"Mummy, I don't know what to play with." Steve stops his mother, who is talking to a friend, for the fourth time. “You've got a room full of toys!" his mother says, impatiently. In fact it is the jumble of toys which is to blame for four-year-old Steve's having no interest in his dolls, cars and animals. Each morning he pours three washing baskets of toys all over his floor, pulls out something and shortly after that, he is standing at his mother's desk or following her into the kitchen saying, "Mummy, I am bored."

A family therapist(心理医生) explains why children lose interest when they have a whole “toy shop” at home. “According to their brain development, little children are not in a position to judge the quality of different kinds of things at once. There is always just one favorite toy for the moment. All the rest are left lying about." What can parents do to stop their children from being oversupplied with toys? Simply make something disappear without the child's knowledge. If he/she takes no more notice of a toy, a parent can ask if it can be stored or given away. Of course the child will always say he/she wants it then!

Lyn is the mother of four-year-old Jessie, and we like her way. A small set of shelves in her child's room holds the toys and books that are the new favourites. When it seems to her that her daughter is tired of these toys, they put them away in a box together and select some other toys from a cupboard in another room. The box of “old” toys goes into the cupboard. When her child says she is "bored", they also get something from her cupboard -- it may be something she has had for some time but because she hasn’t seen it for a while it is almost like a new toy.

Some favourite toys stay out all the time, and there is a collection of dolls which sits in the comer, but in this way Lyn has found that she has fewer toys to put away at the end of the day and her daughter always has something “fresh” to play with.

57. Steve stops his mother several times because______.

　 A. he felt uninterested in his toys　　　　　 B. he disliked his mother's friend

　 C. he didn't have enough toys to play with D. he hoped his mother would play with him

58. According to the therapist, children often say they have nothing to play with because______.

　 A. they can't play alone for a long time

　 B. they are too young to play with so many toys

　 C. they are too lazy to pick out their favourites

　 D. they don't have the ability to value too many things at a time

59. What does the underlined word "jumble" mean in Chinese?

　 A. 单一的选择　 B．杂乱的一堆　 C．普通的外观　 D．相同的形状

60. Which is the advice given to parents in the text?

　 A. Buy fewer toys for their children.

　 B. Form good habits for their children.

　 C. Put some toys away without telling their children.

　 D. Spare some time to play with their children.

Comic Books, Yes and No?

　　In our house, there are lots of comic(滑稽的) books. Some are on the table in the living room. Some are under my bed. Some are under Neal's bed.

　　Neal is my brother. He is seven, two years younger than I am.

　　Every Saturday we do our work first. Then mother lets each of us buy a comic book about animals or children.

　　We can hardly wait to get home to read them! We lie on the floor between our bed. Everything is very quiet then－until we burst out laughing. Mom calls our laughs “explosions”. I guess they sound that way to her.

　　Yesterday I heard Mrs. Easton ask Mom, “Do you really LET your boys read comic books? I must say I am surprised!” Mom said,“Of course I let them!” Then she said, “That is, I let them read comics about animals and children. Not all comic books are bad. Some are very good.”

　　“I wonder why children like comic books?” Mrs. Easton asked.

　　Mom laughed. “I really don't know,” she answered. “But we know they do!”

　　Well, no one asked me. But I could tell Mrs. Easton and mother why we like comics!

　　The ones Neal and I read are funny. The people and the animals in them are smart. They are not goody-goody (虚假的), the way they are in some stories.

　　Comic books are something like space ships. They take Neal and me to the planet Mars or to a rabbit's house. They bring us old friends and new friends. Donald and Mickey and Bugs and Elmer seem like real people to us!

　　We like comic books most of all because we never know what will happen next. In some books, you can always tell what's going to happen.

True or False

1．The stories in the comic books often make the two brothers very sad and angry.

2．The two brothers won't get new comic books before they finish doing their work every Saturday.

3．All the grown-ups know clearly why children like reading comic books.

4．The stories in comic books can take children to places they have wanted to and help them meet a lot of friends.

5．The two brothers like comic books best of all because they can always guess what will happen next.