Ma Li’s parents are going to give a birthday party for her. She’s going to be fourteen years old. Ma Li has a lot of friends. They are going to come to the party. They are girls from Ma Li’s school. There are twenty-five of them.

Ma Li’s mother is making birthday cakes for the party. They are very nice cakes. Ma Li says to her mother “Mum, you’re very nice. Thank you for your nice cakes. ” Her father is going shopping. He buys a lot of apples, bananas, oranges and pears.

It’s four o'clock in the afternoon. Now everything is ready. The party begins in thirty minutes.

One day in summer,little Jack was playing on the beach with his father.Suddenly,he saw a little tortoise moving slowly on the sand.He started to look at it carefully and began to touch it with his hand.To his surprise,the tortoise stopped moving.It pulled in its head and legs,and closed its shell tightly.He touched it again but the tortoise didn’t move at all.Jack became angry.He used a stick and tried to force it to open.

When his father saw this,he stopped him and said,“No,son,you mustn’t do that!You will kill the tortoise.You won’t get it open with a stick.”Jack was curious and asked,“Why?”

“Just wait and see,”his father replied.Then he picked up the tortoise and put it in a bag.

After they came back home,the father took the tortoise out of the bag.He put it near the fireplace.After a few minutes,the tortoise began to move a little.The tortoise stretched out its head and legs.At last,the tortoise began to crawl across the room.How excited Jack was when he saw this.

“Son,now you see,”said his father,“sometimes,you can’t force someone to do things he doesn’t like.But if you get him warm first,he will do what you want him to do.”

The deadliest wildfire in California's history broke out on November 8, 2018. It burned for 17 days and consumed 153,336 acres. In all the fire cost $16.5 billion in damage, destroying nearly 19,000 buildings, living 50,000 homes and killing 85. The beauty of this beautifully named place was gone.

Shane Grammer works as a creative director for Disney's theme parks. When his childhood friend Shane Edwards posted pictures of his white chimney--- the only part of his house to survive---Grammer felt very sad, but didn't know how to help him. And then he had an idea. "I've got to paint that chimney," he told Inside Edition. "And it was an opportunity for me to express myself and be an artist." On December 31, Grammer spent three hours spray-painting a black -and-white image of a woman on the chimney---a reminder, perhaps, of the beauty of life, or even just of life itself.

Grammer posted the image on Instagram. And many viewers said that he had really brought beauty and hope. Suddenly, Grammer realized that what he had thought was that a purely artistic expression had morphed into something deeper, the nature of true art. “When the first mural(壁画) moved so many people in this community, I knew I had to come back up,” Grammer told KRCR- TV. Over a period of three months, he returned eight times, painting 17 portraits of victims and figures of the Bible on walls, pickups, and broken buildings. "There is hope," he explains. "There is beauty in the ashes.”

Grammer's work in Paradise has now become a movement. He has traveled to many places painting murals in dark places that badly needed some light, an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico, for example. "I want to do something powerful and create art that moves people," he says.

That first painting, on the chimney in Paradise, survived only a few months -the bulldozer(推土机) is a cruel art critic. Grammer couldn't be more delighted. It means that the spirit of Paradise is rising again.