NewsBites for Kidz^TM
Nov. 4 2003	Weekly News About Kids All over the World!
Fighting Off Micro-Invader Epidemics Worldwide Harry Potter speaks Hindi, dons adrishya cloak India Miami-Area Student’s Artwork to be Showcased in NASCAR Race USA The difficult story of Arabic children’s books Lebanon Young set an example Bahrain Helping Latino kids develop their dreams USA Germany debates the right of the child to vote Germany Nutrition survey: Knowing what’s good for kids New Zealand Children Design Own Playground USA	Fighting Off Micro-Invader Epidemics Emily Sohn, Science News for Kids. Nov. 5, 2003-Every year when school starts, you hear it in the classroom: a cough here, a snuffle there. Some weeks, more than half your class may be sneezing or hacking away. Colds spread quickly, passing from person to person. Then there’s the flu season: sore throats, runny noses, fevers, aches and pains, and absences from school. It could be worse. Earlier this year, many people died in China and other countries from a disease called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Some schools and hospitals in Toronto, Canada, and elsewhere had to shut down for days to help keep the disease from spreading. And if you’ve been following the news lately, you may have heard about the dangers of not only SARS but also monkeypox, mad cow disease, and the West Nile virus. Animals have died. People have gotten sick. Sometimes, panic has set in. The culprits responsible for most of these ailments are tiny, tiny organisms called viruses. Unlike people, animals, and plants, viruses are not made up of cells, but they do contain some of the building blocks of cells. The most important pieces are the molecules DNA and RNA: sets of instructions that tell cells how to make more cells of the same kind. A virus carries instructions for making more viruses. When certain viruses invade your body’s cells, they can cause your body to react, and you get sick. Your body gets so busy making new copies of a virus that it can’t do what it’s supposed to do. And when viruses spread easily from person to person or from animal to person, a disease epidemic may occur. But we don’t have to be scared all the time. By arming ourselves with knowledge and adopting a few good habits, experts say, people can stay healthy and strong. We might even learn a few things about the invisible world around us. The first lesson is respect, says Amy Vollmer, a microbiologist at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Penn. “We survive on this planet not because we’re superior,” Vollmer says. Bacteria and viruses far outnumber us, and the tiny organisms have been here a lot longer than we have. “Microbes have been on the planet for 4 billion years. Humans have been here for a million or so,” Vollmer says. “They were here first. We have developed and survive around them.” Most microbes don’t affect us at all. Some actually help keep us healthy. But the ones that get our attention are the ones that make us sick, especially if they can easily jump from one person to another. Our immune systems help protect us against such microscopic invaders. These systems are like soccer players: They get better with practice. Washing your hands often and carefully can help keep infections from spreading. Simple precautions can make a big difference. Avoid mosquitoes to protect yourself from the West Nile virus. To prevent monkeypox, don’t buy exotic animals. If you do want an exotic pet, have a doctor screen it for diseases first. It also really helps if you wash your hands a lot. And, if you’re sick, you should stay away from school and other people. Most important of all, Vollmer says, is to take care of yourself. By eating well and sleeping enough, your immune system will stay nice and strong. “If you can learn that early and keep it up as you get older,” she says, “you can live a long and healthy life.” http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20031105/Feature1.asp Copyright © 2003 Science Service. All rights reserved. H E A D L I N E S Harry Potter speaks Hindi, dons adrishya cloak November 3 2003 BHOPAL, Madhya Pradesh, India: Manjul Publishing House is not a name that rings a bell unless you have come across its scores of Hindi self-help books like Vaade jo nibhane hain. All that and more are set to change on November 14 when the company will release its magical potion: Harry Potter aur Paras Pathar. The Hindi translation of the global hit Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone comes a good six years after its international release. Apart from versions in major international languages and scores of pirated Chinese versions, the book is available even in Basque. And across the border, there are numerous takers for the Urdu muggles. Manjul’s translator is Sudhir Dixit, a professor of English from Hoshangabad, who says he has read the original 35 