It’s been just over a year since 9-year-old Zion Harvey received a double-hand transplant(移植), and now, what he really wants to do is playing football. “I feel happy about my new hands, and I don’t feel different. I like that now I can throw a football further than when I didn’t have hands,” he said.

The nation’s youngest hand-transplant patient has been working hard to learn how to use his new hands. He lost his hands and his feet 7 years ago after suffering from a serious infection. In August, the boy showed off his new abilities by throwing out the first ball at a baseball game. Dr. Scott Levin, team leader of Zion’s operation, said Zion was faced with the operation much braver than many adults. “I’ve never seen Zion cry,” Levin said. “He’s just an amazing boy. He has such courage and determination and gives us all inspiration.”

Zion said his courage came from the two most amazing people: his mom and his grandma. His mother, Pattie Ray, said, “It’s been a long journey but now I feel like I am living in my dream. It’s his dream, and it’s mine, too. I’m just living through him, and I’m just here to support him in any way and help him do whatever he wants to do.”

However，Zion told reporters his mom wouldn’t let him try out for football. His mom said it’s too dangerous. She also pointed out that he might be playing against little kids, not professionals, and she told him they would discuss it later. Zion tried to counter her argument. “My next goal: convince Mom to let me play football,” he said.

Two weeks ago, a 7-year-old girl, Chloe Bridgewater wrote a letter to Google, expressing her interest in working for the tech company when she gets older. “Dear Google boss, my name is Chloe and when I am bigger I would like a job with Google,” she wrote. “I also want to work in a chocolate factory and do swimming in the Olympics.” The student said she liked computers and had a tablet she played games on. She even showed off a robot game that her dad gave her.

It wasn’t long before Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, replied wit his own letter on Google website. In a letter dated Feb. 3, Pichai wrote, “Dear Chloe, I’m glad that you like computers and robots, and hope that you will continue to learn about technology. I think if you keep working hard and follow your dreams, you can accomplish everything you set your mind to. I look forward to receiving your job application when you are finished with school!”

Her father, Andy Bridgewater told ABC News he was completely shocked that his daughter received a reply. But he wasn’t surprised that she decided to write the letter in the first place. “She’s got determination. She doesn’t see the barriers that we face every day,” he explained. “If she wants to do it, she will set out to do it and nothing will stop her.”

The father remarked that his daughter began jumping up and down after receiving the letter. Still, he’s not in a rush to send his eldest daughter off to work. “Now, my daughter is confident, although she hasn’t yet fully understood that it will take more efforts than finishing her study to make it with Google,” he said.

I got aboard and sat down in my seat. It was going to be a long flight.

Around me were some  (1)  "Where are you headed?" I asked．

       "Lakes Air Base. Weˈll be there for special training, and then to the front."

       After about an hour, an announcement was made that box lunches were  (2)  for five dollars. The journey would be several hours, and I decided to buy one．

       As I   (3)  for my wallet, I heard a soldier ask his buddy if he would buy lunch. "No, that seems a lot of money for just a box lunch." I looked around at the other soldiers.  (4)   were buying lunch. I walked to the back of the plane and   (5)  the flight attendant a fifty-dollar bill. "Take box lunches to all those soldiers." I said．She seized my arms tightly．Her eyes wet with tears, she  (6)  me, " My son is a soldier in the front．．．itˈs almost like you are doing it for him."

       Picking up ten boxes, she headed to the soldiers．

       After eating, on my way to the restroom I was   (7)  by a man. "I saw what you did and I want to be   (8)  of it." With this, he handed me twenty-five dollars．

       Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming, looking at the seat numbers   (9)   he walked．When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his   (10)  , and said, "I want to  (11)  your hand." I stood and took his hand．With a loud voice he said, "I was a soldier．  (12)  , someone bought me a lunch．It was such an act of   (13)   that I never forgot." I was a little bit  (14)   when applause rang out from all of the passengers．These soldiers were giving their all for our country．I could only give them a couple of meals．

       Later, when I walked to the front of the plane to stretch my legs, a man  (15)   another twenty-five dollars in my hand．

       When we  (16)   I gathered my belongings and started to leave．A man stopped me, put something in my pocket, and walked away  (17)  a word．Another twenty-five dollars!

Seeing the soldiers   (18)  at the terminal, I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars．As I walked  (19)  to my car, I prayed for their safe  (20)  

AWelcomeGift

Dario and his mother loved their new apartment.The living room was larg enough for their piano.That night,the two of them  (1)  side by side at the piano. They played jazz music to celebrate their new home.The loud  (2)  filled the room and made them feel very happy.

The next morning,  (3)  ,their happiness disappeared.Someone had left a  (4)  under their door during the night.One of their neighbors had written to complain(抱怨) about the sound of the piano.Dario’s mother asked the building superintendent(管理员) if he knew anything about it.But he said that they were all  (5)  people and he couldn’t imagine any of them had done that.Later that morning,Dario suggested that they write a letter to their  (6)  and apologize for their playing.

“Maybe we could go and  (7)  everyone in person,”his mother said.

