在一年以前开办阅读群的时候，群里有家长斥责我从别的网站上截取阅读练习资料，妄图欺骗无知群众。我当时就理直气壮地说，我能够分辨哪些是好的教材，但是要我自己编写学习材料，我还没那个本事。
但是我一直在努力尝试，我给学生们学习用的《麦琪的礼物》，《项链》，《变色龙》，《女巫的面包》等都是我自己根据文章的内容编写的阅读理解教材。我觉得我在进行英语培训的道路上又迈出了新的步伐。现在更是一发不可收拾，阅读之路从短篇小时候开始向中长篇小说进军了！之前的《杀死一只知更鸟》还有今天的《偷书贼》都是我在阅读中深受感动的片段（《偷》一书我才读了一半，就已经落了三次泪了）。我将这些只言片语修改组合，再添加上相应的阅读理解和学习写作手法的问题，奉献给我的学生们，让他们体会读书并思考的乐趣。
This time, when mayor’s wife offered Liesel The Whistler, she insisted on the girl taking it. “Please.” She almost begged. The book was held out in a tight, measured fist. “Take it. Please, take it.”
As Liesel was about to ask for the washing, the mayor’s wife gave her a final look of bathrobed sorrow. She reached into the chest of drawers and withdrew an envelope. Her voice, lumpy from lack of use, coughed out the words. “I’m sorry. It’s for your mama.”
Liesel opened the letter. In it, Mayor Heinz Hermann diplomatically outlined exactly why he had to terminate the services of Rosa Hubermann. For the most part, he explained that he would be a hypocrite if he maintained his own small luxuries while advising others to prepare for harder times.
Her sadness left her and she was overwhelmed with anger. “That bastard mayor,” she whispered. “That pathetic woman.” The fact that harder times were coming was surely the best reason for keeping Rosa employed, but no, they fired her. At any rate, she decided, they could do their own blasted washing and ironing, like normal people. Like poor people.
In her hand, The Whistler tightened.
“So you give me the book,” the girl said, “for pity—to make yourself feel better. . . .” The fact that she’d also been offered the book prior to that day mattered little.
Two steps at a time, she reached the door and banged it hard enough to hurt. She enjoyed the small fragments of pain.
Evidently, the mayor’s wife was shocked when she saw her again. Her fluffy hair was slightly wet and her wrinkles widened when she noticed the obvious fury on Liesel’s usually pallid face. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, which was handy, really, for it was Liesel who possessed the talking.
“You think,” she said, “you can buy me off with this book?” Her voice, though shaken, hooked at the woman’s throat. The glittering anger was thick and unnerving, but she toiled through it. She worked herself up even further, to the point where she needed to wipe the tears from her eyes. “You give me this Saumensch of a book and think it’ll make everything good when I go and tell my mama that we’ve just lost our last one? While you sit here in your mansion?”
“You and your husband. Sitting up here.” Now she became spiteful. More spiteful and evil than she thought herself capable.
The injury of words.
Yes, the brutality of words.
“This book,” she went on. She shoved the boy down the steps, making him fall. “I don’t want it.” The words were quieter now, but still just as hot. She threw The Whistler at the woman’s slippered feet, hearing the clack of it as it landed on the cement. “I don’t want your miserable book. . . .”
At home, as luck would have it, when Liesel walked through the door, Rosa, Liesel’s mother, was in the kitchen. “And?” she asked. “Where’s the washing?”
“No washing today,” Liesel told her.
Rosa came and sat down at the kitchen table. She knew. Suddenly, she appeared much older. Liesel imagined what she’d look like if she untied her bun, to let it fall out onto her shoulders. A gray towel of elastic hair.
“What did you do there, you little Saumensch?” The sentence was numb. She could not muster her usual venom.
“It was my fault,” Liesel answered. “Completely. I insulted the mayor’s wife and told her to stop crying over her dead son. I called her pathetic. That was when they fired you. Here.” She walked to the wooden spoons, grabbed a handful, and placed them in front of her. “Take your pick.”
Rosa touched one and picked it up, but she did not wield it. “I don’t believe you.”
Liesel was torn between distress and total mystification. The one time she desperately wanted aWatschen and
she couldn’t get one! “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mama said, and she even stood and stroked Liesel’s waxy, unwashed hair. “I know you wouldn’t say those things.”
“I said them!”
“All right, you said them.”
As Liesel left the room, she could hear the wooden spoons clicking back into position in the metal jar that held them. By the time she reached her bedroom, the whole lot of them, the jar included, were thrown to the floor.
