Senatorsscold Dr. Oz

for poordiet advice

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a very popular TV personality, and, when he gives advice on his show, people take it seriously. That got Dr. Oz some criticism from senators investigating phony weight-loss products,

because people have lost money buying things that he said would work.“I don’t get why you need to say this stuff because you know it’s not

true,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said to Dr. Oz at a senate hearing. Dr. Oz replied that he never talks about a specifi c brand, and that he

wants to encourage people to keep trying to lose weight, even though there may be no proof that the things he tells people to try will really work.

He agreed that the only real way to lose weight is with diet and exercise and promised to do a better job of letting his viewers know that. A Federal Trade Commission study shows that phony weight-loss products are the largest category of consumer fraud. AP photo/Lauren Burke

2013

ColoradoKids CK ReporterSophia Hood,

Littleton

Colorful Colorado butterflIeS!

How do you tell a girl butterfl y from a boy but-terfl y? The experts at the

Chatfi eld Botanic Gardens’ new butterfl y habitat can teach us this and much more.

“This project has been in the works for about a year now.” Di-rector of Botanic Gardens, Larry Vickerman said.

Now “Butterfl ies at Chatfi eld” is open and ready for visitors!

The Butterfl y Pavilion in West-minster and the Denver Botanic Gardens decided to merge their expertise to make a butterfl y habitat, which will be open until the fi rst hard frost, which they hope won’t be until October.

The best day to come to the butterfl y habitat is on a warm and sunny day because cold-blooded butterfl ies need warmth to spread their wings.

Butterfl ies will vary from day to day, but a butterfl y that visi-tors will almost always fi nd is the monarch, expected to be a Colorado fan favorite.

All the butterfl ies and plants in the habitat are native to Colo-rado, so these are plants that you

can grow in your garden and butterfl ies that can be found in your own backyard.

You can learn a lot, like how to tell the different species apart, how different plants and animals need each other to survive, the lifecycle of a butterfl y, and even how to make your own nectar!

Marissa Copan, Butterfl y Pavil-ion Programs Director said, “I’m hoping that the public will learn about native plants and but-terfl ies and how to plant plants in your garden that can attract

butterfl ies.” The habitat always has butter-

fl y gardeners and butterfl y edu-cation experts around to answer your questions.

One you might have right now is, where do they get all their butterfl ies?

They actually get them in chrysalis form shipped in by a local butterfl y farmer.

The new butterfl y habitat is great way to gain knowledge and an appreciation for Colorado-grown plants and butterfl ies!

By Kaiya Cox,10, a CK Reporter from Aurora

Meet the Monarch Photo Scott Dressel-Martin © Denver Botanic Gardens.

Trade Commission study shows that phony weight-loss products are the largest category of consumer fraud.

June 24, 2014

As this photo clearly shows, the “dark side” of

the Moon isn’t always dark.We call it that because the

same side of the Moon always faces us, and we didn’t know what that far side looked like.

When a Russian space probe fi nally photographed it in 1959, the most noticeable thing was that it has no “marias” or seas, the dark areas that create the “Man in the Moon” pattern on the side facing Earth.

Astrophysicists at Penn State University now have a theory: When the Moon fi rst formed, it and the Earth were both hot, molten balls of magma.

So the side facing the hot Earth cooled more slowly than the side facing into cold space.

Our side of the moon devel-oped a more fragile crust, so, when meteors struck it, they’d break through and magma would leak out, forming the marias that we see. Photo/NASA

WHy IS tHe man only on our SIde of tHe moon?

Intriguing but disappointing novel

A young African-Ameri-can girl moving across the country every few

months or even weeks is how life was for author Marilyn Nelson.

Her father had been called up when she was only five and was

still serving in the army when she was 14.

During these times she moved at least 10 times or even more.

The author shows a detailed image to her readers about what it was like during the 50s and 60s when the Civil Rights Movement, the shadow of the atomic bomb, and the feminist movement all started to hap-pen.

“How I Discovered Poetry” by

Marilyn Nelson is a sequence of fifty unrhymed sonnets that

tell the story of Marilyn Nelson’s own childhood.

