One day we went to pick up our grandson at his school. It was a beautiful spring day so we ________   to go to the local gardens. Normally, our grandchildren were very________   about going to the gardens, especially Mark, who was quite a(n) ________ lover and loved being out in the woods.

It ________   was a pleasant spring day, with many flowers blooming and birds singing. Despite all of this, we noticed how ________   Mark was. Kicking pebbles(卵石) along the path, he said quietly, “There is nothing   ________   about me.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Well, I am smaller than my elder brother who is cared about for being the ________ and I am bigger than my younger brother who is cared about   ________ he is the baby”.

“Ah, I see your dilemma(困境).” By Mark's ________ I knew he felt that he, the middle son, was not getting the same ________ .

We walked a little farther into the woods when Mark   ________ and asked if we could throw rocks into the stream to see which one would go the farthest.

“OK.” I said.

Then Mark picked up the largest rock he could and threw it. It didn't go very far. Mark ________ for a minute and said, “Since the big rock didn’t go very far, I am going to throw a small rock ________ .” But it didn’t go very far either. Mark was ________ .

Thinking ________ ,   I said, “Why don't you pick up a rock that is ________ the two other sized rocks and see what ________ .” I thought this was a good opportunity to use nature as a ________ .

Mark did as I said.

Mark said, “Look, the middle-sized rock went the farthest!”

I smiled at Mark. “Mark, you are like the middle rock. In this ________ the little rock was too light；the big rock was too heavy but the middle rock was just ________ .

“So, I am special?”

“Yes, Mark, everyone and everything is special, especially you.”

A long time ago, there lived a girl called Lily. When she started going to school, she was       ________. All her classmates bullied(霸凌) her for her shy behaviour. If the teacher asked any questions she would not answer because of her shyness. But she was a________student and she knew all the answers.

Out of all the subjects, her favorite subject was sports.She always________to be a football player on her school team. But the students always made fun of her. ________, she did not care what her________would say as she wanted to tell them that she could be a football player.

So during the day, Lily________her school, and at night she would practice football at her home. Her mother installed(安装)some more lights in their garden so that her daughter could     ________properly.

After practicing for long, finally, the selections for the inter-school for football competition came. Lily, without a thought________to go for it. Her classmates________her, and said, “Boo! You will not make it. Back off!”But Lily decided not to________their words.

As she began to play, everybody was________her excellent skills.The judges(裁判)were so amazed by her confident________that they not only selected Lily but also made her the team leader. Now, everybody wanted to become Lily’s friend and soon she became the________girl in the school. Lily’s story is one of the________stories for kids that help them to do their work with the right________.

One bitterly cold morning a few years back, I walked into the bathroom and turned on the water to brush my teeth. No water. In a ______, I turned to the kitchen hoping for better. No. My next step was to call my city ______ department. The voice that answered was that of someone who’d already answered the phone too many times that ______. I learned that my waterline was ______. Only one company could solve the problem, and it was booked ______ two days.

Two days later, after I got the all-clear, the guy at the water department told me, “______ you want to go through that again, open a tap and let a pencil lead stream of water ______ for the rest of the winter.”

For the next six weeks, the endless stream became an upsetting ______ of everything I didn’t know. I really had no ______ where our water came from. Or how my phone call to the water department had ______ to the water department. As I ______ out of the window, I further realized I knew nothing about the concrete sidewalk leading to our door, the lawn beneath the ______ fallen snow, the squirrels in the trees ... nothing. And these were just the things I could see through one small window. I had read a number of books about ______ across Antarctica, down the Amazon River, and up Mount Everest; I’d written books about 50,000-year-old wood buried in the ______ of New Zealand and the violin makers of Cremona, Italy — ______ I knew nothing about the world right outside my front door.