Jimmy started painting when he was three years old, and when he was five he was already very good at it. He painted many beautiful and interesting pictures, and people paid a lot of money for them. They said, "This boy's going to be famous when he's a little older, and then we're going to sell these pictures for a lot more money."

Jimmy's pictures were different from other people's, because he never painted on all of the paper. He painted on half of it, and the other half was always empty.

"That's very clever," everybody said. “Nobody else does that!"

One day somebody bought one of Jimmy's pictures and then said to him, “Please tell me this, Jimmy. Why do you paint on the bottom half of your pictures, but not on the top half?"

"Because I'm small," Jimmy said, "and my brushes don't reach very high."

A. Answer these questions:

1. How old was Jimmy when he began painting pictures?
2. What was his painting like when he was five years old?
3. What did people say when they bought his pictures?
4. In what way were Jimmy's pictures different from other people's?
5. What did someone ask him?
6. Why didn't Jimmy paint on the top half of his pictures?

B     Which words in the story mean the opposite of:

1. bad
2. unknown
3. big
4. stupid
5. full
6. same
7. less
8. ugly
9. low
10. younger

C     Write the number of the correct sentence under each picture.

1-He only painted on the bottom half of the paper.

2-He painted good pictures when he was five.

3-Jimmy said, "Because my brushes don't reach higher than that."

4-Jimmy was three when he began painting.

5-Someone said, "Why don't you paint on the top half?"