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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: It is never too early, or too late, to encourage a child to read. With the chill of winter upon us, the following is a list of wonderful stories with winter and or snow themes. Waiting for Winter It was written by Sebastian Meschenmoser. A little squirrel , who has never seen snow, is determined that he will not miss it this year. He gets the help of his good friends, a bear and a hedgehog, trying to stay awake until they can all see the first snowfall of winter. This book is a wonderful story to read aloud to young children or for older children to read by themselves. The Snowy Day The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a short read, but since its first publication it has been loved by millions. It tells about a beautiful story about the magic and possibility of the first snowfall of winter, which appeals to young and older children. The Polar Express Popularized by the 2004 Warner Brothers all-digital film, The Polar Express was first published in 1985. The hero of this story is a boy who is given the opportunity to receive a gift from Santa himself. A magical train appears outside his bedroom window, taking him away on a fantastic journey to the North Pole. Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree It was written by Robert E. Barry. Mr Willowby orders a lovely new Christmas tree, and when it is delivered to his home he finds it far too tall. He has the top of the tree cut off in order to make it just the right height. This book follows the treetop on its journey through the forest, where it brings the joy of the holidays for some woodland creatures. This book teaches us a valuable lesson about the joy of giving, and happiness that it can bring to the hearts of recipients . Question: Waiting for Winter and The Snowy Day are similar in that _ . - they are intended for older children and adults - they are centered around the first snowfall of winter - they are short novels and are loved by millions - they are fairy tales about talking animals
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they are centered around the first snowfall of winter

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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: The film starts out as a normal day at a typical American high school. Friends chat in the dining room and boys play football. But there's big surprise when the movie ends with two students going crazy in the school shouting and killing people. This is Elephant. It stars real school kids. American director Gus Van Sant had no ready-made lines. The student actors made up their own dialogue, with Van Sant asking them to base their characters on their own lives. Although it may not sound very high quality, the film won the Palme d'Or for Best Film and the award for Best Director at the Cannes film festival. The film is based on the shootings at a high school in the US, where two boys killed 13 people and then themselves in 1999. The title of the movie refers to the old expression about a problem that's as hard to ignore as an elephant in the house. The film takes a close look at a few hours in the lives of the victims and the killers. It shows how high school is a different experience for everyone - - fun and friendly, or hard and lonely. In many ways, the two boys, who carry out the shooting, act like ordinary kids. They joke around with one boy's mother as she serves them cakes and play the piano. But there're hints of the anger they feel inside. One of the boys is bullied at school. The other plays violent video games. But Van Sant isn't blaming their killings on either bullying or violent games. In fact, the film doesn't offer any reason for why school violence happens. "I didn't want to explain anything. It's up to the audience to draw its own conclusions," said the 51-year-old director . Question: This text is mainly written to _ . - report a school killing in a US school - tell people to be careful while in peace - introduce the film Elephant - show American school life
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introduce the film Elephant

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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: As I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page. I suppose I was an enthusiastic reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine. Then, in adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and shock my fellow students with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names; I searched the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert. Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound knowledge of post-structuralism, _ and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading. Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer.... Question: The writer enjoyed reading "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen because _ . - he thought it was important for a schoolboy to do so - he was still too young to understand other books - he believed all the real historical figures were his friends - he could imagine himself being the characters in the books
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he could imagine himself being the characters in the books