“Earthquake!” The word flashed in my brain. A roaring sound filled my ears . I tried to slide beneath my desk. The desk did a wild tap dance, slipping and sliding towards the centre of the room. I twisted my body and grabbed at the window sill behind me, somehow kicking free of my dancing chair. I tried to stand. My legs skated away as if on a bucking escalator.
My fingers shook, grasped and held the window sill tightly. Somewhere through the roar sounded the terrified scream of some wounded animal. I looked behind me and tried to steady my gaze on the other kids but the scene was a dizzy nightmare. Some of the class was sitting in the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs and desks. One girl was screaming. A boy was trying to claw his way across the floor to the door in a crazy overarm crawl.
My grip froze me to the window sill.
I cried aloud, “I’m going to die. I’m going to die. Save me, I’ m not ready to die, I’m not ready!”
I hunched forward on my knees and pressed my face against my clenched fingers. I looked at the backs of my fingers and stupidly noticed the fragile pale hairs growing out of the pores. The fingers would soon cease to exist. Somehow the impending horror of my death was too terrible to even cry about.
Suddenly, I became aware that the rocking had ceased. Perhaps I wasn’t going to die.
72. The roaring sound was made by ______.
A. a wounded animal          B. people screaming
C. children running            D. an earthquake
73. When the narrator clenches his fingers he is ______
A. afraid     B. angry     C. injured     D. impatient
74.Pararaph Two describes the _______.
A. injuries suffered by the narrator     B. effects of a bad nightmare
C.disorder in the classroom           D. narrator’s fear of death
75. At the end of the passage there is a felling of ______.
A. panic    B. hope     C. sorrow     D.  excitement

No matter where he lives, 16-year-old Danny Lopez feels like an outsider: he is half-Mexican and half-white.

    At his private high school in wealthy northern San Diego, California, US, Lopez is too brown to fit in, whereas for the Mexican side of his family in National City, just a dozen miles from the border, he is too white to belong.

    Different from both sides, Lopez is silent in school. He focuses on his passion for baseball and working hard to improve the pitches (球场) that have kept him off the school team.

    Mexican Whiteboy, by Matt de la Pena, is about a teenager’s search for identity. It was named as one of the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 2009 by the US Young Adult Library Services Association.

    When Lopez’s mother decides to go to live with her wealthy white boyfriend in San Francisco, he chooses to spend the summer with his father’s family in San Diego. It’s a trip to explore roots and self-identity, filled with unexpected friendship.

    There he meets Uno, of mixed heritage (遗传) like himself, also with a divorced mom. Uno understands Danny’s split background and helps him improve his baseball skills. Both boys have big league dreams, but they both have to learn to come to terms with their mixed heritages before they can achieve their goals.

    Aside from discussions of racism, Mexican Whiteboy takes on other issues, such as the importance of family and the negative influence of hiding the truth. It also shows how sports can draw cultures together.

The reason why Lopez feels like an outsider lies in the fact that ___________.

A. he is a Mexican                              B. he lives in San Diego

C. he is half-white and half-Mexican           D. he studies in a private school

Most probably “Mexican Whiteboy” is a ____________.

A. book         B. club           C. newspaper         D. organization

When Lopez found it is hard for him to fit in, he ____________.

A. starts writing a book about himself

B. begins to look for identity with the help of Mexican Whiteboy

C. loses his interest in baseball

D. works in the fields in which he was kept off the school team

Lopez and Uno have a lot in common except that ____________.

A. they both have a divorced mom

B. they both have mixed heritage

C. they were both in the school baseball team

D. both of them have big league dreams

How could we have thought so wrongly of as banana peel that it always hits the garbage? Utility of anything seems to be in the eyes of the beholder. The banana peel hasn't been an exception.
What most of us looked at as waste was converted to a thing of utility by Prithwis Mukhopadlyay, a 14-year-old prodigy. This Bengali boy, nourished in the US, Lake Junior High in Woodbury, Minnesota, has come up with an idea to convert banana peels to biogas.(生物气).
It's well known that almost any organic waste can be converted to biogas. But why biogas from banana peel has hit the news is because it produced five times as much biogas as manure(粪), a commonly used source for producing biogas, in the experiments Prithwis conducted.  
He filled two airtight containers, one with manure and the other with banana peels. Then he mixed each content with water and connected them to empty jars via pipes to collect the gas produced. He placed a heater next to each jar and measured the gas collected for 60 days. His studies proved that banana peels produced five times more biogas than manure.
This project titled 'Comparison analysis: Eco-friendly source of energy for the future,' earned him a spot in Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge. This weekend, the young whiz is to showcase his research work along with 40 other finalists at Washington. "Initially, I thought of doing a project that would reduce global warming. Things changed after I visited a biogas plant in a village in India during my summer vacations. It was an amazing experience," Prithwis says.
【小题1】Why could Prithwis's finding receive the attention of the media?

