The Denver Post1

“This Broken Wondrous World” by Jon Skovron is a novel about monsters

who live around the world. The main character’s name is Boy, the son

of Frankenstein’s monster. He has spent his life living with humans and with other mon-sters.

Whenever he goes out in public, he is hidden with a special makeup called Glamor that makes him not look like a monster.

This is important because the existence of the monsters is unknown to humans. Just like humans, monsters come in all different sizes, shapes and personalities.

There is a war that is triggered by one, evil monster and it has a disastrous ripple effect.

The story was exciting to read and there were some creepy funny scenes.

However, the majority of the book was full of tragedy and could be considered disturb-ing.

For example when one of the characters was being eaten, the author describes how blood was squirting and bones were crunch-ing.

There are no illustrations but each new

character is described with a lot of detail. Warning - this book contains gore, some

frightening scenes, and profanity. This story was rather emotional and quite

gruesome to read. It will appeal to people who enjoy creepy, scary, horror types of movies.

Although this is the second book about Boy (the first one was called “Man Made Boy”), it is understandable by itself.

The book may be too much for readers under 12, who may also find it difficult to follow all of the different monsters and plac-es because events happen everywhere from Phoenix to New York and lots of new char-acters are introduced throughout the book.

CK Reporter of the WeekThandi Glick, Denver

Film captures suspense of true storyImagine you are trapped 2,300 feet underground with

32 other people. Your food supply is enough to last three days for everyone.

Your only exit is blocked by a huge rock twice the size and weight of the Empire State Building.

It is 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and chances of survival are slim.

What do you do? Wait it out? Go insane? Break down and cry?

“The 33” is a movie based on a real event that hap-pened in Chile in 2010: Thirty-three miners were trapped underground after a mining accident in the Atacama desert.

International drilling teams were funded by the Chil-ean government, but the Canadian and Australian teams failed to reach the miners after their drills broke down.

Finally, after 69 days, the miners were saved by the American team.

Matt Staffe, Jeff Hart, and Jorge Herrera, three men who were part of that American drilling team, attended the movie preview October 29 at the Century Boulder movie theater.

All three men said they were pleased with how the movie was put together.

Jorge Herrera commented on the accuracy of the script, saying: “We don’t know what happened under-ground. [...] On the surface, I’d say it’s about 50% (accu-rate.)”

The movie’s special effects, like falling rocks and ma-chinery when the mine collapsed, were impressive and very realistic.

The costumes and makeup were also very believable, such that I almost thought that someone had stuck a camera into the mountain and fi lmed the miners.

If you like dramatic movies, then this is the movie for you, because it is very intense.

From me, this movie gets 10 out of 10 stars because it was similar to the real event, and it had me at the edge of my seat.

Overall, I thought it was excellent, and worth watching. “The 33” is rated PG-13 for mild swearing.

November 17 , 2015

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

By Maria Ciobanu,11, a CK Reporter from Denver

By Tyler Vanourek,13, a CK Reporter from Littleton

‘Broken World’ will appeal to horror fans

The Denver Post

Do you like baking? If so, the Easy-Bake Oven “Baking Star Edition” might be the device for you.

With a gold and white design and star em-broidery, this oven is great for anyone ages eight and up.

However, while the oven is fun to use, it is not always efficient.

Unlike the original, you must use your own mixing tools since they are not includ-ed with this set.

Meanwhile, however, it bakes better than the older version.

The kit includes the oven, a pan tool, a pan, and one package of ingredients to make sparkle cookies.

You must remember many things while you are exploring this gadget.

First, you must make sure you turn on the oven and preheat for 20 minutes by flipping the power switch, located on the left side of the oven, after plugging it in.

Plus, adult supervision is highly recom-mended, as the oven does get hot, of course.

When starting to bake, you must read every set of directions.

There are pictures to help, and you must also think about how long you have to wait

for it to bake. In addition, it gets a little dirty and results

often vary. Finally, you may need to add more water

than recommended for the batter to reach the desired consistency.

As for the sparkle cookies that were in-cluded with the set, they turned out fine, but somewhat burnt even though the directions were followed.

Furthermore, an additional amount of water was added to the batter to reach the right uniformity.

Nonetheless, the cookie to frosting to sprinkle ratio was perfect and everything balanced out.

If you don’t want to use something pre-packaged, but you still want to use the oven, you’re in luck because this is possible.

All you have to do is follow a regular rec-ipe and fit as much of the batter as you can in the pan.

Even so, you must keep checking on the treats as they bake, but it is less dirty and fewer utensils are used.

Overall, the Easy-Bake Oven “Baking Star Edition” is a fine present or toy to have and bake with, but it is messy, inefficient, and involves many steps, so you might just want to use your regular oven.

