Sachar enjoyed school and was a good student, but it wasn't until high school that he really became an avid reader. After high school, he attended Antioch College in Ohio. His father died during my first semester, and he returned to California to be near his mother. During that time, he had a short but surprisingly successful career as a door-to-door selling cleaning products. He then returned to college, this time to the University of California at Berkeley where he majored in Economics. After graduating from college, he wanted to write for a living, but he needed a day job to support his living expenses, so he got a job at a sweater factory. Unfortunately a year later he was fired because he showed no enthusiasm for sweaters. His next step was to go to law school, passed the bar exam (which was required to practice law) and then did part-time legal work as he continued to write children's books. It wasn't until 1989 that his books began selling well enough that he was finally able to stop practicing law and devote himself fully to writing.

Stanley isn't a hero-type. He's a kind of pathetic kid who feels like he has no friends, feels like his life is cursed. And I think everyone can identify with that in one way or another. Stanley Yelnats is from a poor family. He’s overweight and the kids at his middle school often tease him about his size. Even his teachers sometimes make cruel comments without realizing. Stanley is not a bad kid. In fact, he has a kind and gentle heart, but one day he is arrested for a crime that he didn’t commit. Because of this, he is forced to go to Camp Green Lake. Camp Green Lake is a camp for bad boys. The philosophy of the camp is that if you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy.

Stanley is not a bad kid. He is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He has just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the day he was arrested, a bully named Derrick has taken Stanley’s notebook and, dropped it in the toilet in the boys’ restroom. By the time Stanley retrieved it, he had missed his bus and had to walk home. It was while he was walking home, carrying his notebook, that the sneakers fell from the sky. He took it as some kind of sign. 他把這突然飛來的鞋子看成是神要給他的訊息。 His father has been trying to figure out a way to recycle old sneakers, and suddenly a pair of sneakers fell on top of him, seemingly out of nowhere, like a gift from God. Naturally, he has no way of knowing that the sneakers belonged to Clyde Livingston, a very famous baseball player who had donated his old shoes for auction to raise money for the homeless shelter.

如果你覺得我的podcast對你的英文學習有幫助就請到Apple podcast 幫我按五顆星訂閱和分享。也可到李老師陪你探索英文世界的臉書和IG粉絲專頁按贊追縱或留言。

Facebook: shorturl.at/gmnDM

Instagram: shorturl.at/eyAKU

--

Hosting provided by SoundOn