TALES AND TAILS

Issue 797 Thursday, March 15, 2012

Supported by readers of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News

Reading with the governor, Pages 2 and 3.

Flying squirrels, Pages 4 and 5.

Terrible tornadoes, Page 6.

Most Michigan schools are celebrating Reading Month with special assemblies and activities, but students at an

elementary school in northern Michigan got an extra-special Reading Month kick-off with a visit from Gov. Rick Snyder. The governor visited Traverse Heights Elementary School in Traverse City on March 2 to read aloud a story to students and hear about the school’s growing farm-to-school program. The program helps bring delicious, fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables to the school’s breakfast and lunch menu. The program, “Literacy & Healthy Nutrition with Michigan’s Governor,” included a pancake breakfast for students and families that was served in advance of the governor’s visit. Skye Martin, 8, a third grader at Traverse Heights, says her school makes really good food, including

the “all Michigan made” breakfast. Skye enjoyed pancakes, sausage links and apple juice along with her “papa, grandma and dad,” who also attended the special event.

Students in the Traverse City School District had the day off from classes when the governor was in town, but many came to school for a healthy and hardy breakfast and the opportunity to see the governor and hear him read “Discover the Magic of Rainbows,” a story by local author and cartoonist Dick Evans, about the importance of eating a rainbow of colorful foods. When the governor arrived, he thanked the students for coming in on their day off from school and for looking so good for the visit. Many students were dressed up for the event.

Dick, who has been teaching cartooning classes for 35 years, got the morning off to a

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

It’s halfway through Reading Month and the Yak has a list of books to check out – some of them are on Page 7, where we share more winners from the Yak’s Favorite Book Character Contest.

The state has lots of reading events – and the Yak is visiting schools, too.

Gov. Rick Snyder visited a school in Traverse City for a reading event. See what the governor read and had to say on Pages 2 and 3.

Spring is just about a week away. It makes the Yak want to take a walk and see what’s up with nature. Could he spot a flying squirrel? Find out about these amazing animals on Pages 4 and 5.

It’s also the season for primary campaigns. Read about a young reporter covering them on Page 6.

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Printed by: The Detroit Media Partnership Sterling Heights, Michigan, Winter 2012.

• Tornado Outbreak, Page 6.• Gymnast Wins, Page 6.

Southern flying squirrels are sometimes called “ghost squirrels” because of their creamy white underbellies. Flying straight at you, they look like ghosts!

Photo by Jarrod Yasenchok

On the cover:

Also Inside:

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Yak Chat Look Who’s Reading!

The Governor Celebrates Reading and Healthy Eating

Gov. Rick Snyder visited Traverse Heights Elementary School in Traverse City.

Photo by Janis Campbell

Photo by Janis CampbellReporters from local television stations and newspapers surround Gov. Snyder to ask questions after the breakfast reading event at Traverse Heights Elementary School.

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, March 15, 2012 3

fun start by sharing a drawing lesson with students. He showed students how to draw several “upside-down cartoons.” These were drawings where there were two pictures in one – look at it one way and you see a girl in a hat, and look at it another way, it becomes a dog or a bunny! Skye volunteered to be the artist’s assistant and shared his book, “Cartoon FUNdamentals” with students in the gym bleachers, allowing them to select eyes and noses and mouths on funny creations he made-up on the spot. Dick, who lives in Traverse City and teaches cartooning classes at the local community college, said he was asked to submit his book for consideration for the read aloud about a month ago and was excited to have it selected for the event. He said having the governor read his book to the students was pretty cool. Dick spent his career working in the insurance industry, but has been drawing and cartooning since he was a kid. He told the Yak both of his parents were

teachers, which influenced his desire to teach and create books after he retired from the insurance business in 2000. His mom taught high school business classes and his dad was a high school English teacher, principal and college professor. “I definitely got my love of puns and twisting words around from my dad,” says Dick. One example is farmer Brock O’ Lee. Get it? As in broccoli.

Dick’s book was what the governor chose to read aloud to the students. After the reading, the governor toured the cafeteria and met with many community and school district leaders to hear more about the farm-to-school food service program at Traverse Heights Elementary and at schools throughout the Traverse City Area Public Schools. School and community leaders also shared their plans to get everyone – children and parents – to read aloud 15 minutes a day, every day, not just during Reading Month. Gov. Snyder said

visiting the school and hearing about the partnerships between farmers, schools and community organizations was fun. He loves to get out and hear about programs where people work together to help everyone – including Michigan students, schools, and farmers.