“What if we invited them to come here for a  (8)  instead?”Dario asked.

They both loved the  (9)  .Over the next few days,they sent out invitations and prepared desserts  (10)  their guests.They decorated the apartment with streamers(彩带) and party lights.

Finally,the day of the party  (11)  .Some guests brought presents.Others brought flowers.Some even brought desserts to  (12)  .One woman,Mrs.Gilbert,  (13)  Dario’s mother with a book of piano music by Chopin.

“I heard you playing the other night,”she said.“The sounds woke me out of bed.I  (14)  that you might play like this every night.So I wrote a short note.I hope you don’t think I disliked the playing.”

Dario’s mother smiled at Mrs.Gilbert.“I think maybe we  (15)  you an apology,”she said.“I didn’t  (16)  how late it was when we were playing.Maybe we should play some quieter music at night.”

“You play,you play!”Mrs.Gilbert said.“I like what you play!Just not so loud at night.”She pointed to the book she had given them.“These songs are not such  (17)  music.”

“These songs are beautiful music,”Dario’s mother said.“We will be  (18)  to play them in the evening.”

“And we won’t play so loud or late!”Dario said.He was already looking forward to  (19)  the new music.More than that,however,he was happy to see the big smile on his mother’s face.It gave him a feeling of  (20)  and made him feel that they were home at last.

Compassion（同情）is a desire within us to help others. With effort, we can translate compassion into actions. An experience last weekend showed me this is true. I work part-time in a supermarket across from a building for the elderly. These old people are our main customers, and it’s not hard to lose patience over their slowness. But last Sunday, one aged gentleman appeared to teach me a valuable lesson. This untidy man walked up to my register（收款机）with a box of biscuits. He said he was out of cash, had just moved into his room, and had nothing in his cupboards. He asked if we could let him have the food on trust. He promised to repay me the next day.

     I couldn’t help staring at him. I wondered what kind of person he had been ten or twenty years before, and what he would be like if luck had gone his way. I had a hurt in my heart for this kind of human soul, all alone in the world. I told him that I was sorry, but store rules didn’t allow me to do so. I felt stupid and unkind saying this, but I valued my job.

    Just then, another man, standing behind the first, spoke up. If anything, he looked more pitiable. “Charge it to me,” was all he said.

    What I had been feeling was pity. Pity is soft and safe and easy. Compassion, on the other hand, is caring in action. I thanked the second man but told him that was not allowed either. Then I reached into my pocket and paid for the biscuits myself. I reached into my pocket because these two men had reached into my heart and taught me compassion.

Each of us fails from time to time. If we are wise, we accept these failures as a   (1)   part of the learning process. But all too often as parents and teachers we disallow this  (2)  right to our children.

　 When I see a child   (3)   to this kind of pressure, I think of Donnie.

　 Donnie was my youngest third grader. His   (4)  of failure kept him from classroom games that other children enjoyed. He  (5)  answered questions — he might be wrong.

　 I tried my best to build his   (6)  . But nothing changed until midterm, when Mary Anne, a student teacher, was assigned (安排) to our classroom.

　 She was young and pretty, and she loved children. My pupils, Donnie included,  (7)  her. One morning, we were working math problems at the chalkboard. Donnie had   (8)  the problems with painstaking neatness. Pleased with his progress, I   (9)  the children with Mary Anne and went for art materials. When I returned, Donnie was in   (10)  . He’d missed the third problem.

　 My student teacher looked at me in despair. Suddenly her face  (11)  . From the desk we shared, she got a container filled with pencils.

　 “Look, Donnie,” she said, kneeling beside him and gently  (12)  the tear stained face from his arms. “I’ve got something to  (13)   you.” She removed the pencils, one at a time, and placed them on his desk.

　　“See these   (14)  , Donnie,” she continued. “They belong to Mrs. Lindstrom and me. See how the erasers are  (15)   That’s because we make mistakes too. But we erase the mistakes and try again. That’s what you   (16)  learn to do, too.”

She kissed him and stood up. “Here,” she said, “I’ll leave one of these pencils on  (17)  desk so you’ll remember that everybody makes mistakes,   (18)   teachers.” Donnie looked up with love in his eyes and a smile.

　  The pencil became Donnie’s  (19)   possession. That, together with Mary Anne’s frequent encouragement, gradually  (20)  him that it’s all right to make mistakes—as long as you erase them and try again.

Unlike other men of his time, Irish writer Oscar Wilde was showy, outspoken and unconventional. At the height of his fame, he was betrayed by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas and had to serve two years hard labor for being himself. He died three years after he came out of prison.

The work Wilde is remembered for was written over a period of less than 10 years. The Happy Prince and Other Tales was published in 1888. That volume marks the beginning of Wilde’s true creativity. However, academic criticism of Wilde’s work has too often dismissed his fairy stories as lesser works, a minor bit of sentimentalism(多愁善感).

Today, since JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, children’s literature has been repositioned as central, not secondary, shifting what children read, what we write about what children read, and what we read as adults. At last we seem to understand that imagination is ageless. Wilde’s children’s stories are splendid. In addition, it seems to me that they should be revisited as a defining part of his creative process.

