英语美文诵读有利于培养学生的英语语感,提高学生表达的准确性,丰富学生的英语口头表达内容,发展学生的英语听、说、写能力。本文是初中生经典英语美文，希望对大家有帮助!

初中生经典英语美文：Loving with an Open Hand

The other day as I talked with a friend I recalled a story that I heard this summer. "A compassionate(慈悲的) person, seeing a butterfly struggling to free itself from its cocoon(茧) , and wanting to help, very gently loosened the filaments to form an opening. The butterfly was freed, emerged from the cocoon, and fluttered about but could not fly. What the compassionate person did not know was that only through the birth struggle can the wings grow strong enough for flight. Its shortened life was spent on the ground; it never knew freedom, never really lived."

I call it learning to love with an open hand. It is a learning which has come slowly to me and has been wrought in the fires of pain and in the waters of patience. I am learning that I must free the one I love, for if I clutch(抓住) or cling, try to control, I lose what I try to hold.

If I try to change someone I love because I feel I know how that person should be, I rob him or her of a precious right, the right to take responsibility for one's own life and choices and way of being. Whenever I impose my wish or want or try to exert power over another, I rob him or her of the full realization of growth and maturation. I limit and prevent by my act of possession, no matter how kind my intention.

I can limit and injure by the kindest acts of protection or concern. Over extended it can say to the other person more eloquently than words, "You are unable to care for yourself; I must take care of you because you are mine. I am responsible for you."

As I learn and practice more and more, I can say to the one I love: "I love you, I value you, I respect you and I trust that you have the strength to become all that it is possible for you to become - if I don't get in your way. I love you so much that I can set you free to walk beside me in joy and in sadness. I will share your tears but I will not ask you not to cry. I will respond to your needs. I will care and comfort you, but I will not hold you up when you can walk alone. I will stand ready to be with you in your grief and loneliness but I will not take it away from you. I will strive to listen to your meaning as well as your word, but I shall not always agree. Sometimes I will be angry and when I am, I will try to tell you openly so that I need not hate our differences or feel estranged. I can not always be with you or hear what you say for there are times when I must listen to myself and care for myself, and when that happens I will be as honest with you as I can be."

I am learning to say this, whether it be in words or in my way of being with others and myself, to those I love and for whom I care. And this I call loving with an open hand.

I cannot always keep my hands off the cocoon, but I am getting better at it!

初中生经典英语美文：Peeling Away Artifice For the Pure Original

Sarah came running in. "Look what I found." Over the top of the paper I was reading came a crispy(易碎的) , crumbling 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 wide-eyed seven-year-old.

I stared at the organic wrapper and thought to myself that it really wasn' t that beautiful, but I have learned never to appear nonchalant(冷淡的) or jaded with children. Everything they see for the first time is elementary to their sense of beauty and creativity; they see only merit and excellence in the world until educated otherwise.

"Why does it do this?" Sarah asked.

Robert, ever the innocent comedian, said:"We have a naked snake in our garden!"

I also try to customize every opportunity to teach my children that there is almost always something beyond the obvious; that there is something else going on besides what they see in front of them. "Snakes shed their skin because they need to renew themselves," I explained. As is so often the case in my family, the original subject leads to another and another, until we are discussing something quite different.

"Why do they need to renew themselves?" Sarah asked.

Robert quipped:" 'Cos they don't like who they are and they want to be someone else."

Sarah and I politely ignored her brother. 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 underlying original beneath.

"We often need to shed our skins, those coatings and facades that we cover ourselves with," I said to my now absorbed daughter. "We outgrow some things and find other stuff unwanted or unnecessary. This snake no longer needs this skin. It is probably too stiff and crinkly(起皱的) for him, and he probably doesn' t think he looks as smart in it as he once did. Like buying a new suit."

Of course, I' m sure this explanation won' t sit well with bonafide(诚意) naturalists. But Sarah was getting the point. As we talked, I knew that she began to comprehend, albeit slightly, that renewal is part of progress; that we need to take a good look at ourselves, and our rooms and schoolwork and creativity and spirituality, 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 process, not one to be forced.

"Snakes don' t peel off their skin when they feel like it." I explained. " It happens as a natural consequence of their growth."

"I see, Dad," said Sarah and jumped off my lap, grabbed the snakeskin, 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 cloak ourselves year after year, we need to start examining these layers. We need to gently peel(剥) some away, as we recognize them to be worthless, unnecessary, or flawed; or at best, store the discarded ones as mementoes(纪念品) of our promotion to a better vitality or spirit.

初中生经典英语美文：Free to fly with the wind

One windy spring day, I observed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Multicolored creations of varying shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds darting(突进，投掷) and dancing. As the strong winds gusted against the kites, a string kept them in check.

Instead of blowing away with the wind, they arose against it to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining string and the cumbersome(笨重的) tail kept them in tow, facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and trembled against the string, they seemed to say, "Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!" They soared beautifully even as they fought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose. "Free at last," it seemed to say. "Free to fly with the wind."

Yet freedom from restraint simply put it at the mercy of an unsympathetic breeze. It fluttered ungracefully to the ground and landed in a tangled mass of weeds and string against a dead bush. "Free at last" free to lie powerless in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along the ground, and to lodge lifeless against the first obstruction.

How much like kites we sometimes are. The Heaven gives us adversity and restrictions, rules to follow from which we can grow and gain strength. Restraint is a necessary counterpart(副本，配对物) to the winds of opposition. Some of us tug at the rules so hard that we never soar to reach the heights we might have obtained. We keep part of the commandment and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.

Let us each rise to the great heights, recognizing that some of the restraints that we may chafe under are actually the steadying force that helps us ascend and achieve.