Below are four of the most purchased books we covered this year.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The timeless classic picture book, from generation to generation, sold somewhere in the world every 30 seconds! A beautiful book to give as a gift for new babies, baby showers, and other new beginnings! Featuring interactive die-cut pages and beautifully illustrated pages, this board book edition is the perfect size for little hands and great for teaching counting and days of the week.
Stop Overthinking by Nick Trenton
"Overthinking is the biggest cause of unhappiness". This best seller proposes the idea that acceptance doesn't mean we agree with what happened or that we like it and shouldn't try to change it; it only means we gracefully come to terms with what we can't realistically change, so we can focus on what we can.
Eat to Beat Your Diet by William W Li
Now in Eat to Beat Your Diet, Dr. Li shows readers how adding the right foods to your diet can help reduce unhealthy body fat, and result in the kind of weight loss that can increase your lifespan and recharge you. Both informative and practical, the book offers a four-week meal plan for health seekers, easy shopping tips and more than a month of crowd-pleasing recipes.
Plantifully Lean by Kiki Nelson
In Plantifully Lean, Kiki shares more than 125 wide-ranging, plant-based, low-fat recipes and a four-week meal plan. It was written to help anyone find health and well-being, whether they aim to lose weight, or address high blood pressure. Kiki writes with warmth and includes inspiration on every page. It will help you change from the inside out.
My dog, Harvey, is always looking for something to do. He loves to fetch the ball, run after birds' shadows and bite bones. If none of those are available, he'll find something else to do. He'll chew our shoes, dig holes in the garden or take toilet paper off the roll. This is the reason we gave him a middle name: Danger.
Harvey Danger is a metaphor（暗喻）for my mind. He is like an active and creative mind. My experience with having a creative mind is that if I don't give it a task, something will turn on itself.
To be frank, several years ago, I didn't think I was creative. I was just an ordinary human sticking to my daily routine. But things changed when I came across an article written by Brene Brown. She put forward a theory I had never heard of. "There're no such beings as creative people or non-creative people. There're only people who use their creativity and people who don't, " Brown wrote. "Unused creativity is not benign. It can transform and turn into anger, sorrow, shame and depression. "
I have a mind that is all of those things combined and, if it doesn't have anything to take its attention, it will go searching for things. It tends to do negative things or find things like worries or troubles to focus on. That doesn't mean that those with creative minds need to be busily thinking all the time. What it means is that our minds need a task. It's about releasing our creative energy to keep our minds healthy.
Before I throw a ball to Harvey-because it's not only good for both of us, but also good for the garden that I don't want dug up-I'll leave you with Brown's wisdom. Just give the dog a job, and you'll have a happier life.
The power of effective marketing has a long history. In the 19th century, a new product, soap, became available to everyone in England at a low price. Every British soap producer faced fierce competition. Their answer was to focus on promotion-and to come up with attractive visuals, catchy slogans and competitions to increase sales. Yet it can all very easily go wrong.
However clever the advertisement is, a product that nobody wants is not going to sell. In the motor industry there are stories of products that the public simply did not want. In 1957, Ford introduced a new model, Edsel. Following an investment of $400 million, the company sold only 25 percent of the cars they produced and lost $350 million. Perhaps Ford's biggest mistake was to misjudge the demand from the American public. America had just entered an economic recession（衰退）, so the last thing people wanted was a large，expensive car that used a lot of fuel.
On special promotions, companies may underestimate demand and spend a lot more than they budgeted for. A classic case is that of Hoover，a vacuum（真空的）cleaner company，which offered two free air tickets to anyone who bought a vacuum cleaner for more than one hundred pounds. The tickets cost far more than the appliance. Sales increased 30% but the cost of the promotion was massive. The company lost over £40 million and in the end it was put up for sale.
Customers may find a different meaning in publicity than the promoters intended. Names, symbols and even colors are all possible danger areas. Pepsi Cola made an enormous mistake in some regions in changing the color of its vending machines to light blue, a color associated with death.
The message for successful marketing companies is never to make assumptions about your target audience. Otherwise, even creative, memorable promotion can go disastrously wrong!
B . 
C . 
D . 
Human-made plastic materials have become so essential that it can be hard to grasp that they barely existed a century ago. At my desk, I'm typing on a plastic keyboard, scrolling a plastic mouse, and picking up a plastic pen. Day after day, more plastic enters my life, whether it's a shampoo bottle or new running shoes.
The invention of synthetic（合成的）plastics in the early 1900s was a success of innovation，with chemists realizing they could orchestrate molecular structures（编排分子结构）to create materials that are lighter, stronger, brighter, cheaper, more flexible and more durable. During World War II, nylon and other plastics became essential to the war effort. When the war ended, the initial plastics industry focused on making products for everyday life.
But the overuse of plastic has become a curse, with abandoned objects blocking waterways and landfills. And when plastic does finally fall apart, tiny particles go into the environment. We've known for years that microplastics have spread into the oceans. In this issue, we report on research confirming that microplastics are also storing up in our bodies. Plastic particles have been found in human blood, in body tissues and in breast milk.
Talk about environmental pollution hitting close to home. As independent journalist Anne Pinto-Rodrigues reports, microplastics probably enter the human body through the food we eat, the water we drink and even the air we breathe. Though consuming microplastics along with lunch is frightening enough, the idea that we might be taking in invisible bits with each breath feels much more disturbing.
Researchers have only recently begun quantifying the abundance of microplastics in the air, so it's not yet clear where people face the most exposure. Also unclear is what impact, if any, microplastics have on human health. Science is full of examples of unintended consequences.