times. Apart from the chapters being vetted by an 11-year-old for readability, the final version was sent back to Rowling’s agent for approval before it was printed. The Hindi version will be priced at Rs 165, and the publishing house is also trying out a new marketing strategy. Apart from bookstalls, it could also be ordered from newspaper vendors of a leading Hindi vernacular, and will be delivered at home. The publicity brochure provides a glimpse of just what Harry Potter may read like in Hindi _ magic spells change to mantras, invisible cloaks to adrishya chogas, but Quidditch remains Quidditch. Sample this: “Harry Potter aur paras pathar’ kahani hai ek gyarah saal ke ladke ki, jo apne uncle-aunty ke saath dukhad zindagi ji raha hai hai. Parantu tabhi use jaadu aur tantra ke school Hogwarts mein padne ke liye bulaya jata hai aur vahan jaakar veh ban jaata ek mahan jaadugar. “School mein veh Quidditch khelta hai, mantra padta hai, ande se dragon nikalte dekhta hai aur adrishya choga pehankar poore school mein ghoomta hai”. http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEO20031102135134&Page =O&Title=This+is+India&Topic=0& H E A D L I N E S Miami-Area Student’s Artwork to be Showcased in NASCAR Race PRNewswire via COMTEX Nov 5, 2003 MIAMI, Florida, USA- Fourth-grade elementary school student Carlos D. Fernandez of Miami has been named the winner of the 2003 Hispanic Heritage Art Contest, sponsored by The Miami Herald’s Newspaper in Education and Ford Motor Company Fund, the philanthropic arm of Ford Motor Company. To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, students in the 4^th through 8^th grades were invited to submit artwork and a supporting essay on the theme of ‘Transportation in the Next 100 Years.’The artwork was to be presented in the form of a design for a NASCAR race truck. A new feature in the 2003 Hispanic Heritage Art Contest, Fernandez’ winning entry will be adapted as the paint scheme for driver Rick Crawford’s #14 Ford F-150 truck that will compete on Friday, November 14 in the Ford 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck race at Homestead Miami Speedway. Fernandez’submission, one of 482 total entries, was a NASCAR race truck named ‘Flamer.’His truck was purple with tongues of flame on both the hood and along the bottom of the door panels and rear fenders. His supporting essay explained that ‘Transportation in the Next 100 Years’ would involve ‘getting energy mostly from the sun and wind. Because of our concern for the environment today, my vision for transportation ... is of a truck that is much safer and cleaner than today.’ ‘Hispanic Heritage Month and the art contest certainly brought the best out of our young students,’said Raquel Egusquiza, director of community development for Ford Motor Company Fund. ‘Great thinking. Great art. And great pride in their Hispanic heritage.’ In addition to seeing his drawing on an actual NASCAR Ford F-150, Fernandez will receive a $2,500 United States Savings Bond, a Ford Hispanic Heritage Award, and tickets to the Ford 200 at Homestead Miami Speedway to watch Crawford and the truck compete in the final NASCAR Craftsman Truck event of the year. Public unveiling of the #14 Ford F-150 with Fernandez’artwork will occur on Tuesday, November 11, at Homestead Miami Speedway at 10:30 a.m. as part of Ford’s ‘Champions of the Community’activities. ‘We’re very proud of Carlos and all of the students who participated in this contest,’said Vannetta Bailey-Iddrisu, Educational Services Manager for The Miami Herald. ‘This year’s theme required the students to use their imaginations and do some creative thinking about bigger issues besides trucks, like the environment and energy. And based on the entries we received, I feel the Miami area has a very bright future with these young people leading the way.’ The Miami Herald’s Newspaper in Education (NIE) and Ford Motor Company will present Fernandez his savings bond award and the Ford Hispanic Heritage Medal at a ceremony to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Friday evening, November 14 at the Miami Herald. The ceremony will also recognize the students who submitted the 2^nd prize, 3^rd prize, and honorable mention artwork designs. http://www.stockhouse.com/news/news.asp?tick=F&newsid=1994922 H E A D L I N E S ---------------------------------------------------- The difficult story of Arabic children’s books Appealing offerings with colorful, culturally relevant illustrations are hard to find Hannah Wettig, Daily Star staff Beirut, Lebanon - Have you ever got frustrated trying to buy a book for your child in Arabic? Beirut’s book stores are full of beautifully illustrated books for children in French, and almost as many in English. But checking the Arabic books sections often ends in disappointment by comparison. Thin paperbacks telling fairytales and historical stories