The governor had a full and busy day in Traverse City, but before he headed off to his next event he took time to answer questions from reporters, including the Yak. The Yak wondered what the governor was reading this month. He said he’s between books right now, but can’t wait to get back to reading for fun. The governor is an avid, or enthusiastic, reader, but for months he’s been busy reading materials related to preparing the state’s budget proposal. He added, when he was growing up, he read, “everything in sight – any book in the house, any magazine.”

By Janis Campbell

Photos by Janis CampbellTraverse City cartoonist and author Dick Evans warms up the crowd with a drawing lesson.

Students gather around Gov. Snyder, reading along in their own copies of the book, “Discover the Magic of Rainbows.”

Skye Martin was excited to have Gov. Snyder visit her school. He is the second Michigan celebrity she’s had a chance to meet. She also got to meet former Miss America Kirsten Haglund.

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What’s on your “wish list” of top Michigan experiences? Ours includes spotting a flying squirrel

sailing through the trees, all four feet stretched wide like a parachutist. We can only hope.

Michigan’s two species of flying squirrels are among the state’s most elusive (ee-LOO-sihv), or hard-to-find, mammals. Not because they aren’t out there; they are, nesting in cozy tree cavities and hunting for nuts throughout the state, including in cities.

Are there flying squirrels in Detroit? “Sure,” said Phil Myers, a University of Michigan biologist. “They like big trees and water, especially oaks (for acorns) and hickories (for nuts).”

But flying squirrels are nocturnal, or active only at night. Without illumination from a full moon or a flashlight or car headlights, they’re all but invisible to humans. They’re often gone before their presence fully registers – they fly that fast and silently.

Flying squirrels don’t really fly. They glide, spreading broad folds of skin that stretch from their wrists to their ankles and casting off from a tree trunk or a branch. They become kites! They can take off from any position, “even executing a backward somersault and twist to become airborne,” like Olympic divers, as author Nancy Wells-Gosling observed of the flying squirrels in her backyard, when she lived in Ann Arbor.

“With luck, I’ll catch sight of a squirrel 20 meters (65 feet) away and can watch as it glides unerringly toward the maple tree

where I wait,” she wrote in her book, “Flying Squirrels: Gliders in the Dark.”

“The small form slices through the air beneath the tree canopy, veering left or right to avoid tree trunks and branches...Two meters (6 feet) from the maple tree, the glider makes a sudden, sharp upward turn. Its white underside flashes in the dim light as its body swings into a vertical position, bringing all four feet to the front for landing. In an instant it contacts the trunk, the only sound being that of tiny claws digging into bark.”

Nancy and her husband found flying squirrels so fascinating they built a sanctuary for them. They even kept a few indoors as free-flying pets.

Phil sees flying squirrels all the time at his cottage in Northern Michigan. Like many fans, he set up a special feeder to attract them. He also happens to have red oaks that are “big enough to have some hollows, and often produce a good acorn crop.” Free room and food – what more could a flying squirrel

want?“We see them every night,” Phil said. “They

come down and take some of our sunseeds. There are sometimes as many as seven or eight. It’s great fun because we are actually able to watch them glide into the tree.”

Phil’s squirrels are Southern flying squirrels, the smaller and more abundant of the state’s two species. The other is the Northern Flying Squirrel, which has been disappearing. Phil has studied both species for decades and has documented radical changes in their ranges.

“In the early 20th Century, Southern flying squirrels were known only in about the lower third of the Lower Peninsula,” he said. “Northern flying squirrels occupied the range to the north of that (the upper two-thirds of the LP and the Upper Peninsula) – and they were fairly common.”

But in the 1970s, Nancy, who was in the UP studying Northerns, started seeing Southerns there, too. Today, Northerns have virtually disappeared from the LP. Southerns have

Meet Michigan’s Flying Fur Balls

Photo by John Peterson Myers Flying squirrels know all the cozy shelters near their nests and take the best, fastest routes there.

become “really common” in the northern LP, and can be found “all the way across the UP.”

“The only place I’ve seen Northerns really common is on Sugar Island” off the eastern UP, Phil said.

Having documented similar shifts in the ranges of nine other small forest mammals, he strongly suspects climate change.

“It’s part of a pattern of southern species moving northward, and northern species simply disappearing. The southern species, as they move northward, are finding southern conditions – southern temperatures and southern rainfall patterns, further and further north.”

