Kursor.1s.lv Labākai angļu valodas attīstīšanai

‘I want a baby,’ Aadab demanded one day, ‘and I want a baby now. I'm young and beautiful, and I'm married. I need a baby before I'm too old and past my prime.’

Her husband, Arinjay, sighed a deep sigh. ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ he said.

‘But I want it now!’ she screamed.

Eventually, Arinjay relented and the couple tried for a baby. For years they tried but nothing happened. Every day – morning, noon and night – they prayed to the gods. They also prayed to the local snake charmer, who was considered a holy man, influenced by the gods, but still there was no baby.

  *

Ants don’t have ears or noses, and even though they have mouths, they cannot speak. Instead, they have two long feelers on their head called antennae. These antennae are fantastic little tools that are very important in an ant’s daily life. Ants use them to pick up smells, to feel vibrations through the ground and to communicate with others.

Ants hardly ever sleep. Instead, they have little ‘power naps’ that last only a few minutes at a time.

*

Aharsi, the big Bengal tiger, was having a good think. It was winter and he was still getting used to the feeling of ice on the pads of his paws. He shivered a little, missing the warm ooze of mangrove mud.

Aharsi was missing lots of things. He missed the way the sun made his coat glow a regal orange, or how the glare of midday brightness made his black stripes look so bold and striking like black lightning bolts. He missed dozing in the evening heat and catching the last shafts of sunlight as they cut through the jungle vines. He wondered if he would ever again hear Doyel birds chattering in the trees, or catch the scent of ripe mangoes on the breeze. It was these fleeting, poignant moments that the Bengal tiger was trying so hard to picture in his mind. Aharsi missed his home.

*

Adam lived in a small village in the south of Poland near to the big city of Krakow. Adam’s favourite part of the day was dinner time. Not because his mother made the best food in the whole world, but because, at dinner time, the whole family would sit around the television and watch the news. No school lesson could compare to the stories Adam watched on the news: exotic looking people from different cultures, natural disasters in countries he had never visited and insights into the coolest celebrities and their extraordinary lives. It was one such story that changed Adam’s life forever ...

The camel and the fox were very good friends and very good thieves. One day, the two friends decided to cross the river so that they could travel to a nearby farm to steal food. The small fox could not swim so the camel said to his friend, ‘Climb up onto my back and I will swim across the river.’

And so the fox climbed up onto the camel’s back and the strong camel swam across the river to the other side.

When they had crossed the river, the camel and the fox made their way to the farm. When they finally arrived at the farm, the fox caught herself a chicken while the camel dug up some lovely fresh vegetables.