dominate. With their cheap binding and few appealing illustrations, they look very much like schoolbooks. A glance through the book reveals in fact that almost half of it is taken up by questions about the story with blank space for the students to fill in answers. Very few hard-cover books with colorful childlike pictures are on sale. Most of them tell stories of blond children playing in the snow, in a red-tiled house, or a park that is so obviously not located in the Arab world that you don’t have to take a second guess to know that these are translations from European or American children’s books. Many book specialists agree Arabic children’s books are a problem, especially in Lebanon. The reasons are multiple: a difficult market, society’s view of reading, and the Arabic language in a post-colonial culture. The most important buyer of children’s books are schools. “If you don’t get the schools to buy your book, you might end up not selling more than 50 copies on the market,” says Yolanda Abu Nasr, the president of the Lebanese Board of Books for Young People (LBBY), an organization that promotes reading among children. Shereen Kreidieh, who is responsible for children’s books at Lebanese publishing house, Asala, points out that a publisher will always try to get his book listed as a summer reading requirement for schools “so all the parents must buy it.” But the schools only want certain books. Illustrator Yasmin Taan has spread her newest work on the desk of her office in the Lebanese American University (LAU) where she teaches design. The books Umm Jadida (New Mum) and Qisa Kusa (Zucchini Story) are sold at the Arab Book Fair, which is currently running at the Expo Beirut in Ain al-Mreisseh. “In these books we used words common in Lebanese like ‘please.’ This means the schools won’t buy them,” she says, showing illustrations for Umm Jadida, the story of a little boy who travels all over Beirut to find a new mum because he is upset with the one he has. Taan’s illustrations are collages little photographs of typical Lebanese items are tucked into the paintings such as a birdcage, a street sign reading Rue Gourard, a political poster showing Gamal Abdul Nasser, or even a blue electricity bill stuck under a doormat. “As a mother, I want my children to appreciate their culture,” says Taan. For her this doesn’t mean that books that are supposed to be fun should be written in classical Arabic, the language format for all Arabic schoolbooks, even storybooks. “When I first read a book to my daughter in Arabic, she thought it was Chinese,” says Taan. Her daughter, who is now 7, goes to a French school where she started learning Arabic at the age of 5. But Kreidieh thinks the obligation to write in classical Arabic is not such a big issue. “We try to use words that are common also in spoken Arabic,” she says. However, in a survey she conducted at the Hariri High School in Beirut for her dissertation on children’s literature in Lebanon, she found that kids’ interest in Arabic language books decreases rapidly with age. While the vast majority of first graders (aged 3) say they like Arabic books a lot and as much as French and English books, an equally large majority of seventh graders say they don’t like Arabic books at all. Already in fifth grade the children had a clear preference for foreign language books. For Abu Nasr, who as well as being on the board of LBBY is also a professor of child psychology at LAU, the reason why is clear: “By the time they are in fifth grade, they have been taught so much Arabic in such a horrible way that they hate it.” But why this is so can be traced again back to the type of Arabic books on the market. “Some of the books the children have to read bore you to tears,” says Abu Nasr. “The topics are very traditional. In these stories, children have to be obedient, polite and clean. A book like Pippi Longstocking wouldn’t sell here I suppose.” But after a second thought she adds: “Well, it sells well in Jordan, so I don’t know why you can’t get it here in Arabic.” She is of the opinion that it is always better to buy a book that has been translated than picking a bad book just because it is an Arabic one. “It is important that the author understands the capabilities of the child and knows what children like. The child may not know all the objects in the book but it can learn. If it was an Egyptian book, a Lebanese child (reading it) might also not know what the desert is.” Taan, who has written her thesis about how women are depicted in children’s books points to the old fashioned world portrayed in many of the books. “Women in the Arab world are not as they are shown in the books. My mother is not sitting in a rocking chair knitting. She is jogging in Raouche.” Sometimes the stories and illustrations have to be adjusted to the demands of the Gulf countries, an important market for Lebanese