The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem (生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big plant-eater, it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna (大草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat (栖息地).

It is the elephant's great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas. In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.

Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.

What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.

Gaiman is an English author of lots of science fiction and fantasy works. His argument is that children shouldn't be discouraged from reading what adults may think of as bad books. He is dead right.

A child in a library is an explorer venturing into a land where he has no map to guide him. This is part of the excitement. Everything is new. His taste is yet unformed, and it cannot be formed until he has tried a variety of things.

Not knowing what books are good or bad, an eager child will try very different things. At the age of eleven or twelve, I still read Enid Blyton
Stevenson's Kidnapped, was happily terrified by ghost stories and desperately wanted to be Rupert of Hentzau, a most attractive evil character in literature.

A child reads for enjoyment from all sorts of books. I can't remember when I stopped reading comics like the Wizard and Hotspur, but I'm pretty sure that my reading of them continued even while I was delighted in Sherlock Holmes or in the short stories of HG Wells.

 Never say "Don't read that rubbish" or "You're too young for that". If he is really too young and the book is beyond him, he'll put it aside. If he doesn't, then he's not too young, even if he misses much that an adult reader would find in it.

The only useful thing an adult can do is to give a child a book and say, "I think you might enjoy this." Don't complain if he doesn't like it and turns to something that you think is bad.

A. Anything he reads may be attractive, too.

B. Everybody has a secret world inside of themselves.

C. For the young reader even a bad book has its own value.

D. Adults should be careful in what they say to a child about his reading.

E. Almost everyone who reads widely as an adult has read wildly as a child.

F. The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.

G. He is also a productive blogger and the point he gave in one of his blogs surely makes sense.