I was thrilled when I was pregnant. However, I quickly ______ that the hardest part of pregnancy wasn’t tiredness or swelling but, for me, listening to person after person tell me once the baby was born, I would never read a book again, which ______ me greatly.

I’m a writer and more of a reader. Books are the ______ of my life. There are many things I can ______ give up for the ______ of motherhood, but reading isn’t one of them.

My husband ______ me, “It’s OK to do whatever you want to do. Those who quit reading after they had kids never made reading a top ______ .” Indeed, he was right.

My newborn wouldn’t sleep unless she was held. But there was a great ______ in rocking a baby who’s nursing or napping in your arms: lots of time to______ . My e-reader then became my best friend as I could hold it with one hand and download library books when I was ______ in the house. I read over 100 books in my daughter’s first year and I ______ reading with getting me through those difficult early months.

Now we’re through the unstable and unrest preschool years, and she often said, “Mama, please read me a story. It’s the only way I can ______ . ” As a mother, I’m amazed how ______ she is to know so early how to care for herself.

Should my daughter one day ______ to have a child herself, I won’t tell her that she’ll never read again. ______ I’ll remind her that people do what they want to do, and good moms take care of themselves.

Steph Clemence always intended to go to ________. But life has a ________ to throw obstacles in the way. Growing up, she was always on the move, ________ 25 different schools as her mother divorced and remarried several times.

________, she had good grades and considered herself college bound. But when her stepfather ________ tragically, paying for college became ________. She got married, found a job and tried to figure out how to ________ a life off her planned track.

The ________ came one afternoon, when she found two stapled (钉好的) pages ________ “Mrs. Clark’s Book List” in her bedroom. It was from the English teacher she’d had her ________ years, Dorothy Clark. “Some of you might not go on to higher education” Mrs. Clark said, “but you can continue to ________.” It wasn’t ________, the teacher announced, but it could be a road map.

And so it began. It was 1970. “I was ________ and determined to improve myself,” she says. Starting at the ________, she would read every book in the order they appeared.

Now Steph is 70 and she ________ did get to college. But she has only four books left. She expects to ________ them sometime in 2023.

“Each of the books has ________ something to who I am and how I see the world,” she says. “They’ve opened so many doors for me. I’m no expert, but I now have the ________ to see why things happened and what it might mean.” She wishes she could thank Mrs. Clark and share with her teacher ________ reading the works on her ________ has changed her life.

According to German novelist Heinrich Mann (1871-1950), a house without books is like a room without windows. Mann _______ pointed out the value of books, but some researchers have found evidence that people with books in their homes really do gain a window on the world.

A new study in the journal Social Science Research, publishing in October, suggests that people who grow up with more books are more likely to have educational _______, and to achieve more in life, than people who grow up without them. In the study, over 160,000 adults from 31 countries and regions were asked about the number of books there were in their homes when they were 16 years old. Then they were _______ in literacy, numeracy (计算能力) and information communication technology.

The research shows that the number of books for each household _______ greatly from country to country. _______, the number of books is 27 in Turkey, 143 in the UK and 218 in Estonia. But “the total _______ of home library size on literacy are large everywhere” , according to researcher Joann Sikorn of Australian National University in a paper based on the study.

The researcher found that people who had lower levels of secondary education but had a large number of books at home got a(n) _______ score as university graduates who grew up with only a few books.

The Guardian newspaper commented that “bookish adolescence makes for a good deal of educational advantage.”

“Reading books in a young age can _______ shortcomings not only in adult literacy but also numeracy; its impacts are _______ to additional years of education.” Sikora told Science Alert.

Apart from the educational benefits, growing up with more books also plays an important role in adult success.

“Early ________ to books in the parental home matters because books are an essential part of routines and practices that ________ lifelong cognitive (认知的)abilities”, Sikora told Science Alert. These abilities are ________ to future development.

Without doubt, the fact that we are moving toward a digital era could ________ the importance of printed books. For now, ________, “they still seem to ________ quite a large positive benefit, which shows no sign of decreasing”, researchers wrote in the paper.