1 . It's often said that you can judge a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves. Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago, I made a (n) _________ discovery. Pretty much all the books on my bookshelves were written by British authors, and there was _________ in translation from other languages. What a shame! So, I decided to launch my _________ reading project.

But how could I find books from much of the rest of the world? I had to ask for _________. So in February 202I, I posted a short _________ online. Within hours, people began to _________. At first, it was friends and colleagues. And soon, it was _________.

Four days later, I got a(n) _________ from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. She said she _________ my project and went to her local bookshop to __________ my Malaysian book. A few weeks later, a package which contained one book—Rafidah's choice from Malaysia reached me. At the time, I was __________ that a stranger more than 6,000miles away would help someone she would probably never __________.

Rafidah's kindness __________ to be the pattern for that year. A writer from Spain __________ emailed me an unpublished translation of his novel to me. Thanks to the kind strangers, I could read books from over 70 __________ .

3 . Lainey finished third grade. She had good grades and could read ______       grade level, but she did not like to read. On a family car trip, her Aunt Dede pulled out a copy of Harry Potter, as a surprise for her     ______. But Lainey took one look at it,       ______   her eyes, and said, “Borrrring！”

Aunt Dede, a teacher, had read the book to her students, and they loved it.     ______     the youngest children in the class were       ______   by the story. They     ______     with great interest, and then     ______     joined in grand conversations about Harry's adventures.

“How can you say it's     ______？Have you read it？” asked Aunt Dede.

“No, it's too long and it doesn't have any     ______，” complained Lainey.

“Oh, that's where you are       ______； there are lots of pictures. Every page is full of pictures; you just have to read the words to       ______     them. It's like magic.”

“Nice try, Aunt Dede，” Lainey replied     ______     from the back seat.

Another ______ was in order. “Well, if you don't want to read it, give it ______. Maybe your mum would ______ hearing the story.” The book sailed through the air to Aunt Dede and she began to read it aloud. By the end of the first chapter，______ were coming from the back seat: “Please read a little ______．”

Lainey is an example of an   ______ reader. As shown here, Lainey can become ______ about reading when ______ with literature on topics that interest her, and when the people around her model involvement in the reading process.

5 . During the coronavirus lockdown, a fifth-grade teacher contacted me asking for help. She was ________ with students not attending online class but her students all loved the story in my book. So she asked if I had any ________.

My immediate ________ was for me to do a weekly book club where I would read to the students. The idea was ________ by Mrs. Sandberg, my first teacher in America.

When I moved to America from Iran in 1972, I spoke seven words of English. Despite the language ________, I immediately loved school. My favorite part of the day was ________ lunch, when Mrs. Sandberg read to us. Her kind voice ________ me to magical places where animals could talk and where kids had grand adventures.

With this joyful ________, I started the club. At the first session, five kids ________. I read to them and tried to ________ a conversation. Whenever I asked a question, I was met with complete ________. The following week, a few more kids came; they ________ started responding, but with one-word answers. The next session, they gave ________ answers and more students participated in the conversations.

This club has quickly become the ________ of my week. I have gotten to know the students and grown fond of every single one of them. Reading out loud forces me to forget everything else for an hour. I recently wondered if our post-lunch reading hour had given Mrs. Sandberg a chance to forget her ________, too.

6 . I was always a reader. As a kid, I walked to the library several times a week and _________up late reading with a flashlight. I checked out so many books and returned them so _________ that the librarian once roared, “Don’t take home so many books _________ you’re not going to read them all.”

“But I did read them all,” I said.

I was an English major at university and went on to get a masters in literature When I created my online dating _________, I made my screen name(网名) – “missbibiliophile59595. Filling out the “favorite books” section, I let my taste in literature _________ for me: One Hundred Years of Solitude, A Moveable Feast, White Teeth, How to Read the Air.

_________, I realized it had been more than two years since I had read most of those _________. I had stopped reading gradually. I tried to _________my bookish persona (人设) .I joined book clubs that I never attended. I requested a library book everyone was reading, only to return it _________.