Microplastics are an unintended consequence that we can't put back into the Tupperware. Merely switching from plastic to paper bags won't fix this problem. Science now needs to determine the extent of the threat microplastics might pose and invent new ways to protect against any harms.
You've come back from your holiday and you feel amazingly recharged. Then, you open your inbox. You have hundreds, if not thousands, of unanswered emails. Suddenly, your calm starts to disappear and your blood pressure starts to rise. Yet, that's no way to start your first day at work after a holiday. Here's what you do to keep your stress to a minimum after a break.
Take this time to unpack and do some housework. Do whatever you need to do to wrap up the holiday bits and slowly start getting back into your daily routine. When you do this, you're much more likely to suffer from less stress. You will also feel more prepared going back into work.
As much as possible, limit your meetings and scheduled commitments the first week back. The worst thing you can do is have back-to-back meetings the first few days with little or no time to actually catch up on what you've missed. Keep your calendar as clear as possible and get started on categorizing your unread emails. Split them into categories like urgent, non-urgent, quick responses, and no action needed.
Up your fun the week you're back. Go out for a meal with your friends. Walk your favorite route in your neighborhood. Look at the pictures from your holiday. Hence, make a little time for play your first week back-and the weeks that follow. This will help you to feel happy and energized even though your holiday is behind you.
A. This enables you to deal with your overflowing inbox.
B. You've got a spring in your step and a smile on your face.
C. Remember, there will be plenty more holidays in the future.
D. So the first week back at work will be more tiring than usual.
E. Give yourself at least half a day before you jump back into work.
F. Then, start the urgent ones before diving into the quick responses.
G. Post-holiday blues can be very common if you go straight into all work.
Moments with Mum were painfully short because I spent most of the year at our boarding school. Yet the warmth she gave me kept us 1
However, those 2 moments gradually faded as I moved further. Soon, weekly phone calls filled with small talks were too rushed to ever 3 into real talks, real feelings. Her 4 points of view and old-fashioned advice forced me to 5 her. But the more I pulled away, the more I felt an emptiness, a 6 for the bond that had grown so lifeless. Then there came a(n) 7 .
When visiting the Art Science Museum, I signed up for a 8 drawing activity, 9 hoping producing something together would help us connect. As our creative juices flowed, our faded relationship began to 10 gradually.
"Look there!" Mum said excitedly, 11 a digital screen displaying the fish we had finished, reaching out and touching it as if doing so would bring it to life.
That momentary glimpse（瞥见）of my mother's childlike 12 , that rare instance where she let slip an inner innocence and delight at a new experience, revealed the little girl 13 her, who like me, had lost a vital connection to the 14 of adulthood and motherhood.
I stood there, misty-eyed, knowing our bond 15 again and life did come full circle.
Located in Changping District, Beijing, Juyongguan is of great military imnportance since ancient times. The two strategic (pass) in the south and north are respectively named "South Pass" and "Juyongguan". Grand mountains surround Juyongguan ; an 18km long valley, commonly known as"Guangou", (stretch) right across the middle. In Juyongguan, clear streams belt, green mountains overlap, flowers and trees bloom, and birds sing. Owing to the beautiful scenery, Juyongguan has been honored "Juyong Diecui" and one of the "Eight Great Sights of Beijing".
In the center of stylobate（柱座），there arranges the doorway through people, carriages and horses can all pass. Cloud Terrace at Juyongguan is a large-scale fine work of stone carving, (construct) in Yuan Dynasty. (initial), there were 3 white pagodas（宝塔）. Unfortunately, they (destroy) at the turning of Yuan and Ming Dynasty. Subsequently, "Tai'an Temple" was constructed on the stylobate. However, in the 41st year of Kangxi Reign in Qing Dynasty (1702), the temple suffered from fire, (leave) Cloud Terrace alone.
An overall repair was conducted to architectures in Juyongguan in 1992, restoring (it) former grandness. The (nature) landscape of Juyongguan surroundings is very attractive. Ever since Mingchang Year of Jin Dynasty, "Juyong Diecui" has been listed into "Eight Great Sights of Beijing".
The Last Easter Egg
My mom and I were in Florida during my mom's spring holiday from teaching middle school. As an anxious four-year-old, I had asked my mom several times if the Easter Bunny would be able to find us. She promised me there would be eggs.
On Easter morning, my mom and I discovered that the Easter Bunny had left eggs on the hotel's main lawn（草地）for all the kids. As we walked toward the group of adults and kids waiting for instructions, I found all of the kids were much bigger than me in the competition. It wasn't looking good. The hotel staff member in charge of the hunt explained the rules. My heart began racing as I watched some of the other kids get into a pose to start.
When the staff member yelled "GO!", all kids raced across the lawn, running from tree to tree looking for the plastic Easter eggs filled with candy. I dashed to the closest tree but did not find any eggs. I ran to a nearby sandpit（沙坑）hoping there would be an egg hidden there. But there wasn't. I looked across the lawn and saw the other kids holding up their plastic eggs and knew my chance of finding even one egg was becoming smaller by the second.
Just then my mom pointed out a palm tree across the lawn. " Look! There's One!"A shiny blue plastic egg was resting against the base of the tree. I looked up at my mom in excitement. However, she was staring in the direction of another mom, whose son was pulling candy out of an egg. The two moms were looking at one another and then at what appeared to be the last Easter egg. I had never seen my very petite（娇小的）mom before that day. She had been born with weak knees, due to an issue with her legs, and when she was in primary school she had worn special shoes to correct a foot problem.
注意：
1．续写词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
|
As they stood there staring at each other, I started running toward the Easter egg. My mom walked back to me with the Easter egg of her victory. |
