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Sarah came running in. "Look what I found."Over the top of the paper I was reading came a crispy long
object that caused me to jump. It was a snake skin that had been shed by one of our many garden snakes.
"Isn't it beautiful?" said my wideeyed sevenyearold daughter.
I stared at the organic wrapper and thought to myself that it really wasn't that beautiful,but I have
learned never to appear uninterested with children. They see only good quality and excellence in the
world until educated otherwise.
"Why does it do this?" Sarah asked.
"Snakes shed their skin because they need to renew themselves." I explained. "Why do they need to
renew themselves?" Sarah asked.
I suddenly remembered an article on this page many years ago where the writer was expressing her
concept of renewal. She used layers of paper over a wall to describe how we hide our original selves, and
said that by peeling away those layers one by one, we see the original beneath. "We often need to shed our
skins and those coatings that we cover ourselves with." I said to my now absorbed daughter. "We outgrow
some things and find other ones unwanted or unnecessary. Tills snake no longer needs this skin. It is probably too crinkly (起皱的) for him, and he probably doesn't think he looks as smart in it as he once did."
Sarah was getting the point. As we talked, I knew that she began to understand, although slightly, that
renewal is part of progress; that we need to take a good look at ourselves, our rooms, schoolwork and
creativity, and see what we need to keep and what we need to cast off. I was careful to point out that this
is a natural consequence of their growth.
"I see, Dad." said Sarah and jumped off my lap and ran off.
I hoped she would remember this. That often, in order to find our real selves underneath the layers of
community and culture with which we cover ourselves year after year, we need to start examining these
layers. We need to gently peel some away, as we recognize them to be worthless or unnecessary; or at
best, store the ones thrown away as mementoes (念想) of our promotion to a better vitality or spirit.
1．At the first sight of the snake skin, the author was________.
A. scared
B. puzzled
C. uninterested
D. excited
2．Sarah learned from her father that renewal is________.
A. to recover the layers inside
B. to review what has been done
C. a natural part of getting mature
D. the process of finding the unwanted
3．It can be inferred from the passage that the author________.
A. dislikes the snake skin at all
B. shows concern for nature and culture
C. can grasp the chance to educate children
D. often encourages his daughter to raise questions
4．The author mainly tells the reader that________.
A. snakes cast off the layers to look smarter
B. we should renew ourselves to get improved
C. snakes shed their skins to renew themselves
D. we should explore our original nature underneath

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