I still __________ the idea of reading. __________ I found a bookstore, I would linger__________   the shelves for hours as if __________ up with old friends, picking out books I had read and buying new ones. But it was __________ to me: I was becoming a person I did not know.

David was my first online __________. His profile (简介) said he liked to read, so I asked him about his last book. His face __________ and his fingers danced. David read much more than I did, about a book or two a week. We seemed a (n) __________ couple: me, a five-foot-three black woman__________   to a Caribbean mother, and him, a six foot-four white guy from Ohio. But as we got to know each other, our __________ faith and mutual love of books __________ our gaps.

7 . Like many parents, I enjoyed reading a bedtime story to my two sons each night before they went to bed. After the story was over, we would turn off the lights, and talked until they fell _________

One night after the lights were off, my 3-year-old son, Will, _________ me to tell them a story_________ by myself, not one from a book. So I _________ told him a story about the first thing that came into my _________. But to my surprise, he _________ it so much that he asked me to do that the next night.

Thus a story-telling tradition was _________ in our family. Ever since that night, they seemed not to be able to sleep without hearing one of my _________ stories. Of all the things I do for my _________ ,my storytelling is what they love most. It has created a special __________ between us. And they find that their day isn’t __________ without one of my stories, and so do I.

When I see how __________ my storytelling is in their lives, I come to realize how much our television and video-oriented (以视频为导向的) society has __________in terms of the personal connections that storytelling brings. Before the __________ of television, computers and smartphones, a family’s __________was built around storytelling. This oral (口述的) tradition was __________ from generation to generation, and many of the stories we have today originated from this tradition until someone finally __________them down.

Storytelling is used as a creative way to __________ for me. During the storytelling, I forget about the pressure of the day and enjoy the __________ time I can spend with my children. I hope that other parents can gain __________ from storytelling, too.

8 . The books in David’s schoolbag felt like bricks as he ran down the street. What he wanted to do was play basketball with Eric,_________ his mother told him he would have to return his sister’s books to the library first.

He went into the building; only a few minutes _________ closing time. He put the books into the return box. And after a brief _________ in the toilet, he would be on his way to the playground to _________ Eric.

David stepped out of the toilet and stopped in _________ — the library lights were off. The place was _________. The doors had been shut. They _________ be opened from the inside: he was trapped — in a library!

He tried to _________ a telephone call but was unable to _________. As the sun began to set, he searched for a light and found it.

__________ he could see. David wrote on a piece of paper: “__________! I’m TRAPPED inside!” and stuck it to the glass door. Surely, someone passing by would see it.

He was surprised to discover that this place was not so unpleasant, __________. Rows and rows of shelves held books, videos and music. He saw a book about Michael Jordan and took it off the shelf. He settled into a chair and started to __________.

He knew he had to__________, but now, that didn’t seem to be such a __________ thing.

10 . Emily Bhatnagar is a shy girl who has always loved reading. She says, “The books sort of became my best friends when I didn’t have one.”

When Bhatnagar was 16, her father was diagnosed (诊断) with cancer. The news was________for the family. Books became an even bigger ________, and she started thinking about families in similar situations. When her father recovered, she ________a plan to help others. “The idea came from not just great thanks that the doctors were able to ________such a miracle (奇迹),”she said, “but also a little of ________ that there were kids who were ________ the same battle.”

Bhatnagar started a ________ in her hometown. The goal was to collect books and give them to kids being ________ for cancer in local hospitals. Since the start of the book drive, which she called For Love & Buttercup, Bhatnagar has ________ more than 10,000 books.

Bhatnagar had no idea how much ________ her work would get. She started by posting on social media, asking people in her area to donate. “I was expecting maybe two or three ________ from neighbors,” she said. But it ended up blowing up, ________ when news stations began reporting it. “The public response has been super great,” her father said.

Bhatnagar continues to run the book drive, with a little help from her parents. She hopes to expand the project to ________ more kids one day. The memory of the first time she visited those children who’d ________ her books sticks with her. “It was the best ________ of my life,” she said. “I realized I wanted to do this type of work forever.”