1 . I was thrilled when I was pregnant. However, I quickly ______ that the hardest part of pregnancy wasn’t tiredness or swelling but, for me, listening to person after person tell me once the baby was born, I would never read a book again, which ______ me greatly.

I’m a writer and more of a reader. Books are the ______ of my life. There are many things I can ______ give up for the ______ of motherhood, but reading isn’t one of them.

My husband ______ me, “It’s OK to do whatever you want to do. Those who quit reading after they had kids never made reading a top ______ .” Indeed, he was right.

My newborn wouldn’t sleep unless she was held. But there was a great ______ in rocking a baby who’s nursing or napping in your arms: lots of time to______ . My e-reader then became my best friend as I could hold it with one hand and download library books when I was ______ in the house. I read over 100 books in my daughter’s first year and I ______ reading with getting me through those difficult early months.

Now we’re through the unstable and unrest preschool years, and she often said, “Mama, please read me a story. It’s the only way I can ______ . ” As a mother, I’m amazed how ______ she is to know so early how to care for herself.

Should my daughter one day ______ to have a child herself, I won’t tell her that she’ll never read again. ______ I’ll remind her that people do what they want to do, and good moms take care of themselves.

5 . I grew up around books. I remember opening my parents’ _______ book Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce and thinking: They might have never opened the _______ from the sign of the dust (灰尘), and with so many obscure words in it, why did they _______ it? In spite of this, I could sense the magic of buying it, and I carried that sense of _______ into my life.

In the past, I had hundreds of books in the house. They _______ my bookshelves, and the books got in the way sometimes. They gathered around the chair where I _______ on to watch TV. They _______ the space on my ottoman (凳子) where my feet were _______ to go. I thought I needed more _______ for my books. Since my work is to write about books, I have some forms of ________. But there’s more to it than that. That is I always had the ________ of holding a book, reading a book, and buying a book.

Though many books I ________ may haven’t been read, nothing can stop me from buying them. ________, with many books around me, there will always be an opportunity (机会) for me to pick up a book ________, and it takes me back to ________ times.

6 . I was an obsessive (痴迷的) lover of books, who was ______ at two and polishing off chapter books by kindergarten. In grammar school I worked my way through the library, gradually getting less picky as the options ______. However, what I wanted to read was science fiction. It was ______ to find. A sixth-grade teacher lent me a copy of Watership Down, a(n) ______ experience.

I am sick. My symptoms (症状) are odd, and no one really knows what my ______ is. I grew weaker and more isolated, but I got a ride to the library once a week and ______ all the novels I could carry. I kept reading ______ my disability.

Later, I met a technical nonfiction writer, who explained to me how to make a living ______ for magazines. At last, something I could ______! I subscribed to Writer’s Digest but wrote a fantasy novel instead.

After ______ that first novel, I made writer friends online. I thought my life ______ at last. Here was a career path where all my reading would ______ and where my disability wouldn’t shut me out. I wrote two science fiction novels, which later got published.

It turns out that in writing science fiction being unique can be a ______, practice eventually works, and persistence (坚持不懈) is really what matters. Without ______, I wouldn’t have had anything to aspire to, and I would never have ______ something I could share with the world.

7 . Myrtle is a small sleepy town in Missouri. There’s no bank or restaurant here, but a small stone_______right next to the state highway. Half of it is a post office. The other half is a one-room_______.Rachel Luster took over this library four months ago with the_______of connecting the community to the outside world and creating a _______center for the kids.

Her first task was_______the books she felt every library must have: The Odyssey. “I looked and looked. But we didn’t have. No library in our system had one,” Luster said. So she started to use social media to_______money from people around the state and has already _______about 1, 000 new books to the library.

“While the Myrtle library_______taxpayer money, it gets only $200a month for books and supplies,” she explained. “But the library is a _______for the community because many people here do not have ________to the Internet at home and the library is the only place that people can connect to the outside world. I want to bring a sense of ________to the community.”

Luster’s library is open only three days a week. One of her ________visitors is 10-year-old Blake Brooks.

“Before________this library, my favorite activity was watching TV,” he said. “Now, as soon as I step off the school bus, I come here to________.I like to________.I’m in the books I read.”

8 . Not long ago, Linda was sitting by a hospital bed, feeling anxious. Beside her lay her 88-year-old father. His heart was ________ and he needed an operation.

What ________ her almost as much as his health was the fact that all day the two of them had engaged in nothing but ________ small talks. She and her father had always had good ________, but now all he talked about was the awful hospital food and the ________ outcomes of his illness. His once wide-ranging interests seemed to have ________ to the size of the room.

That day in the hospital, Linda’s eye fell on the ________ that people had brought as gifts and left on the table. Her father had always been a passionate reader, but lately he didn’t have the ________ or focus. She ________ a book, and started to read it out loud.

It ________ changed the mood and atmosphere. It was a ________ and a pleasure for both of them. Reading gave the daughter a way to connect with her father and help him in a situation that was ________ out of her hands. ________ allowed the father to travel on the sound of his daughter’s voice, up and out of the bed and back into the world of mature, intelligent engagement, where he ________ himself again.

In fact, almost any kind of reading to another person can be ________ to both parties, providing a joyful shared experience.

9 . Time for girls to shine

Most of us grew up reading fairy tales that start with “Once upon a time” and end with “the princess and prince lived happily ever after”. They seem to be harmless- even _________, perhaps. But in the eyes of two Italian writers, Favilli and Cavallo, this is what’s been _________ with children’s stories for years.

“Children’s books have always _________ the same since we were children,” Cavallo said. And a study also found while 80 percent of male characters in most popular children’s books have a(n) _________, only 18 percent of female characters do.

So they together wrote a book _________ only female protagonists (主角). Good Night Stories for Rebel (叛逆) Girls is an “anti- princess” book, which gives young girls role models of their own to _________.

The original book was published in December 2019, and the second volume _________ on Feb 28, 2021. Both books contain the stories of 100 extraordinary women from all over the world, and much to the_________ of children’s book writers, every one of them has a job or professional ambition. The “characters”_________ pop singer Beyonce and tennis star Serena Williams.

However, the word “rebel” may make some people feel uncomfortable, since it’s not really seen as __________. But being rebellious is__________ being independent, which many of today’s girls need to develop.

“It is important to __________ — especially if you are a woman or a girl- a rebel attitude, a rebel character, because you have to __________ harder to reach your dream and to get what you want.

And this __________ is made clear, with the book’s first page reading “To all the girls of the world, dream __________, aim higher, fight harder”.

10 . When I was a kid I didn’t like to read. I didn’t get a lot of readers _______. When I was in 3rd grade I used to get in _______ that I didn’t read and I didn’t have enough points. When I was in 4th grade I wasn’t in the gate class for the first week and then after the first week friends moved me up and _______ me because they knew I was smart.

The first school term I didn’t _______ at all because I didn’t find a book that I was _______ in, but then during winter break I _______ a book called The Series of Unfortunate Events. After a few pages I was _______ to that book. I was reading and reading it because it was suspenseful (充满悬念的). After winter break I took the _______. I got 9 out of 10. My friends were so _______ with me because I was ________ getting points and within one term I read the whole series. I was on a ________ with one of my friends named Kelly to see ________ could finish the series faster. But it was a tie ________ we finished it on the same day within one term. Then I started to read the Percy Jackson series and I also ________ that series.

Till this day my 4th grade teacher always ________ how I didn’t like reading to I was reading all the time. With determination you can do anything as long as you like what you are doing.