Have you seen the girl ________?

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       A priest（牧师） had a cat that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down．The priest persuaded, offered warm milk, et  The kitty would not come down．The tree was not strong enough to climb, so the priest decided that if he tied a rope to his car and drove away so that the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitty．He did so, checking his progress in the car frequently, then figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent enough for him to reach the kitty．But as he moved a little further forward, the rope broke．

       The tree went “boing!” and the kitty at once sailed through the air —out of sight．The priest felt terrible．He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they’d seen his kitty．Nobody had seen a lost kitty．

       So, he prayed, “God, I just give this kitty to your keeping,” and went on about his business．

       Several days later he was at the grocery store, meeting one of his church members．He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food．Now this woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, “Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?”

       She replied, “You won’t believe this,” and told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing．Then a few days before, the child begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, “Well, if God gives you a cat, you can keep it．” She told the priest, “I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat．You won’t believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes．A cat suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws spread out, and landed right in front of her．”

1.The priest drove his car to bend the tree in order to ________．

       A．get his kitty down from the tree

       B．persuade his kitty to come down

       C．offer the kitty some warm milk

       D．see if the rope was strong enough

2.The underlined sentence probably means that the priest _______．

       A．was happy he didn’t have to care for the kitty

       B．hoped his neighbors would look after his cat

       C．thought his kitty might be lost or killed

       D．didn’t want to see his kitty any more

3.Why was the priest amazed when he saw the woman had bought much cat food?

       A．Because he couldn’t imagine she had her own cat．

       B．Because the woman was his church member．

       C．Because he thought she would live on cat food．

       D．Because he knew clearly she didn’t like a cat．

4.Which may be the best title of this passage?

       A．A flying cat                                  B．A lucky girl

       C．God sent her a cat                            D．An unlucky priest

A priest（牧师） had a cat that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down．The priest persuaded, offered warm milk, etc. The kitty would not come down．The tree was not strong enough to climb, so the priest decided that if he tied a rope to his car and drove away so that the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitty．He did so, checking his progress in the car frequently, then figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent enough for him to reach the kitty．But as he moved a little further forward, the rope broke．

       The tree went “boing!” and the kitty at once sailed through the air —out of sight．The priest felt terrible．He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they’d seen his kitty．Nobody had seen a lost kitty．

       So, he prayed, “God, I just give this kitty to your keeping,” and went on about his business．

       Several days later he was at the grocery store, meeting one of his church members．He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food．Now this woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, “Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?”

       She replied, “You won’t believe this,” and told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing．Then a few days before, the child begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, “Well, if God gives you a cat, you can keep it．” She told the priest, “I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat．You won’t believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes．A cat suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws spread out, and landed right in front of her．”

1．The priest drove his car to bend the tree in order to ________．

       A．get his kitty down from the tree

       B．persuade his kitty to come down

       C．offer the kitty some warm milk

       D．see if the rope was strong enough

2．The underlined sentence probably means that the priest _______．

       A．was happy he didn’t have to care for the kitty

       B．hoped his neighbors would look after his cat

       C．thought his kitty might be lost or killed

       D．didn’t want to see his kitty any more

3．Why was the priest amazed when he saw the woman had bought much cat food?

       A．Because he couldn’t imagine she had her own cat．

       B．Because the woman was his church member．

       C．Because he thought she would live on cat food．

       D．Because he knew clearly she didn’t like a cat．

4．Which may be the best title of this passage?

       A．A flying cat                                  B．A lucky girl

       C．God sent her a cat                            D．An unlucky priest

Franz Kafka wrote that “a book must be the ax (斧子) for the frozen sea inside us. ”I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.
We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”
But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic—the giving way of dreams to fate (命运).
For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school—one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. Ds.
Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view.   About The Red Pony, one student said, “it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness.”I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), but both made sense; The interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.
Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich (充实) the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
【小题1】The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to __________.