The Easy Bake Oven is fun, but you wouldn’t want to count on it for your daily cooking needs.

2

Inspiration comes in all sizes. Freddie Steinmark was a Wheat Ridge athlete over 40 years ago, and most colleges said he was “too small” to play football for them.

But he was very persistent and the University of Texas gave him a chance to play college ball, where he became a star.

A new movie about this local hero “My All-American,” based on the book “Freddie Steinmark: Faith, Family, Football,” demonstrates all the attributes of a good person not only in football but in life.

In the film, football is not the only thing important to Freddie; so are grades in school, as he had a 4.0 grade point average.

Most people ages 9 and over would, I think, enjoy this film. A lot of football games are played throughout this film, but, even if you’re not a football fan in general, there is more, including some humor.

There are also many life lessons to be learned. People younger than 9 might not understand the story, and some

romantic kisses happen throughout the movie as well as mild cursing.Finn Wittrock was excellent as Freddie Steinmark, as were the oth-

ers, including Aaron Eckhart (as his coach), Sarah Bolger (as his girl-friend), and Robin Tunney (as his mom).

The director of “My All-American,” Angelo Pizzo, has worked on two other well-known films, “Rudy” and “Hoosiers”, and is skilled at directing sports movies.

This one focuses mainly on the positive side of Freddie’s life, but, of course, does show that he ended up with cancer.

In his final game, Freddie was awarded a game ball by his team because he couldn’t play. He had to have his leg amputated but died a year and a half later.

In Colorado today, the Steinmark award is presented every year to the best high school student athlete in the state.

How would you respond to being “too small?”Would you accept a chance to go to the University of Texas knowing

you weren’t guaranteed a spot on the 100 man roster? These, and his illness, are among the tough challenges Freddie Stein-

mark has to face in “My All-American”.

Wheat Ridge hero still inspires

By Sam Martinez,12, a CK Reporter from Lakewood

By Kayla Mitchiner,10, a CK Reporter from Golden

Novel combines fascinating fiction, non-fiction

New ‘Easy Bake Oven’ okay, but not perfect

“Boy’s Best Friend” by Kate Banks and Rupert Sheldrake is about two boys named George Masson and

Lester Shoe, and their dogs, Bart and Bill Gates, respectively.

Lester is the new kid who moved to Cape Cod, where the story takes place, from Den-ver. He likes mustard, and has quite a bit of trouble fitting in.

George is a slightly depressed boy, whose best friend moved to North Carolina a while back.

When George and Lester are assigned a science project about animal behavior for school, they decide to conduct an experi-ment based on Rupert Sheldrake’s studies on dogs (The novel was inspired by Shel-drake’s non-fiction book “Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.”).

George and Lester may end up discovering more than just how much their dogs know about them, though.

If you haven’t heard of or read about Rupert Sheldrake’s fascinating “morphic resonance” theory, then you might not un-derstand everything that goes on in “Boy’s Best Friend.”

Basically, this theory refers to the idea that all animals, including humans, could possi-bly sense emotions and thoughts, based on a

“morphic” field that holds thoughts and past memories.

One thing that was really interesting about this book was the fact that George emails with Sheldrake to ask for help and guidance, and those emails are featured in the book.

Quite a few of the emails from Sheldrake include pieces of scientific information and interesting insights on some of his actual experiments.

I thought that ‘Boy’s best Friend’ was a very funny, charming book, with an unex-pected ending.

I recommend this unique read to animal lovers over the age of 8, because younger people might not understand the science ex-periment or might find the email exchanges boring.

This book encourages children of all ages to try their own experiments of the sort that George and Lester did.

By Leslie Wilburn,14, a CK Reporter from Denver

The Denver Post3

In Chelsea Clinton’s book, “It’s Your World! Get In-formed, Get Inspired &

Get Going,” she urges kids 10 through 14 to help make a dif-ference and help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

Clinton, who recently made several appearances in our area, said she realizes that kids are the world’s future and that she is introducing kids around the United States to how they can make a difference.

This is greatly important because many things these days are good at telling you what the world’s problems are, but not how you can help to change the way it is.

But in “It’s Your World,” Clin-ton helps kids realize the easy things they can do to help make an impact that would change not only their communities, but also countries around the planet.

I personally found that this “how-to” book greatly inspiring and also informative about things that I had known little about.

While the chapters are long, they each have a good message that includes real-life stories of young people and adults around the globe who have helped make a life-changing impact on lives in developing countries and beyond.