No one knows why Northerns are being squeezed out, but some scientists believe a parasite is involved, Phil said. The worm infects both species, but it doesn’t seem to harm Southerns. In Northerns, “it’s fatal – they die. And there’s some evidence the worm is temperature sensitive. So it’s spreading northward because of warming.”

Right now, both species are busy courting and breeding. Soon, mothers will be nursing

pups – usually three – each at birth weighing less than a large marshmallow. For added warmth, the moms will spread their gliding flaps and cover the babies with it like a blanket.

In about their sixth week, the curious young rodents will try to “fly,” starting with short jumps and then clumsy leaps. In no time they’ll be gliding with ease, searching out the best routes between trees. When they find one, they’ll practice gliding it again and again, “sometimes for thirty or forty minutes without ceasing,” wrote Nancy.

Finally, they’ll be able to perform the maneuver instinctively, an important survival skill. To escape from a predator – say, a coyote or a snake or a cat – the squirrels have to take off spontaneously – without hesitation – gliding to safety “as fast as a speeding bullet,” as was said of Superman.

Supersquirrels!

By Patricia Chargot

5MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, March 15, 2012

A flying squirrel’s tail is used for balance. It functions like the tail on a kite.

To a flying squirrel, a branch is a launchpad. They are constantly taking off from trees to retrieve stored nuts, gather new ones, return to their nest to sleep or visit the separate safe place where they poop.

With their enormous dark eyes, Southern

flying squirrels are as irresistibly cute as

the house mice in a fairy tale.

Photo by John Peterson Myers

Photo by John Peterson Myers

Photo by Phil Myers

For a list of the world’s 43 flying squirrel species visit the University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web Site at http://animaldiversity.org. Search Pteromyini (Terro-MY-knee), the group’ scientific name. Search Southern Flying Squirrel and Northern Flying Squirrel for detailed reports on North America’s two species.

Thursday, March 15, 20126 MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

Tornado OutbreakThe first week of March began

with a terrible tornado outbreak, causing death and destruction in several states and setting a record for the number of twisters in one day. At least 10 states in the Midwest and South were affected, including Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky with more than 90 twisters reported on March 2. More than 30 deaths were due to the storms. Schools were destroyed as well as houses and businesses in several towns. The National Guard as well as the American Red Cross are helping the towns now, as are many volunteers. The outbreak is earlier than the normal beginning of the tornado season in April and May. Dr. Greg Forbes of The Weather Channel said that several of the storms, including one that hit the town of Henryville, Indiana, had winds of more

than 175 miles per hour. Henryville schools were heavily damaged, but teachers and staff kept students inside in bathrooms, protecting them from the storm, reported USA Today, but others were not so protected in homes or businesses. The cleanup and recovery will be a huge job, but as one Henryville resident said

to The Weather Channel, “We are pulling together.”

Winning GymnastMichigan’s own Jordyn

Wieber won another gymnastic championship. She won the American Cup title for the third time. Jordyn, who trains in Diamondale, Michigan and will be competing in the Olympics in London this summer, told NBC after winning the title in New York, “I did have a little bit of nerves.’’ She is also proud of how well every gymnast did. “It shows all the other countries:

‘look what we can do.’”Jordyn says she will be working hard before

the Summer Games. Compiled by Cathy Collison

Teen Covers Michigan PrimaryCharles (Charlie) Kadado used to read Yak’s

Corner when he was in elementary school. And at 7 years old, when he became a subject of a television news story, interviewed by WDIV’s Ruth Spencer, he became interested in television news reporting. (Charlie had been struck by a car in a hit-run accident. It led to some lengthy time in a wheelchair and big operations.)

So maybe it’s not surprising that Charlie has already been a Scholastic News reporter for a year and this winter, was called by Scholastic for a big assignment: covering the recent Republican primary election in Michigan. The Dakota High School student is also covering the whole 2012 campaign for other media.

