Read the introductory paragraph from a student's Hero's Journey narrative. Making their first steps on the red, dusty rock, they were surprised by the lack of heat they felt. They knew all there was to know about this place—its distance from the earth, its weather, and every living thing hiding in each crevice of its surface and core. Yet, being here was different. And then they saw something coming towards them, and it looked a lot like . . . them, actually. How could that be?

Which introductory sentence would make the most effective hook for the paragraph?

a.
“Not quite the warm welcome I was expecting,” Brett said to his fellow soldier Marena, trying to mask his nervousness.
b.
Taking a look around, Brett said something funny to his fellow soldier Marena in an attempt to seem less worried.
c.
Aristotle once said that, "a man cannot become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall."
d.
Brett and Marena are two soldiers starting to explore a new environment together, and they are feeling uneasy about it.

Iback to my office after i saw the rain.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.

Ispeak without a mouth and hear without ears. i have no body, but i come alive with wind. what am i?