“The Happy Prince” starts a new note in Wilde’s writing: loss. Fairytales always involve reversals of fortune. This works in both directions: beggars become kings, palaces collapse into shelters, the spoilt son swallows bitterness. Wilde’s own reversal of fortune from fame and money to poverty and imprisonment shares the same rapid drama. Fairytales are also and always about transformation of various kinds – frogs into princes, coal into gold – and if they are not overly moralistic, there is usually a happy ending. Wilde’s fairytale transformations turn on loss.

“The Happy Prince” is the story of a gilded(鎏金的) and jeweled statue on a column high above the town. One day, a Swallow rests at the feet of the Happy Prince, who tells him of all the suffering he can see. He asks the Swallow to take the ruby(红宝石) from his sword and give it to a poor family. The Swallow does so. The Prince begs him to stay and to strip him bit by bit of all his gold and jewels to distribute to others. The weather is getting colder and the Swallow knows he should fly to the sun. But as he takes the Prince’s jeweled eyes, he realizes that he must stay, for now the Prince is blind.

Winter comes. The Swallow dies at the feet of the Happy Prince, no longer sparkling with jewels and gold. The Mayor has the statue pulled down. As the workmen melt down the Prince they find they cannot melt his heart. They throw it on the rubbish pile next to the body of a swallow.

I don’t think anything could be closer in description than this to the criticism of Wilde and his talent by a society fascinated with appearances and indifferent to imagination. Wilde believed in the soul. The soul is often described as a bird – and if Wilde is the Happy Prince, then the Swallow is his soul, that returns to him and will not leave him.

_______ gift and sacrifice is another theme of Wilde’s fairy stories. In “The Nightingale and the Rose”, a Nightingale colors a white rose red with her own heart’s blood so that a poor student will have the most beautiful flower in the world to give to his beloved. His beloved rejects him and his rose, and the rose is thrown in the gutter(排水沟), where it is broken by a cart-wheel. As Wilde says in his letter to Douglas: “Having got hold of my life you didn’t know what to do with it… and so you broke it.”

Reason and logic are tools for understanding the world. We need a means of understanding ourselves, too. That is what imagination allows. When a child reads of a Nightingale who bleeds her song into a rose for love’s sake, or of a statue who feels the suffering of the world more keenly than the Mathematics Master who scoffs (嘲笑) at his pupils for dreaming about Angels, the child knows at once both the mystery and truth of such stories. We have all at some point in our lives been the overlooked idiot who finds a way to kill the dragon, win the treasure, marry the princess.

One night, when I was eight, my mother gently asked me a question I would never forget. “Sweetie, my company wants to   (1)   me but needs me to work in Brazil. This is like your teacher telling you that you’ve done   (2)   and allowing you to skip a grade(跳级), but you’ll have to  (3)   your friends. Would you say yes to your teacher?” She gave me a hug and asked me to think about it. I was puzzled. The question kept me   (4)   for the rest of the night. I had said “yes” but for the first time, I realized the   (5)  decisions adults had to make.

For almost four years, my mother would call us from Brazil every day. Every evening I’d   (6)   wait for the phone to ring and then tell her every detail of my day. A phone call, however, could never replace her   (7)   and it was difficult not to feel lonely at times.

During my fourth-grade Christmas break, we flew to Rio to visit her. Looking at her large   (8)   apartment, I became   (9)   how lonely my mother must have been in Brazil herself. It was then   (10)   I started to appreciate the tough choices she had to make on   (11)   family and work.   (12)   difficult decisions, she used to tell me, you wouldn’t know whether you made the right choice, but you could always make the best out of the situation, with passion and a   (13)   attitude.

Back home, I   (14)   myself that what my mother could do, I could, too. If she   (15)   to live in Rio all by herself, I, too, could learn to be   (16)  . I learnt how to take care of myself and set high but achievable   (17)  .

My mother is now back with us. But I will never forget what the  (18)   has really taught me. Sacrifices  (19)   in the end. The separation between us has proved to be a   (20)   for me.

Once upon a time there were two smart boys. Their talents were obvious from an early age. They knew they were special, and they desired that, in the future, everyone would admit how great they were.

   They developed in a different way. The first boy had a successful career. He took part in all kinds of competitions, visited the most important people and places. No one doubted that he would be the wisest and most important person in the land.

   The second boy always felt a heavy responsibility. He would feelobligedto help others. This didn’t leave him enough time to follow his dreams of greatness. He was busy looking for ways to help others. As a result, he was a much-loved and well-known person in his small circle.

   A disaster took place, spreading misery (痛苦) there. The first man had never come across anything like this, and he failed to improve the situation. The second man was used to solving all kinds of problems, and had such useful know-how in certain subjects. So the disaster hardly affected thepeople at all.His methods were adopted there, and the name of this man spread even wider. Indeed, he was elected the governor of the nation.

   The first man understood the greatest wisdom isfrom the things we do in life, from the impact (影响) we have on others, and from the need to improve ourselves. He never again took part in competitions. Instead, he always took books with him to be ready to help others.