1 . Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland

An Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia

10 June —12 August 2019

Venue (地点) The Ian Potter Centre

Admission     Free entry

Charles Blackman is famous for his beautiful paintings of dreams. In 1956, he heard for the first time Lewis Carroll’s extraordinary tale of Alice in Wonderland—the story of a Victorian girl who falls down a rabbit hole, meets a lot of funny characters and experiences all kinds of things. At that time, Blackman’s wife was suffering from progressive blindness. The story of Alice moving through the strange situations, often disheartened by various events, was similar to his wife’s experiences. It also reflected so much of his own life. All this contributed to the completion of the Alice in Wonderland paintings.

Illustrator Workshop

Go straight to the experts for an introductory course in book illustration. The course includes an introduction to the process of illustration and its techniques, workshop exercises and group projects.

Dates Sunday 17 June &Sunday 5 Aug.10am—1pm

Venue Gas Works Arts Park

Wonderful World

Celebrate the exhibition and Children’s Book Week with special activities just for the day, including a special visit from Alice and the White Rabbit.

Date Sunday 24 June, 11am—4pm

Venue Exhibition Space, Level 3

Topsy-Turvy

Visit the exhibition or discover wonderful curiosities in artworks in the NGV Collection and make a magic world in a box. Alice and the White Rabbit will be with you. Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland will be screened.

Dates Sunday 8, 15, 22, 29 July, and Tuesday 24—Friday 27 July, 12 noon—3pm

Venue Theatre, NGV Australia

Drawing Workshop

Distortions of scale (比例失真) can make artworks strange but interesting. Find out how Charles Blackman distorted scale in his paintings to create a curious world, then experiment with scale in your own drawings. More information upon booking.

Date Friday 27 July, 10:30am—3pm

Venue Foyer, Level 3

Many people cherish the magic of Father Christmas. That is the reason     1     Letters from Father Christmas could be the perfect book for those who regard Christmas     2     a special time of year. The man who wrote these letters is one of the     3    (famous) names in English literature — J.R.R. Tolkien.

Every Christmas, an envelope with a North Pole stamp     4    (address) to Tolkien’s children. Each letter took Tolkien a long time     5    (complete). The letters told wonderful stories about Father Christmas’s life and adventures at the North Pole. The letters did, however, change as Tolkien’s children got     6    (old). The book tells us that as well as     7    (enjoy) the adventures of Father Christmas, Polar Bear and other     8    (character) at the North Pole, we can all share the true spirit of     9    (give) at Christmas time. By expressing love for his children     10     such a special way, Tolkien may indeed have been the real Father Christmas.

6 . Graham Moore is the best-selling author of The Sherlockian and the screenwriter of The Imitation Game. His new book The Last Days of Night is out now. He is talking about some of his favorite books.

Murder in Three Acts

BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

My mother is a crime fiction（侦探小说）lover and, when I was having trouble learning to read, we'd sit in my bed at home in Chicago and take it in turns to read a paragraph. It was the first book I read cover-to-cover and I later became a writer because of that experience. Not only did it give me a love of crime fiction but, more importantly, it taught me that reading can be a shared experience.

Cryptonomicon

BY NEAL STEPHENSON

This book showed me that historical fiction need not be dry, but can be lively and enjoyable. Stephenson asks readers to take science seriously, but writes the story in a funny way. I'd long known of Alan Turing, but Stephenson's technique（手法）of describing him was surprising; I saw how a writer can bring a real person to life for modern readers.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

BY JENNIFER EGAN

Egan uses a technique that I drew on when writing The Imitation Game. She tells stories from different voices and times, and uses many styles that say to readers, "I've done a lot of work, but now you have to join in and work it out for yourselves. "

With my latest book, my greatest hope is that readers will want to get other people discussing the book. I've just started the conversation.

7 . Magazines can got your students to enter the world of English speakers, read interesting articles and improve their language skills. Today we are going to introduce the most popular magazines that may come in your classes.

Students Weekly

This is a weekly magazine published by a Thai company, which has a history of 25 years. The readers of the magazine are mostly teenagers of middle level. Here you can find articles on the topics of education, entertainment, current affairs, latest events, and song lyrics. In addition, there are also some vocabulary and grammar exercises to memorize the newly learnt material.