Afraid that her son would be too tired, Ms. Wendy would sometimes tell the boy to skip school, but each time, Fabian would insist on going to school.
“I don’t like it because when I return to school, I don’t know what’s going on,” the 12-year-old boy explained. He suffers for SMA－a neuromuscular（神经肌肉的）disease that leads to weakness in muscles－and gets around in a wheelchair.
Fabian’s determination to excel in his studies was evident when he was disappointed that he got a total score of 236 yesterday in his Primary School Leaving Examination. He was hoping for a score of at least 240, but his mother was full of pride. “I am happy with his results. He’s very motivated,” said Ms. Wendy.
When Fabian was two months old, he was diagnosed with SMA. Ms. Wendy, who used to go to other homes to teach piano lessons, started teaching lessons at home so she could take care of her son. Fabian proved to be a fighter. Ms. Wendy said, “ He would study every day on his own even though he was weak and his spine（脊柱）was already starting to curve quite badly.”
Fabian is also active in the Singapore Disability Sports Council, where he plays boccia（滚球）, a ball sport for those who require a wheelchair due to physical disability.
At just 133cm tall and weighing 14kg, he knows that he will have to rely on others all his life. “I’m afraid that when my parents grow older, they will not be able to carry me and that there will be nobody to carry me,” said Fabian. “But for now, I feel lucky that I get to go out and do a lot of things that I thought I couldn’t.”
His dreams aren’t lofty（崇高的）either－all he want to be able to do is work and provide for his parents. “I just want to study hard so that I can be a businessman, like my dad.” He is planning to apply to study at Victoria School.
【小题1】The underlined word “it” in the second paragraph refers to ______.
A. going to school.               B. being absent from school
C. studying hard.                   D. suffering from SMA.
【小题2】We can know from the text that Fabian ______.

No matter where he lives, 16-year-old Danny Lopez feels like an outsider: he is half-Mexican and half-white.

    At his private high school in wealthy northern San Diego, California, US, Lopez is too brown to fit in, whereas for the Mexican side of his family in National City, just a dozen miles from the border, he is too white to belong.

    Different from both sides, Lopez is silent in school. He focuses on his passion for baseball and working hard to improve the pitches (球场) that have kept him off the school team.

    Mexican Whiteboy, by Matt de la Pena, is about a teenager’s search for identity. It was named as one of the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 2009 by the US Young Adult Library Services Association.

    When Lopez’s mother decides to go to live with her wealthy white boyfriend in San Francisco, he chooses to spend the summer with his father’s family in San Diego. It’s a trip to explore roots and self-identity, filled with unexpected friendship.

    There he meets Uno, of mixed heritage (遗传) like himself, also with a divorced mom. Uno understands Danny’s split background and helps him improve his baseball skills. Both boys have big league dreams, but they both have to learn to come to terms with their mixed heritages before they can achieve their goals.

    Aside from discussions of racism, Mexican Whiteboy takes on other issues, such as the importance of family and the negative influence of hiding the truth. It also shows how sports can draw cultures together.

1.The reason why Lopez feels like an outsider lies in the fact that ___________.

A. he is a Mexican                                             B. he lives in San Diego

C. he is half-white and half-Mexican            D. he studies in a private school

2.Most probably “Mexican Whiteboy” is a ____________.

A. book                 B. club               C. newspaper           D. organization

3.When Lopez found it is hard for him to fit in, he ____________.

A. starts writing a book about himself

B. begins to look for identity with the help of Mexican Whiteboy

C. loses his interest in baseball

D. works in the fields in which he was kept off the school team

4.Lopez and Uno have a lot in common except that ____________.

A. they both have a divorced mom

B. they both have mixed heritage

C. they were both in the school baseball team

D. both of them have big league dreams