Put the verbs in brackets into the correct tense form and voice.
Mismatch Wins International Reading Award Mismatch by Lensey Namioka (1) (to name) to the 2008 Reading Association Young Adults' Choices lists. Since 1987, the list (2) (to be) a trusted source of book recommendations. Used by young adults, their parents, teachers, and librarians. The books (3) (to select) by the readers themselves, so they (4) (to bind) to be popular with middle and secondary school students. Sue Hua (5) (to be) fifteen, and just (to move) from multiracial Seattle to a white-bread (6) suburb, where she (7) (to feel) like the only Asian for miles. (to meet) Andy, a handsome Asian-American Then she (8) violinist. Sue and Andy (9) (to hit) it off, and their friends (10) (to think) they (11) (to make) for each other. There (12) (to be) only one problem. Sue's family (13) (to be) Chinese-American, and Andy's (14) (to be) Japanese-American. The difference (15) (not/ to mean) anything to their friends, but to Sue's and Andy's parents it (16) (to mean) everything.
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.
Today we are preparing for Thanksgiving - it is always the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is a kind of harvest festival. This is a very old tradition in the USA. Families always spend the day together, so tonight my older sister is returning from college. Now dad is decorating the house and mom is making pumpkin pie. Tomorrow we'll have a big traditional Thanksgiving dinner with roast turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. And tomorrow afternoon we visit our cousins to give them presents. here in the USA. Did you know that people eat 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving?
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