Another thing that I thorough-ly enjoyed about the novel was that it focused on several of the very diffi cult and very real situ-ations that people have to deal with on a day-to-day basis and that kids will have to cope with as they grow older, like climate change, gender inequality, and poverty.

In the long run, I am on my way to making a change in the world, my community, and my school thanks to the inspiring words in “It’s Your World! Get Informed Get Inspired & Get Going” and I hope more kids join me to help stand up and de-fend what they believe is right.

I would most defi nitely recom-mend this book to anyone who

has a desire to help make the world a better place, one small step at a time!

Those who worry about rising sea levels have something new to worry about,

thanks to a combination of warmer air and warmer currents in the oceans.

For some time, there has been concern about the giant glaciers of Antarctica and, in our hemisphere, those on the southern end of Greenland.

As they begin to break off huge icebergs and slide more rapidly towards the sea, they add to the amount of water in our oceans.

Although the surface ice in Antarctica has increased in recent years, that has little to do

with the glaciers, which have been frozen for tens of thousands of years. Sea ice increases and decreases with the weather, but climate change continually melts the glaciers.

Now studies of NASA data show glaciers in northern Greenland are also melting faster.

The two glaciers are only partially on land, and while they are melting at the top from air temperatures, they are also being melted underneath from warming ocean currents.

Neither will melt completely for many years, but, if they eventually did, the seas would rise more than three feet.

World’s oceans get bad news from an expected place

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi saw her political party win a

clear victory in Myanmar’s elec-tions last week.

In the fi rst free elections since 1990, The National League for Democracy party won 80 per-cent of the seats in parliament.

In parliamentary democracies, the members of the parliament elect the country’s leader, often called a prime minister but, in Myanmar, called the president.

With such a huge majority, the NLD will be able to decide who will be president, but it cannot be their leader, Suu Kyi.

After winning in the 1990 elec-tions, Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, meaning she was not in jail but had to stay at home and have no unsupervised con-tact with the outside world.

The army halted democracy, took over the country and ruled harshly.

Besides not holding elections, they made a change in the con-stitution so that no one with for-eign relatives could be president.

Most people thought that was done simply to keep Suu Kyi, whose late husband was British, from ever gaining power.

But her Nobel Prize and pres-sure from other nations made the army gradually relax their rule, and the results of last week’s elections have been accepted by the military and the government that had been ruling Myanmar.

At least, that’s what they said.Myanmar has many challeng-

es ahead, but the fi rst is to see if Aung San Suu Kyi’s party will truly be permitted to return their nation to democracy.

Will elections return Myanmar to democracy?

photo/NASA/USGS

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 1800, Congress met for the fi rst time in the new capital city of Washington, so our answers this week will each begin with “C.”

1. Army base located between Colorado Springs and Pueblo

2. Former U.S. President now known for helping to build homes for the poor.

3. A small trumpet with a high, bright tone

4. Wolves, coyotes, foxes, dogs and jackals are part of this family.

5. Type of fruit associated with Rocky Ford, Colorado

6. Author who created Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby

7. Punter for the Denver Broncos

8. The capital of Denmark

9. Herb used in Mexican and Thai cooking also known as “coriander”

10. A large asteroid named for the Roman goddess of agriculture

(answers on Page Four)

Chelsea Clinton signing books for readers at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. (photo: Clarise Reichley)

Campaign materials for Myanmar’s victorious National League for De-mocracy party included fans with a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi and the words “We Must Win!”

(AP photo: Khin Maung Win)

Former ‘First Daughter’ wants you involved

By Clarise Reichley,11, a CK Reporter from Denver

The Denver Post 4

is produced by Denver Post Educational Services

Executive Editor: Dana Plewkadplewka@denverpost.comCK Editor: Mike Peterson

coloradokidseditor@gmail.comWe welcome your comments.

For tools to extend the learning in this feature, look under “Youth Content” at:

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eEditions of the Post arefree of charge for classroom use.Contact us for information on all

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Stories without bylines were written by the editor.

(see Page Three)

10 right - Wow!

7 right - Great!

5 right - Good

3 right - See you next time!

1. (Fort) Carson 2. (Jimmy) Carter 3. cornet 4. canine (or canidae) 5. cantaloupe

6. (Beverly) Cleary 7. (Britton) Colquitt 8. Copenhagen 9. cilantro 10. Ceres

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The Water Dance (South Africa)

(This African story will likely sound familiar to American readers. It is one of many stories brought here by Bantu-speaking Africans who came as slaves. There are no rabbits in Africa, however -- The “rabbit” of the American version is, in Africa, a type of hare, Lepus crassicaudatus, and quite a different animal. In those folk tales, however, he is just as troublesome as his American cousin!)

There was a summer when it did not rain. First the streams stopped running.

