My 7-year-old daughter always has her nose in a book. She even continued reading in the car on the long drive to summer camp, where she lost the book. This is the first lost _______book in my life. In my childhood, my family had always been expected to be _______, but we were poor, and I didn’t own books. I had to borrow books. My library books lived on a _______shelf while they were mine, and it _______me when I had to return them to the library on the due day.

However, my daughter has more books now than I owned during my whole childhood. So it’s probably my _______that she didn’t cherish the books. “Sorry. I can’t find it.” My daughter said with a shrug, “We just pay $ 20 for the book. What’s the big _______?” The missing library book just met with a cold _______from her, but it met with nail-biting _______from me. I walked into the library in a deep _______as if I had lost the book.

Feeling the need to make her feel responsible for the book, I asked her to do the chores. She agreed to clean up all the pets’ houses _______my paying the library book. I’d meant the chore to be _______!

Surprisingly, she was enjoying herself. I took a picture of her lovely back. So, was I winning or losing at _______? Did I teach her the _______of keeping a library book if the picture I took shows she is working _______?

To my _______, my little girl knew what matters in her life. She could devote herself to the chores as much as books.

The Market for Self-help Books Is booming

Bookshops in China are filled with works offering advice on self-betterment. Topics range from coping with shyness (“How to Make Friends with Strangers in One Minute”)   to succeeding in business (“Financial Management in Seven Minutes”). The title of one recent bestseller urges: “Don't Opt for ________at the Stage of Life that is Meant to be Difficult”. Their popularity and ________reflect the stresses of a society in rapid flux—one in which paths to wealth are opening up in ways barely imaginable a generation ago.________statistics on China's book market are hard to find. But according to a study by Eric Hendriks-Kim, a sociologist at the University of Bonn, self-help books may ________almost one-third of China's printed-book market. In America they make up only 6% of adult non-fiction print sales, reckons NPD Group, a research firm.

Although China's leaders keep stressing the need for China to be ________, seekers of advice on how to succeed often turn to American books for guidance. In China last year the top ten self-help sellers included ________ of several American works, such as “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

Chinese readers appear more eager for such imports than people in many other countries that are ________closer to America. That may be because both China and America are “hyper-competitive”, argues Mr Hendriks-Kim, who has described this in his book. In the early 2000s a Chinese translation of “Who Moved My Cheese?”, a motivational book by an American, Dr Spencer Johnson, became so popular that a play based on it ________theatres and the Chinese word for cheese acquired a new meaning: one's own self-interest. Books proliferated (激增) in China with cheese in their ________.

China has a long tradition of reading for ________purposes. In 2018, fiction makes up 7% of sales, compared with more than 30% in Germany. “One of the most striking features of China's market for books is its absolute and passionate ________to life,” said a report in 2006 by Arts Council England. The ________education system leaves little time to develop interpersonal skills, so people, desperate for advice on how to sell themselves, turn to self-help books instead.

Perhaps the self-help industry has come full ________. ________, China's 6th-century-BC masterpiece for would-be generals, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, was arguably the self-help protolype. Its title has been echoed, consciously or otherwise, in the names of countless other books of the genre. One such is Donald Trump's “The ________ of the Deal”. Its fifth and most recent translation in China was published in 2016.

Nowadays, media and information coming so quickly on the Internet, kids are used to getting things in quick ways, but refuse to read a book.

I remember the wonderful ________ when I realized my 6-year-old niece could read. One weekend, it was bedtime and we were reading Make Way for Ducklings. She ________ a few words. I was ________ to see that she was enjoying reading. Two years later she moved in with me. Our bedtimes were filled with various stories. Now she is 11. However, she is more interested in Tik Tok than in any of the stories. And ________ she certainly can read, she really doesn’t like to unless I threaten to ________ her iPad.

As an educator and writer, this is ________ for me. To my regret, reading has become a ________ in my family.

“Don’t worry too much,” educational consultant Waldinger ________ me when I called to discuss my pain. “As digital natives, our children simply have a ________ relationship with the written word from that of us who came from the typewriter ________”, suggested Waldinger

“Kids do lots of incidental (伴随的) ________,” she told me. “Playing video games and watching a movie like Frozen with closed captions (字幕) are reading. And so is using a(n) ________ to make cookies.”

She said, “You just can’t expect kids to sit down and ________ the encyclopedia (百科全书) like we did back in the day. Accept the fact, stop ________ over reading, and just give children more ________ to read, whether digital or printed.”