National Geographic

The magazine is being published since 1888. It mainly contains articles about geography, science, history and world culture. Its language is a little bit complicated, and that's why this resource will suit only for higher-level students. Al part from articles, you can also find a huge collection of photos of nature.

Reader’s Digest

The magazine was founded in 1922. It is a general interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Here you will find inspiring true stories about people and what they have done, some funny moments in the lives of personalities. And you can also read articles about how to be responsible parents.

Sunset

This is a lifestyle magazine that first was published in 1898 in the USA. It focuses mainly on traveling, home and gardening, lifestyle, food and drink. The magazine is full of amazing pictures and interesting articles about places in the United States. The magazine is suitable for students with middle or higher levels.

8 . Tang Dynasty poets sang for about three centuries in different tones. There were many famous poets living in the Tang period, such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. The Poems of Tang Dynasty edited in the Qing Dynasty is a collection of more than 28,900 poems that were written by over 2,200 poets. But it didn't cover all the poems of the Tang Dynasty.

During the Tang Dynasty, poems were recited when lovers walked under the moonlight. Poems were also recited when soldiers fought on the battlefield. People recited them in the open air or at temple fairs.

Tang Dynasty poets wrote poems to win fame and also to develop their temperament   (性情). They poured out deep feelings for their friends and criticized injustice in the world through poems.

In the Tang Dynasty scholars had to be poets. Their readers were not only people of high social position but also common people. Poets recited poems, women singers sang poems and other ranks of people, including old women and children, read Tang poems. This atmosphere affected foreigners who visited the country at that time. As a result, Tang poetry was introduced to some adjacent countries, like Japan and Vietnam.

Tang poetry is a most brilliant page in the history of ancient Chinese literature. It's a miracle   (奇迹) in the cultural history of mankind. The Tang Dynasty was a powerful empire with a vast territory. It inherited     (继承)   Chinese civilization that went back to ancient times, was combined with the best of other cultures and adopted the benefits of other nations in the world. Tang poetry wasn't the only spiritual wealth created by the Tang Dynasty people. Philosophy and religion, handwriting and painting, and music and dance all gained new peaks of development. Tang poetry, however, was the jewel in the crown and its greatest achievement.

9 . After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a conclusion on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at a few in his list.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions and translations. This world-famous novel is a complex literature that one cannot resist.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

A great work that’s been repeatedly printed, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English.

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)

Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her dishonorable family to marry a wealthy man she dislikes, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world that shows the knowledge about the human heart.”

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Tom Jones is a classic English novel that gets the spirit of its age and whose characters are well-known since they have come to represent the society at that time.

Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

Jane Austen’s Emma is her most outstanding work, mixing the best parts of her early books with a deep sense of feelings.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel—a classic adventure story with supernatural elements—has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.

10 . Some of the world’s biggest companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook — didn’t exist 30 years ago. So what firms are we working for in 2050? That’ s a question put forward by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his new book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”.

He argues that because technology is changing so fast, it’ s one of the first times in human history when we don’t know what jobs will look like in the coming three decades. “So the best bet is to focus on emotional intelligence (EQ),” he said. “Information is the last thing the kids need. They have too much of it.”

In this book, he focuses on the various challenges facing us today. As he writes in the book’ s introduction: “What are today’s greatest challenges? What should we pay attention to? What should we teach our kids?” One area where these questions crop up is artificial intelligence (AI). Harari believes that AI will completely affect the job market for the next generation of workers.

His first two books — “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” — became international bestsellers, selling more than 12 million copies worldwide. They were praised by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Bill Gates. Harari’ s books, about the past and future of humanity, attract a great number of fans. Fellow Israeli, actress Natalie Portman, is a fan. So is American R&B star Janelle Monae.

As for Bill Gates, he might be Harari’s biggest fan. So when the New York Times asked him to review Harari’ s latest books, he jumped at the opportunity. “All the three books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead?” Gates wrote in his review. “So far, human history has been driven by a desire to live longer, healthier, happier lives. If science is eventually able to give that dream to most people, and large numbers of people no longer need to work, what reason will we have to get up in the morning?”