Because they are sonnets, each poem has 14 lines and close to 10 syllables per line.

Her poems go through her life as a four-year-old all the way through her 14th year.

Throughout the poems you can see that she expresses her

opinions clearly about her life and the world during the 50s

and 60s. There are pictures next to po-

ems, and below the title of each poem there is the setting of the poem you’re reading.

Sometimes the author asks you a question that you might never have thought of before and leaves you wondering.

One question even asks you about something you might take for granted and you might never think to ask why.

I would recommend this book for anyone old enough to read, however, older kids would learn more from this book than younger kids.

“How I Discovered Poetry” is a book for learning and discuss-ing with others but can also be read for non-fiction enjoyment.

“West of The Moon” by Margi Preus pulls you in, then

slightly disappoints.

After their mother’s death and their father goes to America, Astri and her little sister Greta are forced to live with their selfish aunt and cousins in the center of Norway.

As soon as the two girls get settled in, their aunt sells Astri to a poor and unfair goat herder, breaking the hope of the girls of joining their father in America.

After finding that she is not the only prisoner stuck with the goat herder, Astri and the other girl, nicknamed Spinning Girl, flee into the woods with Greta, starting their journey toward America.

I was highly impressed with the detail and how well the au-thor made sure that there were

sections in her book pointed at all ages of readers.

Some sections were clearly aimed at the younger audience and other parts pointed toward older kids.

“West of The Moon” would keep most people interested and involved in its strange plot, and the way that the author expressed Astri’s feelings so deeply was very impressive.

Sadly, though, the book was strangely confusing and a little hard to follow.

Some sections had to be reread in order to understand them at all.

I also felt that many chapters in the book were unnecessary, and just added to the confusion. Emotions changed quickly, mak-ing it harder to follow.

Even though different sections seemed directed toward differ-ent aged readers, “West of The Moon” was clearly aimed at an older audience, perhaps 10 and up.

This strange book is quite good, but be prepared for some confusion.

Grayson Bruce stood up to bullies and was a guest at Denver Comic Con on an anti-bullying panel. Look through today’s paper for an example of someone who you think shows how a difficult situation should be handled. Imagine that you could put together a panel with that person and two others. What would you call the panel and who else should be on it?

That’s Switzerland in the circle. We apologize for getting it wrong in last week’s World Cup Quiz.

Beyond these four pages

CorreCtion

Traveling through America, and history, in poetry

By Megan Lindsey,11, a CK Reporter from Fort Collins

By Yejin Campbell,13, a CK Reporter from Brighton

Colorado Kidsis produced by

Denver Post Educational ServicesExecutive Editor: Dana Plewka

dplewka@denverpost.comCK Editor: Mike Peterson

coloradokidseditor@gmail.comWe welcome your comments.

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

www.ColoradoNIE.com

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

our programs.

Denver Post Educational Services101 W. Colfax Ave.Denver CO 80202

(303) 954-3974(800) 336-7678

In 2010, when the World Cup was played in South Africa, Colombian singer, dancer and songwriter Shakira Isabel Mebarak

Ripoll appeared at a huge concert there.For those games, she had worked with the

South African group Freshlyground to cre-ate “Waka Waka, (This Time For Africa),” the official song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Now Shakira is back with “La La La (Brazil 2014),” one of two official songs for this year’s World Cup. For this one, she used one of her recent songs which she rewrote with the help of Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown.

For the video of this song, however, she

brought in two additional helpers: Activia brand yogurt and the World Food Programme.

The World Food Programme is the United Nations’ group that helps to fight hunger around the globe, with emergency help when it is needed, but also with programs that help prevent hunger in poor nations.

Sometimes, WFP helps by provid-ing food, while other times it helps by educating people about nutrition or by setting up programs to make local farmers and other food pro-ducers more successful.

Activia, WFP and Shakira have put together a program that encourages people to donate to WFP in order to provide school lunches for children in Nicaragua and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

School lunches are important not only to give poor children the energy to pay attention and do well in the classroom, but also because it may be the best meal they get all day.

