1 . This Mother’s Day we asked a handful of children’s book experts and writers which stories and characters come to mind when they think about motherhood.

Runaway Bunny

by Margaret Wise Brown

Since it was first published in 1942, Brown’s Runaway Bunny has never gone out of print. It is pretty much a work of genius! Brown opened the door for parents to feel like they’re reading a story about love and caring about their children while the children are exploring their own individual identity and how close they are or separated they are from the adults in their lives.

Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse

by Walter Dean Myers

It is a collection of photographs Myers collected over the years. Myers writes, “Seeing their faces scrubbed and beaming and them dressed in their Sunday best makes me think about the hardworking parents and grandparents who have taken time to take care of their children.”

Mommy’s Hometown

by Hope Lim

This story is about a boy and his mother’s trip to her childhood home in Korea. The boy discovers the town is not how he imagined it would be. Mommy’s Hometown starts from the specific lens (镜头) of Korean culture, but has the universal feature of memory and perception.

Happy Dreams, Little Bunny

written and illustrated by Leah Hong

Happy Dreams, Little Bunny is ”a next-generation Runaway Bunny.“ Through a gentle dialogue, it guides us to find peace in our imagination and to grow in autonomy and independence.

1. Which statement of Runaway Bunny is NOT correct?

A．It has been published for 80 years.

B．It is appreciated widely.

C．It will separate adults and children.

D．It can help kids to find their individuality.

2. Whose book is the best choice for a photograph fan?

A．Margaret Wise Brown.	B．Walter Dean Myers.
C．Leah Hong.	D．Hope Lim.

3. What do these books have in common?

A．They all have no pictures.

B．They are all about Korean culture.

C．They all have gentle dialogues.

D．They are all suitable for moms and kids.

2 . “The Road Not Taken” appears as a preface to Frost’s Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916 when Europe was engulfed in World War I; the United States would enter the war a year later. Frost wrote this poem at a time when many men doubted they would ever go back to what they had left.

Actually, Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” as a joke for a friend, the poet Edward Thomas. When they went walking together. Thomas was habitually indecisive about which road they ought to take and when looking back often regretted that they should, in fact, have taken the other one. Soon after writing the poem in 1915. Frost complained to Thomas that he had read the poem to an audience of college students and that it had been “taken pretty seriously... despite doing my best to make it obvious by my manner that I was fooling. ... It is my fault.” However, Frost liked to make jokes, “I’m never more serious than when joking.”

Indeed, shortly after receiving this poem in a letter, Edward Thomas’s Army was sent to Arras, France, where he was killed two months later. When Frost sent the poem to Thomas, Thomas initially failed to realize that the poem was about him. Instead, he believed it was a serious reflection on the need for decisive action.

Frost was disappointed that the joke fell flat and wrote back insisting that the sigh at the end of the poem was “a mock sigh, hypo-critical for the fun of the thing.” The joke made Thomas angry; Thomas was hurt by this characterization of what he saw as a personal weakness — his indecisiveness, which partly sprang from his paralyzing depression. Thomas warned Frost that most readers would not understand the poem’s playfulness and wrote, “I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them and advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on.” Edward Thomas was right, and the critic David Orr has referred to “The Road Not Taken” as a poem that “at least in its first few decades came close to being reader-proof.”

1. What did the college students think of the poem?

A．It fooled them.	B．It deserved high praise.
C．It confused them in a manner.	D．It concerned something serious.

2. How did Edward Thomas react to the poem when receiving it?

A．He felt so hurt by it as to go to Arras.	B．He wrote back to criticize its mock sigh.
C．He doubted if anybody could see its fun.	D．He thought it relevant to the situation then.

3. What does the critic David Orr mean by saying “The Road Not Taken ... came close to being reader-proof”?

A．Readers were forbidden from reading the poem.

B．Readers didn’t know who to laugh at in the poem.

C．Readers might fail to appreciate the teasing in the poem.

D．Readers couldn’t appreciate the beauty described in the poem.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．A Poem Over-interpreted	B．Friendship revealed by a Poem
C．Fun of Rereading a Classic Poem	D．The Secret to Understanding a Poem

3 . On Feb. 19, the same day Harper Lee passed away, the world lost another literary giant. He was 84-year-old Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, whose masterpiece The Name of the Rose won him international fame when it was published in 1980. The novel sold more than 10 million copies in about 30 languages and was made into a movie in 1986 starring British actor Sean Connery.

A USA Today obituary (讣告) thus describes: “Eco was an author of books ranging from novels to scholarly books to essay collections; Eco was enthusiastic about the obscure as well as ordinary daily life; As a scholar, critic and novelist, he also did research on the mysterious theory of semiotics-the study of signs and symbols in language and the technical languages of the Internet.

The Name of the Rose can be seen as a much more complicated version of US writer Dan Brown’s popular novel The Da Vinci Code. The book is set in a 14th century Italian Monastery (修道院) where monks are being murdered one by one in terrible manners. Two monks who travel to the monastery try to solve the murders. The book’s mystery develops around a complex-designed library and a lost Aristotle’s book on comedy.

Although the novel is full of Latin phrases and devotes many pages to analysis of Christian beliefs and ancient philosophy, it’s a fascinating detective thriller.

Eco also wrote some harsh literary criticism. He once wrote that “books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told”.

1. What can we learn about The Name of the Rose?

A．It earned Harper Lee worldwide reputation.

B．It featured the main character Sean Connery.

C．It was translated into no more than 30 versions.

D．It had its film adaptation following the book’s publication.

2. From the USA Today obituary, which of the following can be inferred?

A．Eco not only wrote novels but also some dramas.

B．Eco was merely interested in ordinary daily life.

C．Eco was an expert in the Internet.

D．Eco was more than a novelist.

3. What does the book The Name of the Rose describe?

A．A story copied from the novel The Da Vinci Code.

B．Chain murdering in an Italian Monastery.

C．A long-lost ownerless book.

D．A complex-designed library.

4. What does the underlined quote said by Eco imply?

A．Stories are far from reality.	B．Creativity is hard to come by.
C．Some books are well worth reading.	D．Writers need to polish their language.

4 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

By 1972, Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler     1     (complete) a life-changing journey from London to Australia, and written a booklet about a portion of it: Across Asia on the Cheap. As they sat in     2     Italian restaurant tasting a few glasses of wine, they tried to dream up the name for     3     (they) new publishing company.

“Once while travelling across the sky,” said Tony,     4     (repeat) the lyrics to the song Space Captain, as sung by Joe Cocker, “this lonely planet caught my eye.” The correct words were actually “lovely planet”,     5     somehow “lonely planet” stuck… and here we are today.

Our hippy-era name must never have sounded     6     (suitable) than it does right now, if your passion for travel     7     (contain) as you avoid mixing with others. I’m so glad we can deliver you some much-needed mental escapism with this issue: to transport you between the     8     (place) and people we hope you’ll soon be encountering in person again.

Let me finish my speech by saying thank you     9     my happy and highly creative team,     10     good humour and spirit of adventure I’ve so appreciated all these years.