books. Taan once illustrated a book about a little girl whose dog dies. “It was meant to make children familiar with the topic of death,” she says. But the publisher didn’t want a dog. The book was going on sale in Saudi Arabia, where dogs are considered unclean animals. So, Taan redrew the story featuring a cat. Then the publisher wanted to omit a birthday party the children were having in the story. “In Saudi Arabia they don’t have birthday parties. Well, I thought that was a bit much, so I changed publisher,” Taan says. According to Kreidieh, few Arabic books can be sold to France for the large Arab community there. But it’s a big success for her if she manages to push a book on the North African markets. “Tunisia alone has over 300 public libraries which may all buy it,” she explains. But the North Africans are producing their own children’s literature many of them in the Egyptian, Tunisian and Algerian dialects of Arabic. “Egyptian children’s books are quite good, too,” says Abu Nasr. If a book flops in other markets, it could cost the publisher a lot of money: “The production of children’s books is expensive, all pages must be colored, the paper should be of good quality,” says Kreidieh. And yet most children’s books on the market are not of the quality Kreidieh describes. “I like to buy Arabic books as a present when my daughter is invited to a birthday party,” Taan says. “But most are so cheaply done that it would be embarrassing to give it as a present.” She thinks that many publishers don’t realize the value appearance has for children. “Publishers say books more expensive than LL6,000 won’t sell,” Taan argues. “They (would) rather do a book without illustrations than pay an appropriate price for the illustrator. No one can live from illustrating here.” Abu Nasr recounts that once, “at a book exhibit, I was observing how parents choose books. The child might be attracted by illustrations of a good book. But the mother will tell him, ‘we can buy three books for the price of this one,’” confirming publishers’ fears. “We are not a reading culture,” she comments. And the reading culture that exists is also affected by a question of class and education: “The elite buy French books. The masses don’t have money,” Taan says. Children who go to French schools are encouraged to only read French books in their leisure time. “The director of my daughter’s school even tells the parents to always speak French in front of the children,” Taan says. Nevertheless, many new books are being published that are more appropriate for children. Taan knows of several people who want to launch publishing houses for children’s books in Arabic. However, the way bookstores are currently functioning in Beirut makes it often hard to find such books, “They mostly represent one or two publishers, so you won’t find much variety,” explains Kreidieh. “The best is to hunt for books at book fairs.” http://www.dailystar.com.lb/05_11_03/art3.asp H E A D L I N E S Young set an example By REBECCA TORR, Gulf Daily News Manama, Bahrain, Nov - MORE than 100 youngsters from KG Kids Pre-School broke open their money boxes yesterday - and counted up a total of BD824 for needy Bahrainis. The children, aged 18 months to five years, bought the money boxes from a pottery workshop in A’Ali village three weeks ago and have been filling them up ever since. The money box project is part of the school’s annual Ramadan drive to help needy families. School principal Huda Amer Sraieb said she was very proud of the children for raising such an amount. The children and their parents have also donated toys, clothes and food. “On Monday we will be presenting all the food, toys, clothes and cheque to a needy Bahraini charity,” said Ms Sraieb. “Every year during Ramdan we like to help people in Bahrain who don’t have enough money for food, clothes, or toys. “It is good for children to start thinking of others when they are small and we show them how to do this in a practical way.” As a special treat, the class which raised the most money will enjoy a special party and free trip. http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=65972&Sn=BNEW H E A D L I N E S Helping Latino kids develop their dreams By Laura Shovan, Special To The Sun Program: A Hispanic group and faculty at Oakland Mills middle and high schools are trying to help Spanish-speaking students succeed. Oakland, Maryland, USA, November 5- When the Spanish-speaking population of Oakland Mills Middle School jumped from 20 to 40 children last year, school counselor Roberta Shawver decided it was time for action. About the same time, Murray Simon, president of the local Hispanic organization Conexiones, noticed a disturbing trend: a high dropout rate among Latino students. Before the 2002-2003 school year began, Shawver contacted Simon with an idea. She said she and other teachers realized “these kids had some kind of unique needs that we wanted to address and help them to be more successful at school and more comfortable at school.” With the help of Conexiones, the middle school began a pilot program for Latino children that now offers adult mentors, academic tutoring and encourages parental involvement. With help from Simon’s group, Shawver began inviting Spanish-speaking and Hispanic professionals to talk with the youths, asking them to relay “a little bit of their journey with the kids. Where they came from, how they accessed education for themselves and developed their own plan for their lives,” she said. “What these kids needed was to find out how they could become successful as students, first of all, and then as citizens - to develop a dream for themselves and for the future,” said Shawver. Oakland Mills 10^th-grader Yvonne Mercano, 15, recently joined the school’s Latino club. “It’s really good that they’re doing things like this. It helps a lot. You get information” about careers and scholarships, she said. “It’s very interesting because sometimes you meet other people who are from different places. You make more friends. Everybody just helps each other out.” Not all Hispanic students are suffering academically. Thesing hopes to create a network of Latino students at Oakland Mills High, encouraging Spanish-speaking students to tutor each other. “Because some of them are great students and they can pass that to other kids who need help,” she said. For students who do well in school, Conexiones sponsors a scholarship fund. http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/howard/bal-ho.hispanic05nov05,0,340639.stor y?coll=bal-local-howard http://conexiones.asu.edu/ H E A D L I N E S Germany debates the right of the child to vote REUTERS , BERLIN Berlin, Germany, Nov 06-Some Germans are taking the idea of universal suffrage to its logical conclusion. They want children to win the vote to counter-balance a fast-aging electorate that is resisting cuts to generous benefits. Concerned that politicians, increasingly beholden to the demands of the swelling ranks of retired voters, are neglecting children’s interests, 47 members of parliament are supporting a cross-party motion that calls for the right to vote from birth. The motion asks the government to amend the Constitution so parents get a proxy vote for each child under 18. “A fifth of the population is excluded from elections,” said Klaus Haupt, a 60-year-old grandfather of two from the opposition Free Democrats who is driving the initiative. “Two hundred years ago, nobody could imagine that every male citizen would be able to vote and 100 years ago people couldn’t imagine that every woman should vote. Now they can’t imagine that everybody should vote from birth,” he said. The initiative has won influential supporters. The German Family Association has made votes-for-kids its theme for the year and wants pilot schemes in local elections. Michael Kruse, deputy head of the German Children’s Charity, supports the initiative but wants youngsters to vote themselves, saying a proxy vote is likely to provoke conflict in families. “Politicians will only take children seriously if they know they could be voted out by them,” he said. A poll for Der Spiegel magazine showed 79 percent thought the decision would have a great or very great influence on the voting preferences of the 20 million retired. “How can any reforms be pushed through against pensioners? Children are second-class citizens,” said Kurt-Peter Merk, a lawyer who is representing eight minors in a constitutional challenge to the exclusion of children from the vote. “We only worry about preserving the high quality of life of our pensioners while many children suffer poverty,” he said. Unless more notice is taken of the concerns of Germany’s young people, some politicians believe that the country could face an increasingly heated fight between the generations. Erika Steinbach, a member of parliament said “The young generation is wrong if it thinks old people are the problem. No, they themselves are the problem. The readiness to invest just as much energy and work in the future as the elderly did is not very widespread,” she said. Karl-Rudolf Korte, politics professor at Duisburg University, said such disputes were likely to become more fierce and urged the government to act fast to streamline the welfare state before an aging electorate produced deadlock. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/11/06/2003074801 H E A D L I N E S Nutrition survey: Knowing what’s good for kids By REBECCA WALSH, health reporter, The New Zealand Herald New Zealand Nov 8 - Potatoes mashed or roasted are the best. Jam, peanut butter and vegemite are the top spreads and, yes, although their parents might not know it, children use pocket money and “money found on the floor” to buy soft drinks and chips, say children at Kowhai Intermediate School. The food choices of the Auckland 11 to 13-year-olds reflected many of those uncovered in the 2002 National Children’s Nutrition Survey. Most ate breakfast before school but sometimes missed it if they were running late or didn’t feel like it. Cereal and toast were the staple choices, although cooked breakfasts featured on some weekend menus. “Sometimes in the morning I don’t feel like breakfast, so I just buy a pie at the shop,” says Cassandra Tutoka, 11. “I probably buy stuff from the tuck shop three times a week, things like cookies, Primo and Mizone - I love them - and mince and cheese pies.” When it comes to what goes in their lunchbox they mostly share the decision and the preparation with their parents. They know what’s good for them, rattling off fruit, vegetables, sandwiches and “stuff at the bottom of the food pyramid”. But there’s a catch. “A lot of the time people are given healthy lunches but they use their own money to buy something else,” Alice Stacey-Jacobs, 13, says. All 14 heads nod in agreement. Mention is made of fruit tubes (frozen fruit drink), cookies, crisps, pies and soft drinks. Chicken is a popular choice at dinner time, described by 13-year-old Mitchell Black as “not too heavy, not too light”. Few add salt to meals. For some, takeaways were a fantasy while others ate them up to three times a week. “We used to have takeaways once a week when mum had a fulltime job because everyone was tired,” Grace Stacey-Jacobs says. “But now she doesn’t work and we haven’t had takeaways in ages, so I think it depends on time.” All the students took part in a 12- minute run every school morning and most said they were involved in a sports team. The rules on TV and PlayStation varied - for some it depended whether they were staying with mum or dad. Shanice Evile, 12, isn’t allowed to watch TV during the week but can at the weekend. “So I mostly watch it every single minute.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3533212&thesection=n ews&thesubsection=general H E A D L I N E S Children Design Own Playground By Rhoda Amon, Staff Writer, Newsday.com November 6, 2003 The school principal, Perletter Wright, shoveled dirt into a wheelbarrow. The Rev. Walter Maxwell pressed on a 2-by-4 to pry up the winding slide. Sixth-grade teacher Denise Wallace whirred an electric drill, while Nate Berry, a foundation executive, drove a small tractor leveling the area for a jungle gym. A sign in front of Roosevelt’s Washington Rose Elementary School announced that a community playground was under way. The playground’s designers—fourth- to sixth-graders—watched from the school windows last weekend as the unlikely work crew, teachers, parents, ministers and community volunteers transformed the barren schoolyard into a bright-colored play environment. Vanessa Pugh of Sustainable Long Island, summons volunteers to breakfast from work on the playground piece at Washington Rose Elementary School in Roosevelt. (Newsday Photo/Julia Gaines) “We had nothing here; we didn’t even have swings,” said fourth-grade teacher Dawn Wilkes. Wilkes divided 30 students into five teams to pick the desired equipment from a catalog supplied by Playground Environments, a Commack-based company specializing in custom-designed play structures. They asked for the school colors, yellow and blue. The Washington Rose School, which dates from the original 80-year-old Roosevelt School, got additions over the years but playground equipment deteriorated. “The children invent their own games,” said Wright, who became principal in 1990. “They have a great sense of play and socialization.” “Playgrounds are important learning places. They’re outdoor classrooms,” said Amy Hagedorn, co-founder and president of Sustainable Long Island and a retired pre-kindergarten teacher. Community playground building is similar to an old-fashioned barn-raising, according to the Rev. Patrick Duggan of Hempstead, Sustainable’s executive director. Two construction companies, Jovee of Westbury and Boyd of Roosevelt, provided the tractors. Other local merchants pitched in. “This has been due a long time,” said Gloria Reid, 67, who was helping raking leaves. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/education/ny-liplay1106,0,653439 1.story?coll=ny-lischools-headlines
News for Kidz^TM subscribe@newsforkidz.com We’re on the Web! www. newsforkidz..com News for Kidz Site Map Earlier NewsBites NewsBites for Kidz^TM is published by the News for Kidz^TM website. It is a free weekly e-newsletter, sent by subscription to kids all over the globe. It is a digest of condensed news stories published by international media, of the news in the life of kids. Each news story and photograph is copyright of the original news source quoted with it. To subscribe, please send email to subscribe@newsforkidz.com with "Subscribe" in the subject line.