In addition, school lunch programs give health workers a chance to check

and make sure that kids are doing well and, for instance, to take steps to protect them against parasites and other health risks.

It’s not surprising that Shakira is involved in something like this: Besides being a good dancer, singer and songwriter, the Colombian superstar has often been involved in charity and has been honored in countries around the world for her international public service.

You can catch a link to watch the video at ColoradoNIE.com.

That’s the only place that you’ll see her boyfriend, Spanish futbol player Gerard Piqué now: Spain was eliminated from the World Cup last week. (But Colombia is still in it!)

Shakira beats the drum for school lunches

CK Reporters serve from July 1, 2014 to September 7, 2015. Questions? E-mail dplewka@denverpost.com

Apply to be a Colorado Kids Reporter! It’s fun and there are cool perks

Get all the details at ColoradoNIE.com today!

Love to Write?

ck Kids and adults can find live links to information about stories in Colorado Kids at www.ColoradoNIE.com

SudokuRules: 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.

4 1

2 5

2 1

5 6

6 1

5 4

Imagine a huge building packed with thousands of people, and imagine that 85

percent of them are dressed like they’re trick or treating.

As soon as you walked into Denver Comic Con last week, you could feel the excitement radiating from people as they walked around chatting excited-ly; It was so loud that you could barely hear yourself think.

There were 70,000 people of all ages there, from baby Bat-mans to adults dressed as Star Trek characters.

There were also group cos-tumes, like a family dressed as “The Incredibles” and friends dressed as the Mario Brothers

and video game princesses. Everywhere you looked were

characters you recognized, from Maleficent to Deadpool, from Elsa and Anna to Finn and Jake.

And everywhere you looked there were smiling faces.

Comic Con also had booths where you could learn about dig-ital designing and how to draw a comic book, or find merchandise from TV shows, movies, books and comics.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Batman, so the building was filled with Batman costumes, panels, merchandise, and comic books. There was also a car exhibit with the Bat-mobile from the older movies and the latest model as well.

Walking around the 50,000 square foot Colorado Conven-tion Center gets tiring, but you could sit and listen to panels on Star Wars, Star Trek, specific superheroes, TV shows, anima-

tion, cosplay, and other topics.The guest of honor was Wil-

liam Shatner from the original Star Trek, and there were many other TV and film celebrities as well as artists and authors.

People lined up to pay to get autographs from their ac-tors like Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead), Jason David Frank

(Mighty Morphin’ Power Rang-ers) and Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk) or pictures with stars like Chandler Riggs (The Walking Dead) and Jeremy Shada (Adventure Time).

Denver Comic Con 2014 was a wonderful experience for kids of all ages and I highly recom-mend going next year.

ComIC Con roCkS ConventIon Center

onCe-bullIed brony fIndS frIendS at ComIC Con

By Sophia Khan,11, a CK Reporter from Northglenn

When 9-year-old Grayson Bruce walked into school with his school supplies last fall, things

got complicated. Grayson is a “brony,” a male fan of “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.”

Grayson was already being bullied at school but his new “My Little Pony” backpack made the bullying worse. Kids pushed him down and called him names.

His mother complained to the principal, but the principal’s re-sponse was that the backpack was a “trigger for the bullying” and that Grayson should leave it at home.

Instead, Grayson’s mother created a Facebook page called “Sup-port for Grayson” and his story became known worldwide.

But more examples have also now become known of bronys being bullied, including one who attempted suicide due to the

constant bullying he got for his love of the show.

At this year’s Denver Comic Con, Grayson Bruce was part of a panel called “Speak Up: Stop Bullying” with Jeremy Shada (Adventure Time) and Max Charles (Mr.Peabody and Sherman, The Neighbors).

The message of the panel was that, if you are getting bullied, you should use

Grayson as a role model to talk about it with someone you trust and can talk to in confidence. His refusal to be bullied can be an inspiration if you are being victimized.

Do not lose hope: Take a stand like Grayson did and speak up. No one should be bullied for liking something others don’t.

-- Story by Sophia Khan, photo courtesy Grayson Bruce

Youth-written stories that appear here also appear on

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Photo by Sophia Khan