To improve your reading, you can try the form of readers’ theatre, a formatted script for readers to read aloud. It’s so interesting!

Cast of Characters: Narrator, Kayla, Ms. Lee, Zack

Narrator: On a sunny day in southern Texas, Ms. Lee’s students gathered in the school playground.

Ms. Lee: Tomorrow is the day of the sidewalk（人行道）chalk-art festival. The principal has allowed us to practise our wet-chalk drawing on the playground sidewalk, which will be our studio. Remember, whenever you want to draw on a sidewalk, always ask an adult in charge for permission before you draw. Now let’s review the steps of wet-chalk drawing. What do we do first?

Narrator: As the students told her the steps in order, Ms. Lee wrote them on a large pad of paper. When she finished writing, she pulled the paper off the pad and displayed the directions so everyone could read them. Then the students chose and soaked （浸湿）their pieces of chalk. Meanwhile, Kayla and Zack planned their drawing.

Kayla: Let’s draw a jungle feast. Parrots can be eating all kinds of fruit.

Zack: I’ll draw a model train carrying food to the birds.

Narrator: The students removed their pieces of chalk from the water and drew. As Zack drew a sweeping curve of train track, his hand knocked over the jar of water. He and Kayla watched water streak across their drawing.

Zack: Our drawing is ruined（毁坏）！

Kayla: Don’t be so worried! Quick, mix the water and the chalk together! Now let’s use more chalk and smear（涂抹）it around.

Narrator: Kayla and Zack worked quickly. The smeared colours looked glorious, like rich, thick frosting on a cake.

Ms. Lee: That looks great! That’s a special method you’re using, kids. Are you two interested in taking part in the chalk-art festival tomorrow? The timetable for the festival says that drawing starts at 9:00 a.m.

Kayla and Zack: Sure!

Kayla: Tomorrow we’ll pour water over our drawing on purpose.

Zack: Then we’ll know just what to do!

The monster statues (怪兽雕像) in the Forbidden City (故宫) come alive! They can move and talk. They even have their own languages. Li Xiaoyu, an 11-year-old student, joins them on an adventurous journey.

This cartoon story comes from the book series (系列) Monsters in the Forbidden City. There are many special things in the cartoon. It has real actors. Li Xiaoyu becomes a monster and gets into the world of monster statues. There are red walls, yellow roofs (房顶), and water-ink paintings.

The books’ writer is Chang Yi. When Chang was a little girl, she often heard stories of monsters in the Forbidden City from older people. She also read about them in some books. Interested in these monsters, she kept reading to find out more about them in ancient books.

As she grew up, she found that many Chinese people knew more about monsters from European and American movies and TV programs. Some loved Japanese monsters, but many of these came from China. Chinese monsters were less well-known. Chang decided to make a change by writing books. The Monsters in the Forbidden City series was born. Each chapter of the books tells the story of a monster statue in the Forbidden City.

Every morning my father buys a newspaper on his way to work. Every evening my mother looks through magazines at home. And every night, I look at the posters with photos of David Beckham and Yao Ming on my bedroom wall before I go to sleep. Can we imagine life without paper or print?

Paper was first created about 2, 000 years ago, and has been made from silk, cotton, bamboo, and, since the 19th century, from wood. People learned to write words on paper to make a book. But in those days, books could only be produced one at a time by hand. As a result, they were expensive and rare. And because there weren’t many books, few people learned to read.

Then printing was invented in China. When printing was developed greatly at the beginning of the 11th century, books could be produced more quickly and cheaply. As a result, more people learned to read. After that, knowledge and ideas spread quickly.

Today information can be received online, downloaded (下载) from the Internet rather than found in books, and information can be kept on CD-ROMs or machines such as MP3 players.

Computers are already used in classrooms, and newspapers and magazines can already be read online. So will books be replaced by computers one day? No, I don’t think the Yao Ming poster on my bedroom wall will ever be replaced (代替) by a computer two meters high!