Can You Spell Winner?

At the National Spelling Bee it’s spelled Kavya Shivashankar!

 The audience was freezing and tense. The auditorium was really, really cold.

Everyone groaned when there was a commercial break. The Scripps National Spelling Bee finals were broadcast live and the camera lights were really heating things up on stage. So were the words!

 I reported almost word for word on Tweeter all evening long as spellers moved from one side of the stage to the next. When a speller missed a word, he or she would moved from stage right to stage left, joining family members.

Although the audience groaned at too many commercials, I put the time to good use.
I interviewed spellers during the breaks for my story. I had a deadline to make. I had to turn the story around as soon possible for Scholastic News Online’s top story on Friday. Plus I had a final tweet and this blog post. AND I had to send in pictures. Thank goodness for my mom who helps with the photos!

I first talked to Sonia Schlesinger, who won the D.C. competition, but didn’t make it into tonight’s finals. Sonia is a great speller. She easily beat me at the D.C. finals. Yes, I competed too!

The spellers use commercial breaks very differently than everyone else. They sign autographs. These guys are real celebrities!

For three rounds everyone got everything right. Then came the 11th round. If you had to guess, you usually got it wrong, and the words were getting harder. It was down to three when the championship round began.

In the championship round only 25 words are left. The spellers left standing at the end of those 25 words win, no matter how many that may be. It didn’t take long, though. It was soon down to Kavya Shivashankar, a 13-year-old from Olathe, Kansas. (Speller No. 110.) She got the final word right: laodicean: lukeworm or indefinite in religion.

Here are the words that took down two champions:

For Tim Ruiter, 12, it was maecenas: a generous benefactor, especially a patron of the arts.

For Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, it was menhir: a tall upright megalith; found primarily in England and northern France.

I liked watching some of the quirks of the spellers as they got lost in concentration on stage. It was like the audience didn’t even exist. They are on live prime time major network TV and all they think about are their words. That’s a champion.

The winner, Kavya, always spelled the word in her palm with her finger. Aishwarya closed her eyes when spelling. Tim would ask, “What’s it mean?” when everyone else always said, “May I have the definition please?”

I know the NBA finals were playing on another channel, but I think the real competition was right here in Washington D.C. at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

—Madison Hartke-Weber

Photo: Spelling Bee Champion Kavya Shivashankar with Kid Reporter Madison Hartke-Weber after the National National Spelling Bee on May 28, 2009. Photo Courtesy Maddie Martke-Weber 

History Lives!

I saw history come to life this weekend and I obviously wasn't alone. The new movie, Night at the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian, made more than $70 million when it opened nationwide over the Memorial Day weekend.

In this sequel to Night at the Museum, great art and historic figures leap into action, reliving their most famous achievements: Amelia Earhart tells her life story and a man walks on the moon just to name a few. As a PG action adventure for kids, the movie was educational, but most of all it was fun! And funny!

The Night at the Museum movies are based on a childrens book by Milan Trenc.  In the book, a museum guard named Larry dozes off on the job. He wakes up to discover that all the dinosaur bones have disappeared. He frantically searches the museum and Central Park looking for the missing bones, which have come alive.

The movies have taken that idea and really run with it. I’ve seen both movies now and can tell you that the sequel is very different from the first movie—maybe better and even funnier.

All the previous characters from the American Museum of Natural History in New York come along for new adventures with exhibits from the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. Some of the new characters include a giant squid, Darth Vader, Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, and Abraham Lincoln. The Jonas Brothers get in on the act, too, lending their voices to the singing cherubs on a water fountain.

I visited the set of the movie last summer in Vancouver, Canada. (Check out the video interview with Director Shawn Levy!)  Art director Claude Pare gave me a tour of the set and explained how he and his art team made replicas of the famous paintings and works of art.
The replicas look exactly like the originals and Pare had to get permission from the artists and their estates to use and animate each piece. Yes, even paintings come to life!

In one scene, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) and Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) escape into a famous photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse during a celebration of the end of World War II.

In a replica of the aerospace museum, Pare built a NASA control room with real technicians counting down the blast off of the first mission to put a man on the moon.  They recreated the rocket launch complete with fire shooting out of the rocket engines.

“All of these artifacts are rigged [to work],” Pare said. “It takes everything that Larry has in terms of energy to actually stop the launching situation.” 

President Abraham Lincoln and General George Custer turned out to be really funny, too. At least in the movie. I wonder what they would be like in real life?

Here’s something to think about.  If you could choose anyone in history, what figure would you most like to see come to life? What would you ask that person? You can send you answer by clicking on the blue COMMENT below!

