turning into a recluse (孤独者), but I was________. Maybe they made me smarter. I know they provided me with________.

So, when I had my son, it surprised no one that I filled his room with________. With a certainty I didn’t know, I read to him for hours, hoping that I would________the magic to him. It did. Now he writes________about fire engines, policemen and flying birds. He is becoming a(n)________storyteller--just like his parents. I________to him through stories in a way I didn’t envision (想象).

2 . Why girls do better at school than boys?

For centuries, boys were top of the class. But these days, that’s no longer the case.

A new study by the OECD, a club of mostly   _______ countries in Europe and North America, examined how 15-year-old boys and girls performed at reading, mathematics and science. Boys still get somewhat better _______ in maths and physics, and in other science courses the genders are roughly _______. But when it comes to the students who really struggle and suffer at school, the difference is _______ : boys are 50% more likely than girls to fall short of basic standards in all three areas.

_______ are girls performing better at school than their male classmates?

First, girls read more than boys. Reading proficiency (熟练) is the basis upon which all other learning is built. When boys don’t do well in reading, their _______ in other school subjects suffers too.

Second, girls spend much more time on their homework and out-of-class learning. _______ , girls spend five and a half hours per week doing homework while boys spend a little less than four and a half hours. Researchers suggest that doing homework _______ by teachers is linked to better accomplishment in maths, reading and science. Boys, it appears, spend more of their free time in the _______ world; they are 17% more likely to play cooperative online games than girls every day. They also use the Internet more.

Third, peer_______ plays a role. A lot of boys decide early on that they are just too cool for school. They adopt a so-called concept of masculinity (男子气概) that includes a disregard for _______ , which means they’re more likely to be rude and noisy in class. Teachers mark them down for this. In anonymous (匿名的) tests, boys perform better. In fact, the gender gap in reading_______ by a third when teachers don’t know the gender of the pupil they are marking.

So what can be done to close this gap? Getting boys to do more homework and cut down on screen time would help. And offering boys a _______ to read non-fiction would help too: they’re keener on comics and newspapers. But most of all, abandoning gender stereotypes (刻板印象) would _______ all students. Boys can read much better than girls. And as we know, girls in Shanghai are good at mathematics, and they _______ boys from anywhere else in the world.