“I first applied to Scholastic, almost by accident… I was looking for how to publish and saw an ad for Scholastic Press Corps,” said Charlie. The first year, he didn’t get the

job, but he did later. Recently, he was happy to do some stories on the GOP primary when Scholastic called. Charlie, 15, is not only an accomplished reporter and writer, but also a videographer. He has covered the campaign assignments on video. He attended a Mitt Romney gathering in Shelby Township, Candidate Romney’s speech to the Detroit Economic Club at Ford Field and a Rick Santorum rally in Lincoln Park. He ended up covering the Romney victory party in Novi, where he interviewed Gov. Rick Snyder. He also has recently interviewed Mayor David Bing. His tip to anyone interested in trying out for a reporter’s job? “Never give up.” “I had lots of problems and struggled in first and second grade,” said Charlie. But he overcame his challenges and now makes time for school and his passion for news and politics. His other tip? “Have a strong work ethic.” “Work, work and work!” He’d like to run for office someday himself. The Yak would bet that he’ll be doing just that!

Check out Scholastic’s election coverage at www.scholastic.com/election.

By Cathy Collison

Yakking about the newsA weekly wrap-up for young readers

Scholastic News PhotoCharlie Kadado covered the Michigan Republican primary.

Kids making News

American Red Cross PhotoHenryville, Indiana, was one of the towns struck by tornadoes.

Sixth grader Gwen Annable, Pine Street Elementary, Wayland, drew Julie from “Flipped” by Wendelin

Van Draanen.

Third grader Gavin Ward, Mason Elementary, Grand Blanc, drew Harry Potter from “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K.

Rowling.

First grader Jenna Stevenson, City School, Grand Blanc, drew “Rainbow Fish” by Mar-

cus Pfister.

Second grader Leah Cunningham, Haisley Elementary, Ann Arbor, drew Gator from “Gabby and Gator” by

James Burks.

Kindergartner Anna Stall, West Side Christian, Grand Rapids, drew

Piggie from “I Am Going!” by Mo Willems.

Fourth grader Eve Bournias, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Grosse Pointe Woods, drew Poppy

from “Poppy and Rye” by Avi.

Fifth grader Peyton Jacob, Donald J. Yacks Elementary, Harrison

Township, drew Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” by

Suzanne Collins.

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM 7Thursday, March 15, 2012

This week, we share the third-place winners in our contest. You can see more winners online at www.yakscorner.com. Check out these books at your library!

Yak’s Corner Favorite Book Character Contest Winners

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

Why is Open Enrollment important?

Should students help parents with picking their schools?

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Yak’stake-home page

Build skills for reading – tips to try

DPS Has Cool SchoolsOpen Enrollment Runs From March 15 – April 16

It’s time to start planning for the 2012 school year, and DPS has plenty of cool schools for students and parents to choose from.

The new Open Enrollment period for families is now open and ends on April 16, 2012. Parents have the opportunity to register for schools during this time. Informational events, open houses and parent shoppers’ fairs will be held during March.

With more than 100 schools throughout the district, DPS offers tons of options for students and families. Here are just of a few of our cool schools with specialized programs geared toward specific career goals:

Brenda Scott Academy for Theatre Arts, PreK-8: Brenda Scott promotes a theater arts-focused curriculum with programs like Music, Art, Dance, Drama and Fencing. As a 21st Century Learning School, students benefit from exciting programs like Radio Broadcasting and Announcing, Videography, Tutoring/Extended Day Program, Accelerated Reading/Math and more!

Davison Elementary-Middle School, PreK-8: Davison offers a culture-rich learning environment with a diverse population of African-American, Bangladeshi, Polish and Arabic students.

The academic program at Davison features a unique reform model called MicroSociety School, where students participate in student-operated businesses and agencies.

Western International High School, 9-12: Western International is a culturally

diverse, comprehensive high school with academic programs including the STEM Academy (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics); International Business Academy; Fine and Performing Arts Academy; and 9th Grade Ambassador Academy.

The newly renovated $28.3 million school has an athletic complex, swimming pool addition, and exercise facility. Students also enjoy a new Visual and Performing Arts Wing with a Black Box Theater, two dance studios, language laboratories, and art classrooms in addition to a cultural center.

Pick your cool school today! Plan early and be sure to tell your parents which programs you are most interested in. For more information on Open Enrollment, call 313-240-4DPS or visit detroitk12.org/enroll.

Think about different things you like to do, hobbies, or areas of study that you enjoy. Write a short essay on how these interests can be transformed into a career through the programs offered at Detroit Public Schools.

Source: Detroit Public Schools

Western International High School received a $28.3 million renovation in 2011 with a new athletic complex, swimming pool addition and exercise facility, and a new Visual and Performing Arts Wing.

Q&A

What’s your opinion?

8 Thursday, March 15, 2012

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