B

　　In late 2003 my wife and I were newly-married couples living in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver. My three step children were all young then and they liked us to read to them. We had a good collection of children's books, including Blueberries for Sal, The Wind in the Willows and The Illustrated Works of Beatrix Potter. We also enjoyed more recent works, such as Two Cool Coyotes, The Rainbow Fish, and Walter the Farting Dog. As a result, I was immersed in the world of animal characters and their fantastic stories.

　　During that time we enjoyed taking walks to the nearby City Park, where we would watch the geese fly and the ducks swim. At one time we took a road trip to Northern California, where we spent hours hiking the trails and observing the wildlife at Point Reyes National Seashore. These experiences, together with all the stories I had read, caused my imagination for writing. When I got back to Denver after the trip, I wrote down a few children's book ideas. One of those ideas was about a bear which lived in a cave near the beach.

　　My ideas began from these early years spent on reading, traveling and hiking with the kids, but I didn't actually write the first tale until several years later. One day while I was working on a memoir（回忆录）about another family road trip we had taken, I decided to clear my mind by working on the story about the bear which lived near the beach. Later I passed the story along to a few friends and family members just for fun and they encouraged me to get it published. Within a year of its writing, and after fruitlessly turning to some local famous people for help to look for an artist, I raised money by starting a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for a professional publisher and illustrator（插画家）. Through the book's publisher, CreateSpace.com, I found my illustrator Baird.

　　Barry's Wild Ride was successfully funded in November of 2012 and was published in May of 2013. I'm excited to have the book in circulation（发行）and I hope that people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

24. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word "immersed" in Paragraph 1?

A. Absorbed. B. Occupied. C. Frustrated. D. Included. 25. According to the second paragraph the author's story was based on__________. A. his own experiences in the past years

C. his road trips and story reading B. his oral stories told to his step children

D. his past family life with his former wife 26. The author collected money in order to __________. A. help the children in poor rural areas

C. pay for advanced education for children B. buy more books for the children in the city

D. pay for the publisher and the illustrator 27. Why did the author write this text?

A. To tell us why he wanted to write children's book.

B. To show us how he created Barry's Wild Ride.

C. To share his experience in teaching children.

D. To explain how he help pay the illustrator.