Сделайте краткий пересказ под каждой буквой, желательно с переводом. (1-2 предложения)
A. All children hurt themselves from time to time. But when
thirteen-year-old Ashlyn Blocker was younger, she had more
accidents and injuries than her friends. For example, she once
put her hands on a very hot engine and got a serious burn. She
only knew about it when she looked at her skin. She showed
her parents and they took her straight to hospital. Ashlyn
simply did not know when she injured herself.
B. When Ashlyn was a baby, her parents knew she was different:
she didn't cry. Then, when she was eight months old, they
noticed there was some blood in her eye, so they took her to see
a doctor. The doctor was shocked and confused when he looked
at Ashlyn's eye: there was a serious cut. So why wasn't the baby
girl upset? Why didn't she cry? The eye injury soon got better,
but doctors realised that Ashlyn had a very unusual medical
condition: she couldn't feel any pain.
C. This condition is very rare: only about a hundred people a
year in the USA are born with it, and many of them die because
of it. Pain is a natural warning: when you're ill or injured, your
body hurts and this tells you there's a problem. People who
can't feel pain often die young because when they break a bone
or have a problem with their heart, they just don't realise.
D. The first few years of Ashlyn's life were very difficult. She often
tripped and injured herself. Once, she broke her ankle and didn't know,
so she didn't stop running. At school, Ashlyn needed a lot of attention
to keep her safe. For example, in the playground, one teacher watched Ashlyn all the time. When other children fell over, the teachers could ask, 'Does it hurt?' But of course, with Ashlyn, it was not so simple, and the teachers had to search for cuts, bruises or other injuries.
E. When she was five, Ashlyn's story appeared in newspapers. Then
30 she had invitations to appear on TV shows and became well known.
Scientists studied the causes of her condition and found it was a
genetic disorder. For some reason, pain signals do not reach her brain.
Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no hope of a cure. And as
Ashlyn knows, a life without pain is both difficult and dangerous.
2. He hasn't given them any money. Has he given them any money?
3. You haven't brought anything for us. Have you brought anything for us?
4. I haven't taken any English books from you. Have I taken any English books from you?
5. She wasn't reading anything. Was she reading anything?
6. He hasn't written a letter to anybody. Has he written a letter to anybody?
7. Nobody by the name of Petrov lives on the third floor. Does anybody by the name of Petrov live on the third floor?
8. They don't have any English books. Do they have any English books?
9. There aren't any tall trees in front of their house. Are there any tall trees in front of their house?
10. Peter doesn't have anything in his box. Does Peter have anything in his box?
11. There aren't any parks in his town. Are there any parks in his town?
12. There aren't any good bookshops in our district. Are there any good bookshops in our district?
Contents
The Reader of Books Mr Wormwood, the Great Car Dealer
The Hat and the Superglue
The Ghost Arithmetic The Platinum-Blond Man Miss Honey
The Trunchbull The Parents Throwing the Hammer
Bruce Bogtrotter and the Cake
Lavender The Weekly Test
The First Miracle The Second Miracle Miss Honey’s Cottage
Miss Honey’s Story
The Names The Practice
The Third Miracle A New HomeThe Reader of Books
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
Some parents go further. They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius.
Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this. It’s the way of the world. It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, "Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!"
School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their
own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of doting parents. "Your son Maximilian", I would write, "is a total wash- out. I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he sure as heck won’t get a job anywhere else." Or if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, "It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing-organs in the sides of the abdomen. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she’s learnt this term, has no hearing-organs at all."
I might even delve deeper into natural history and say, "The periodical cicada spends six years as a grub underground, and no more than six days as a free creature of
sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from the chrysalis." A particularly poisonous little girl might sting me into saying, "Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface." I
think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class. But enough of that. We have to get on.
Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones. Mr and Mrs Wormwood were two such parents. They had a son called Michael and a daughter called Matilda, and the parents
looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. Mr and Mrs Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next county or even further than that.
It is bad enough when parents treat ordinary children as though they were scabs and bunions, but it becomes somehow a lot worse when the child in question is extraordinary, and by that I mean sensitive and brilliant. Matilda was both of these things, but above all she was brilliant. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of
parents. But Mr and Mrs Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter.