The Denver Post1

CK Reporter of the WeekSophia Khan, Northglenn

Four Miles and two centuries back

I visited Four Mile Historic Park, a unique and interesting park in Denver that has enough attractions for several hours of

fun. Since it was the fi rst Friday of the month, I

didn’t have to pay to get in: It’s free general admission then! (It’s only $3 for kids and $5 for adults anyway.)

All day I observed how life was in the 1800’s.

For instance, at the school, they only used

one book for each grade! I also saw an old tool shed that has two car-

riages and some unique inventions that farm-ers used to use, like a weird type of plow that was pulled by humans instead of oxen.

My favorite stop was the visit with the blacksmiths, Mike Miller, Steve Swanson and Mark Bosler.

They were actively making tools. They said that blacksmithing is not hard, but it is tricky. When the metal is heated enough, they told

me, the metal bends like clay.I also went panning for gold. (They give you

pans at the front desk.) The trick is to go down deep in the dirt and

don’t just wash the pan out right away. Add a bit more water and keep wearing down the layers. When you are done, you get to keep the 3 biggest pieces of gold.

I went to the cooking area and the food was very good: I got to sample an iced pumpkin cookie and pumpkin pie.

I also got to try some chicken soup. On special days, like birthdays, you can

make butter, or bake your own cake in a wood-fi red oven.

They had a garden that grows the same food that the Pilgrims used to grow.

They had a couple of squashes with a sign that said the pilgrims would eat squash for every meal.

The stables had animals like goats and horses.

You could buy wagon rides. They also let you feed the chickens for 25 cents for a cup of food.

Since it was a free day, there were a lot of people there.

However, the park is large so I didn’t have to wait long to do things.

August 25, 2015

Well-done characters spark thoughtful novel

“The Education of Ivy Blake” by Ellen Airgood is an intriguing book about a girl who struggles

to fi nd her place in the world. Ivy Blake lives with her best friend Prai-

rie Evers and her family while her mom is in prison.

Ivy is happy until her mom comes back to reclaim her daughter.

She goes along with her mom only to fi nd that her life isn’t so fun and upbeat anymore.

Ivy feels ignored and tries to overlook her mom’s negative attitude but soon it becomes too much.

Feeling angry and hurt, she seeks to make a difference for herself.

With the ability to recognize things that people normally wouldn’t see, she soon discovers that she has great potential and is ready to make decisions for herself.

This book encourages readers to refl ect on their own life.

Readers will fi nd themselves thinking more about their life compared to the characters.

I really enjoyed this book because of the characters. Each one of them was unique and I could tell the author really spent a lot of time forming and thinking about them.

When a new character was introduced, a new plot or twist was added that makes

you want to read more. For example, Ivy’s friend Prairie was

spunky and cheerful and she was a big part of the story numerous times.

Each time that she was talked about, she created a new confl ict with Ivy.

Another example was Ivy’s mom. Throughout the entire story her stub-

bornness and anger always got in the way of Ivy’s happiness and self-confi dence.

This book was a sequel to Ellen Air-good’s “Prairie Evers,” but you don’t have to read that novel before you read this book because everything is explained in the beginning.

This a great book, though best for ages ten and up because the plot and theme were at times hard to grasp.

If you like stories about human struggles and friendship trouble, then this book is for you.

By Grace McClung,11, a CK Reporter from Denver

By Ben Vanourek,10, a CK Reporter from Littleton

Youth-written stories that appear here also appear on

C , !

HEY COLORADO KIDS!Visit YourHub.com/nextgen for more stories, movie reviews, school news, blogs and polls. Join the conversation today.

Mark Bosler works at the anvil while Mike Miller watches in the background. Photo/Ben Vanourek

The Denver Post

“When the Earth Shakes” is an educational book written by Simon Winchester, who is a

geologist who became a writer. In this particular book he writes about

earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.I typically do not tend to pick scientific

books to read, so for me this book started out a bit slow.

However by page 10 I was totally in-trigued and found myself excited to read what he was going to explain next.

Even though the subject can be intense, Winchester has a good sense of humor

that at times made me laugh out loud. One example of the stories of his per-

sonal experiences was the time he encountered a water monitor (lizard) and threw his sandwich at it!

My favorite part was the section about tsunamis, because there he went into intense detail.

He described some of the biggest tsu-namis, including what caused them, how they formed, how wide and tall they were, how fast they travelled, and how much damage they caused.

He also shared legends and stories of those who have lived through tsunamis.

He went into similar details for volca-nos and earthquakes, but, in my opinion, the tsunami section was the best because I love the ocean.

This book can bring out strong emo-tions.

The details and the pictures that show what everything looked like as they were happening and after the fact make you feel like it is real and happening right now.

At times I was like “This is so cool” or “Wow, how interesting!” then at oth-

er times I was like “How awful, so many people died” and I felt sad.

I highly recom-mend this book, especially for people who are fascinated with science in gen-eral and with natural disasters.

This book provides great examples and

diagrams that explain the science, provide fun facts and stories, and share how a sin-gle disaster can impact the entire world.

The citizens of Wanderville have es-caped an orphan train, avoided the police, and deceived the evil Miss

DeHaven countless times, and now they are finally on their way to California!

However, when they find themselves with-out transportation, they choose to make a delivery for a mysterious dandy who will hopefully get them enough cash to travel to California and give them the ability to final-ly—finally—create Wanderville again.

The third installment to Wendy McClure’s Wanderville series lives up to the standards set by the other two Wanderville books.

It is entertaining, well-written, and also has an interesting, well-developed plot.

In fact, “Wanderville: Escape to the World’s Fair’s” plot is more developed then the sec-ond book’s was.

To understand “Wanderville: Escape to World’s Fair,” you will have had to read the first two, because the story picks up right where it left off at the end of the second one, without any refreshers or explanations.

While that may please readers who finish

one book in a series and immediately begin the next one, it will be hard for people who waited a long time between the second and the third one.

As for people who haven’t even read the first two books, they will not understand it in the least.

I would recommend this novel for the same audience as the other two: the 8-10 years range, although older readers will enjoy it, as long as they’re not looking for a challenge.

“Wanderville: Escape to World’s Fair” is an excellent novel that will not disappoint fans of the Wanderville series.

It is just as entertaining and fun as the last one, if not more of both.

2

Science book with humor, emotion

Sumatran rhinoceros no longer wild in Malaysia

Another species of rhino may be nearing extinction: Naturalists in Malaysia say

the Sumatran rhinoceros is likely extinct in that country.

The Sumatran rhino once lived in many parts of Southeast Asia, but scientists believe there are only 100 left in the wild, living in Indonesia.

There are nine in captivity, in-cluding at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Only one of the two rhinos in this picture from the zoo is still

alive and there are plans to bring it back to Sumatra to help re-estab-lish the animals there.

The zoo has worked actively for many years with rhino special-ists in Indonesia to preserve the animals. (You may recall that the Denver Zoo works with a sanctuary in Nepal to help preserve another species of Asian rhinos there.)

There was a summit meeting in 2013 of experts to find ways to save the Sumatran rhinoceros, and the Indonesian government agreed to

take an active part in the effort.Naturalists are now hoping not

only to work on captive breed-ing programs to reintroduce new animals into the wild, but to set up security in order to protect wild rhinos from poachers, one of the greatest dangers to rhinoceroses.

Rhinos are often killed for their horns, which are believed to have medical uses by old-fashioned Asian people who pay very large amounts of money for the horns.

photo/Charles W. Hardin

Young Ada Smith, the protagonist of “The War That Saved My Life,” by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, has never

set foot outside her one-room apartment. Her cruel mother is embarrassed by her

clubfoot to even talk to anyone from the win-dow.

The war has threatened bombing of London, so Ada’s mom plans to ship her son Jamie out of the city for safety.

Since Ada’s mother wouldn’t allow Ada to go, Ada begins a chapter of her life herself and sneaks out with Jamie.

When they reach the evacuation city, no-body wants to take the two siblings to their homes.

So a so-called mean Susan Smith is forced to take the children in. Ada gets to experience a new way of life.

She is surrounded by people who care for and love her to guide her through her new beginning.

“The War that Saved my Life” is a book that kept me on the edge of my seat with all the adventures of Ada with her friends and family.

I think that this book was also very educa-tional about World War II.

Throughout the book, it explained the Ger-man plans to attack various places.

This book made me realize how lucky I am considering how mistreated Ada was.

I would recommend this book to ages 8-11 since it isn’t a very challenging book.

But older kids will enjoy this quick and easy read as well. This book is fairly short and keeps you absorbed till the very end.

By Cara Dulin,13, a CK Reporter from Castle Rock

By Tyler Vanourek,12, a CK Reporter from Littleton

By Saloni Agwar,12, a CK Reporter from Centennial

Third time’s a charm in Wanderville series

Novel is easy reading but an absorbing tale

At times I was like “This is so cool” or “Wow, how interesting!” then at other times I was like “How awful, so many people died”

and I felt sad.

The Denver Post3

Hummingbirds move so fast that science has long known they need to take in a

lot of energy to keep going.Their speed is one thing that has made it

hard for ornithologists to study how they take in their diet of nectar from fl owers.

The other diffi culty is that, when they stick their long bills into the deep part of fl owers, you can’t see what’s happening in there.

But instead of watching captive birds eat from feeders in a laboratory, University of Connecticut researchers build transparent plastic “fl owers” with nectar for wild hum-

mingbirds and fi lmed them with high-speed cameras.

They discovered that, when the bird’s very long tongue goes through the tip of its bill, the two tiny tubes in it are squeezed fl at.

As it touches the nectar, the tongue’s tubes are bouncing back into shape, so the nectar is drawn in, as if you squeezed a plastic bottle and then held it under water.

The birds, it turns out, eat more and much faster than was thought under the old theory that the nectar was simply being absorbed through those tiny tubes.

Hummingbirds’ tongues act as tiny nectar-pumps

We already know that there is a problem when people take too many antibiotics,

especially without being careful to follow instructions: “Superbugs.”

Some of the bacteria live, and they are the ones that can best survive the drugs intended to kill them.

As they reproduce, we end up with a larger percentage of bacteria that antibiotics won’t kill, and so it be-comes harder to cure those diseases.

So now let’s talk about head lice.Head lice are well-known at schools,

because they love to make their homes in the hair of little kids.

And once one kid has them, all it takes is for a hat to go from that head to another head, or a mat to be shared at a pre-school naptime, and the head lice have found another home, and then another, and then another.

Head lice don’t spread disease, but the itching can cause scratches on your scalp and lead to infections, and

even loss of little patches of hair.So when kids show up at school

with lice, they get sent home, and parents are told to fi nd a cure.

This is where we get back to the topic of antibiotics and “superbugs.”

For years, people have treated head lice with the same basic medications.

Just as the bacteria that survive an-tibiotics are the tough ones that can resist that treatment, the lice that live through treatment with over-the-counter head lice shampoos and medications are the ones that aren’t easily killed by them.

Recently, researchers from South-ern Illinois University collected 109 samples of lice from all around the country.

They found that 104 had a gene that makes them resistant to most head lice shampoos and medications.

So will their many, many babies.For schools, the “superlice” problem

may become a real head-scratcher.

Overuse of remedies breeds super head lice

Story of colonial friendship told in stanzas

image: UConn

Rules: Every row across, every column down and each of the six smaller boxes must contain numerals 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, one time and one time only.

The solution to this week’s puzzle is on Page 4.

On this day in 2012, Voyager I became the fi rst man-made object to leave the solar system (and it’s still sending back data!), so our answers this week will all begin with V.

1. The Green Mountain State

2. Author of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”

3. A fl ower, a color of the rainbow, one of Charlie Brown’s friends

4. Six-person sport that involves serves, sets, blocks, digs and spikes.

5. Teller County gold rush town very close to Cripple Creek.

6. First US president born in the United States (and not the Colonies)

7. Children’s book about a stuffed bunny who wants to become real

8. Roman god of fi re (or Spock’s home planet)

9. Loudness. Your friends say “Pump it up!” but your parents say, “Turn it down!”

10. The volcano that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD

(answers on Page Four)

Above, states in which the superlice have been found are in red. Colorado is still a safe green. (Kyong Yoon, Ph.D.)

Right, a head louse -- pediculus huma-nus capitis -- seen under a microscope. (Kosta Mumcuoglu)

Alis lives in Roanoke, with her family, and with Indians. “Blue Birds” , by Caroline Starr Rose, is a book about

Alis, who moves to Roanoke with a settle-ment group and befriends an Indian girl nobody knows about.

Twelve year old Alis has traveled a long distance with her family and settled into a new world, and wants to explore her new surroundings.

As she skips through the meadows looking at all the beautiful flowers, a movement in a bush startles her.

She walks over to see what it was and finds an Indian girl about her age.

She starts to run back to her new home, because her father has warned her about the Indians.

While running, the prized wooden bird her uncle made for her drops from her garments.

She goes back to pick it up, but the Indian girl beat her.

Soon after losing her bird, Alis goes back to the place where she and the Indian girl had met.

Alis finds the girl there waiting for her return.

Alis nervously walks up to the girl, and asks for her bird back.

The girl gives the bird back and then intro-duces herself, “Hi, I am Kimi”.

Alis then tells Kimi her name and soon, they become friends.

“Blue Birds” is a unique book, because it is written in poem form. It doesn’t rhyme, but it is written in stanzas instead of paragraphs.

Also unique about this book is that Caroline Starr Rose tells the story from the view of two different characters, Kimi and Alis.

I really liked reading their different points of view.

Caroline Starr Rose made this book very interesting to read!

I was attracted to the book, due to the vivid details (although some of them were disturb-ing).

I would not recommend this book for any-one under the age of 10 due to the amount of violence in it.

Parents are also needed when kids read “Blue Birds” because there are a lot of big vocabulary words that I had trouble reading.

By Ashley Gaccetta,11, a CK Reporter from Longmont

The Denver Post

The Dog, the Cat and the Mice (Romania)

Years ago, dogs, cats and mice got along quite well. The cat was in charge of all that happened inside the house, and the dog was in charge of all

that happened outside the house, and the mice weren’t in charge of anything but they went their way and nobody bothered them.

But then one day the dog was lying in the dust of the yard and he felt a drop of rain. He didn’t feel much like moving, but he knew that it was about to rain even more and that not only would he soon be soaking wet, but, if he did not move, he would also find himself lying in mud.

So he got up and trotted over to a spot on the porch, and as he sat there with the rain beginning to pour down harder and a cold wind whipping it up so that it blew under the porch roof to where he was sitting, he glanced in the window and there he saw the cat.

The cat was lying on the thick carpet in front of the warm hearth, and as the dog watched, the cat stretched all four of her legs out, extending her claws and opening her mouth in a wide, pink yawn.

Then she blinked a few times at nothing in particular, curled her nose under her front paws and went back to sleep.

As the dog was watching this, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. A weasel was stealing around the corner of the barn, headed for the chicken house, and the dog had to jump out into the driving rain, barking loudly, to chase it back into the forest where it belonged.

By now the dog was cold and wet clear through, and he’d cut his paw on a sharp rock while he was chasing the weasel. As he limped back onto the porch, he noticed that somebody had put his food bowl just a little too far out from the edge of the house so that the rain was running from the roof into it, turning his dinner into cold, soupy mush.

The dog thought about all this through the cold, rainy night, and, when the sun came out the next morning, he asked the cat a question.

“Why is it,” the dog asked, “that you get to lie around all day in the nice warm house, while I’m out here in the cold and damp, chasing weasels and fighting with foxes and having my dinner dish getting filled with rain water and sleeping in the dirt?”

“Don’t blame me,” the cat replied. “That was our agreement.”“I don’t think I agreed to this,” the dog said.“Oh yes,” the cat insisted. “Cats are supposed to stay indoors and watch

the inside of the house, and dogs are supposed to stay outdoors and watch the outside of the house. It’s all signed, sealed and proper. Why, we couldn’t change it even if we wanted to.”

“Let’s see about that,” the dog said. “Show me this agreement. I want to see what it says and, especially, I want to see who signed it for us dogs.”

“Very well,” the cat said. “I’ll go and get it.”She went into the house and upstairs into the attic to fetch the paper, but

when she got there, she couldn’t find the agreement. She looked in the trunk where it belonged, but all she could find were a few scraps of paper and a lot of fuzz.

The cat realized what had happened: Mice had gotten into the trunk and had been nibbling on the agreement, chewing it up and turning it into fuzz for their nests.

She went back down the stairs and out the kitchen door to where the dog was waiting.

“It’s gone,” she said. “But I remember exactly what it said. It said you were to stay outside and watch the yard and the barn, and I was to stay in the house and watch everything inside.”

“What?” the dog roared, “Do you think I’m a fool? Show me the agreement!”And with that, he grabbed the cat by the skin on the back of her neck and

gave her a good shake. The cat pulled away in fear and ran off as fast as she could, and just as

she was escaping from the dog, she spied a small mouse watching her.“You!” she cried. “You mice have done this to me!” And she chased after the mouse angrily.And ever since that day, when a dog meets a new cat, he immediately

chases after it, shouting for her to show him the agreement.And ever since that day, when a cat sees a mouse, she immediately tries

to catch and kill it, for having turned her perfect life upside down.

text c. 2005, Mike Peterson - illustration c. 2005, Marina Tay

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(see Page Three)

10 right - Wow!

7 right - Great!

5 right - Good

3 right - See you next time!

1. Vermont 2. (Judith) Viorst 3. Violet 4. Volleyball 5. Victor 6. (Martin) van Buren

7. (the) Velveteen Rabbit 8. Vulcan 9. volume 10. Vesuvius

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Superlice

Hummingbird tongues

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Folk Tales & Fables