Then the rivers dried up. Even the springs ceased to pour water from the rocks.

The animals held a meeting, all together, to decide what they should do.

The elephant suggested a water dance. “We have tried stamping on the river bed to make the water come up out of the mud, but it was not enough,” the elephant said.

The animals shook their heads. If the elephant could not bring up the water, the drought was very bad indeed.

“If everyone takes part, it might work,” the lion said. “But everyone must help. If you do not help, and we find water, there will be none for you.”

The hare laughed. “I don’t like to dance,” he said, “but I will drink water anyway.” And he went away without offering to help.All of the other animals gathered in the river bed and began to dance. They danced

and danced, the jackal and the hyena and the lion and the rhinoceros. The tiny gazelle danced next to the mighty buffalo, and the screeching baboon

danced alongside the silent giraffe.After a long time, someone shouted, for the crusted mud under his feet was be-

coming soft and damp. Everyone danced harder, and soon all the mud was wet, and then there were places where it was more water than mud. At last, they had danced the riverbed down to where it turned into a pool of water.

Every animal had a drink, and then they rested. At last, they all went back into the forest and plains, except for the hyena, for he was chosen to guard their waterhole and make sure nobody drank from it except the animals who had worked so hard to make the water come.

The moon was just rising when the hyena saw the hare coming down the path with two gourds. “Don’t ask for water,” the hyena called out to him. “You’ll get none of ours. You didn’t dance with us, and you won’t drink with us!”

The hare smiled. “I don’t want your plain old water, friend,” he said. “I have much better water right here.” And he lifted one of the gourds to his lips. “Would you like to try it? It’s very special water!”

The hare took a blade of grass and dipped it into the honey he had in the gourd. He held the grass up and let the hyena lick a drop as it dripped off. “That is good!” hyena said. “Can I have a sip of it?”

“I don’t know if it would be safe,” the hare said. “It is very powerful water. You might begin to leap about. You might even try to eat me!”

“I wouldn’t do that,” the hyena promised. “Just let me have a sip of your special water!”

The hare thought a moment. “Well, let me tie you to this tree first. That way, if the special water makes you go crazy, I’ll be safe until you calm down.”

The hyena agreed, so the hare took some strong vines and tied him to the tree. “Can you move?” the hare asked.

The hyena struggled, but the vines held him tight. “No, I can’t move at all!” he said.“Good,” the hare laughed. Then he went to the waterhole, filled his other gourd with water and drank deeply.

“My, that’s very nice water!” he said. “Thank you, hyena! I’ll come back tomorrow night for another drink!”

In the morning, the other animals came to the waterhole for a drink and found the hyena still tied up. They laughed at him for letting the hare fool him, but then they wondered who could keep the hare from drinking their water.

“I will do it,” said the tortoise. “If the hare can fool the hyena with the bees’ honey, I will fool the hare with their wax!”

He got the other animals to help spread sticky beeswax all over his shell, then he waded down into the pool until nothing of his legs, head or tail showed above the water. All that could be seen of tortoise was his high, round back.

That evening, the hare came down to get another drink. He looked around to see if there was a guard, and then went to get a drink.

“I see they put a rock in the water to keep their feet dry! What a good idea!” he said, and jumped right onto the tortoise’s sticky shell.

The hare quickly realized what had happened, but his feet were already stuck in the beeswax. “Let me go, or I’ll hit you!” he shouted. He swung one fist, then the other, but he did not hurt tortoise, and now his hands were stuck, too!

“You think you’re smart?” he said. “I’ll butt you with my head!” and the next thing the hare knew, his head was also stuck to tortoise’s sticky shell. And when he tried to whip tortoise with his tail, he had no better luck.

The tortoise turned and slowly walked out of the water with hare stuck to his back, while all the animals came out of the bushes laughing.

“What shall we do with this thief?” the tortoise asked them.“Cut off his head!” someone shouted.“Let the elephant stomp him flat!” cried someone else.“What do you think we should do to you?” Tortoise asked.“I don’t care, as long as it is an honorable death,” the hare replied. “I would not

want a shameful death, like being swung around by the tail and slammed into the ground.”

“That is what we will do, then!” the elephant shouted. And he grabbed the hare by the tail, pulling him off the tortoise’s shell and swinging him around his head.

But the hare’s tail quickly broke and he flew off into the bushes, while elephant’s trunk held nothing but a bit of skin and fur.

“Ha ha!” a voice laughed in the distance. “That part of my body was made to fool my enemies! Thank you for the drink, and for letting me escape again!”

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

For a teaching guide, go to http://tinyurl.com/ckserial

Folk Tales & Fables