—Mariam El Hasan

Photo: 20th Century FOX

Memorial Day from Home

You can find national history in your local cemetery.

This Memorial Day weekend Americans will pay tribute to the men and women of the military who have died protecting this country.

You may wonder how Memorial Day began. I paid a visit to a cemetery near my home town that claims to be the birthplace of what was once called Decoration Day. You’ll be surprised at what I learned!
According to some historians, Memorial Day began 143 years ago about 30 minutes from my home in the nearby town of Columbus, Mississippi.

On April 25, 1866, four women decorated the tombstones of the Confederate soldiers buried in Friendship Cemetery. They noticed at the time that the graves of the Union soldiers were being ignored, so they laid flowers there, too.

At the Friendship Cemetery in Mississippi, I learned that a famous poem was inspired by the women who decorated those graves. Francis Miles Finch’s poem “The Blue and the Gray” was published in the September 1867 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The headnote to the poem read:

The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by noble sentiments, have showed themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers on the graves of the Confederate and the National Soldiers.

Some experts claim this is the first time both the Confederate and Union soldiers were recognized at the same time.

But other regions make the same claim. In fact, about 25 different communities say Memorial Day began in their cemeteries, including Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; and Columbus, Georgia.

The first national observance of the Civil War dead was held on May 30, 1868 in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. That was three years after the end of the “War Between the States.”

After World War I, the day was designated to honor those who died in all American wars, not just the Civil War. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, New York, the "birthplace" of Memorial Day. Congress passed a law in 1971 designating the last Sunday in May as Memorial Day.

I have attended several Memorial Day ceremonies and it has changed the way I think of all our men and women in uniform. It has taught me to appreciate all of them for risking their lives to give us our freedoms. Have you ever been to a Memorial Day ceremony? What does Memorial Day mean to you? Send us your comments below!

—Miandra Maiers

Photo: Decoration Day memorial stone at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi. Photo by Miandra Maiers

Chocolate Power!

Can chocolate help the environment?

Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH), the state’s largest electricity producer, and Lindt Chocolate in Stratham, New Hampshire, have come together to go green with chocolate.

Lindt will begin processing chocolate at its plant in Stratham by the end of 2009. The company plans to contribute its leftover cocoa bean shells to PSNH. 

PSNH is experimenting with turning those shells into electricity by burning them along with coal in their Schiller Station power plant in Portsmouth. Mixing a biomass product like cocoa shells with coal reduces the amount of carbon dioxide the power plant emits into the atmosphere.

PSNH and Lindt hope that by burning this mixture they might be able to reduce each of their companies’ carbon footprints. Both PSNH and Lindt hope that replacing a fossil fuel with a biomass product like cocoa shells will lead to greener power.

—Chloe Conway

PHOTO: Cocoa beans in a shell sits on a bag of already shelled cocoa beans. The discarded shell can be burned to produce energy. Credit: istockphoto.com

Texas Takes the Lead in Swine Flu Prevention

I just spent the last three weeks in Texas where I have several family members who work in the public schools. Texas is taking a lead in prevention and is doing a good job.

As parents began to panic about sending their kids to school, Governor Rick Perry stepped in and took action. The last week I was there, he held an emergency meeting with a majority of the state's school superintendents. That same day, the superintendents went back to their districts to decide whether or not  to close their campuses to prevent the spread of the virus.

Most districts stayed open, but with pro-active measures. Janitorial staffs went to work double time, disinfecting washrooms and cafeterias twice as often as usual. They are also disinfecting classrooms on a daily basis rather than weekly.

Student competitions, which require schools to bus participants to other districts, have been canceled for the remainder of the school year. Field trips are also canceled. Kids may be missing out, but they are staying safe and helping prevent the spread of a dangerous disease.

Two reporters in the Scholastic Kids Press Corps talked to infectious disease experts in Texas last week to find out how we can all be involved in prevention. The three doctors each stressed the importance of containing the spread by staying home if you are sick and washing your hands frequently.

You should cough and sneeze into your arm or tissue. Many people are no longer shaking hands or giving hugs and kisses to greet friends and family. Don't touch your face with your hands and keep your hands clean!

You should also get a flu shot if you haven't already. Two are recommended. And when a swine flu vaccine is finally available, be sure to get yours as soon as possible!

You can keep track of what the government is doing, and get advice on prevention at the Health and Human Services Web site.

The World Health Organization has a great site with most frequently asked questions. You can keep track of the number of cases by state at the Center for Disease Control's site. It also has a great list of prevention tips. You can find more tips on the Scholastic Kids Press Corps page, too!

So what is your school doing to prevent the swine flu? Click on "Comment" below and let us know.

—Kids Press Corps Editor Suzanne Freeman