Looking for something to do while waiting for the bus? 【小题1】

At 20 stops across Boston until August, you can check out digital books from the library using your smartphone. Simply scan a QR code on the blue decals (贴纸) marked “Browse, Borrow, Board” outside these stops to choose the titles you like.

【小题2】 You can choose from audiobooks, digital books, newspapers, and magazines, with a large collection of over 7,000 titles from more than 125 countries. They are mainly in English and Spanish. You are allowed to check out as many as five titles for a two-week period.

This program is part of the city’s efforts to make public transportation more enjoyable. 【小题3】 The city made three important bus routes free and added more bus lanes (车道).

The program is a team effort between the city, the library, and the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority). MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said MBTA will continue to look for ways to improve riders’ experience. 【小题4】

Boston Public Library President David Leonard said that they share the value that knowledge and transportation could both be free to all. He stressed the importance of connecting public library services with public transportation: 【小题5】 To serve people better, the library has chosen to focus on titles that are easy to enjoy on the bus.

So, the next time you find yourself waiting for the bus, take the chance to enjoy a good book from the library.

When I was in primary school, my favourite place was the library. I was the kid who got shouted at for trying to bring home sixty books at a time because I just couldn't decide which world I wanted to experience that week. I remember spending my weekends glued to a book, hungering for experiencing lives other than my own. Up until middle school, reading was a passion of mine.

Something changed after I entered high school though. All of a sudden, reading was a task that I could not avoid fast enough. The books that I read in school bored me, or even if I enjoyed the books themselves, the repetitive, challenging homework we completed about those books made me hate reading as a whole.

It wasn’t until recently that I rediscovered my love for reading. How, you may ask? Audiobooks. Last summer, I spent every morning taking long walks while listening to them, and I would find myself lost in the stories for hours. And now I'm rediscovering my passion for reading. I feel that pull again. That curiosity.

My love story with reading may have had a happy ending, but not everyone is as lucky as me. What went wrong?

What tends to happen is that students lose their love for reading because of the way many schools try to encourage children to read. For example, when a child is told to read for twenty minutes every night, they tend to read for the required amount of time and then check the task off on their list. In this way, reading has suddenly become a boring task instead of an exciting experience.

Making sure that kids keep their passion for reading will require us to rethink how we teach reading in schools and how we introduce books to children outside of school as well. There needs to be less of a focus on meeting reading requirements and more of a focus on creating an environment in which students are excited to read.

Reading with a child is a hugely important developmental activity as it helps youngsters learn new words, broadens their knowledge and provides time to bond with loved ones. So scientists wanted to see if parents and children acted differently when they read books together using traditional media compared with electronic device (电子设备).

To find out, the researchers carried out a study on 37 pairs of parents and healthy children between two and three years old. They asked them to read from three different types of media: electronic books with sound effects or animation; a basic electronic book; and a print book.

Researchers found parents and children spoke more when interacting with a paper book rather than a story on an electronic tablet (平板电脑). What’s more, parents used richer language when using print books compared with tablets. But parents were less responsive and children were less engaged with their parents when reading e-books, Munzer said. Dr Tiffany Munzer, coauthor of the study, told Newsweek: “One of the most surprising aspects is that these findings held true even when parents and children read tablet books with few distracting factors, suggesting it might be the actual tablet device that’s contributing to less conversation between parents and children.”

So should parents give up tablets when reading with their children, or is some reading better than none, regardless of the device?

“That isn’t to say there is no benefit to electronic book reading compared with doing nothing, just less compared with print books. Print books are just better for improving rich language from parents and more conversation between parents and children.” Munzer said that parents always know their children best. “So they should feel free to adjust (调整) the reading experience to what they know their children are interested in, even comics and magazines count as reading.”