(II) The History of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
　　The character of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, has been an important part of Christmas for a long time. That means it will be strange if reindeer can’t be seen during Christmas. However, Rudolph is a 20th-century invention whose creation can be dated back to a specific time and person. Rudolph came to life in 1939 when Chicago’s Montgomery Ward company asked one of its workers, 34-year-old Robert L. May, to write a Christmas story that could be given away to shoppers as a promotional little book.　　
      May was chosen to do the job because he had a talent for writing children’s stories. When May was a child, he was often laughed at by other children because he was shy and weak then. He drew on his own background to build the idea of a reindeer that was made fun of by other reindeer for his red nose. May named this deer Rudolph, and he then worked on writing Rudolph’s story. He took it to his 4-year-old daughter Barbara to see if she would like it. Although Barbara quite enjoyed Rudolph’s story, May’s boss was worried that a story about a red nose reindeer was not good enough for a Christmas story. It could be easily thought of as a drunk. Therefore, May took an artist friend to a local zoo to draw some deer. The pictures of a red-nosed reindeer made May’s boss believe in his idea, and then the Rudolph story was born. Nearly ten million copies of the little book about Rudolph were distributed by Montgomery Ward between 1939 and 1946.
* reindeer 馴鹿　invention 創作　creation 創作品　date 確定…的年代 specific 特定的 promotional 促銷的　background 背景　distribute 分送
【題組】42. If people make fun of you, it means you are______ by them.
(A) laughed at
(B) welcomed
(C) agreed with
(D) cheated