One writes about death, another laments a friend's suicide, another wishes he were evil, another makes fun of her big nose, yet another complains that men do nothing around the house.
The writers are children age 8 to 10. Their language is English, French, Spanish. They come from Quebec, from California, from Mexico. And their words are collected in a new book published by a Montreal small press.
The trilingual, illustrated anthology is called Sunflower: Poems by Children of the Americas.
"As we were putting this together, people wondered whether it can really be poetry, when it's children doing the writing," C�t�-Gauthier said.
"We said, 'Of course it can.' The children are poets because they're using the form and their writing in the spirit of poetry."
Here's a remarkably mature one by a boy named Luc:
"Un homme chante la pomme
Une femme l'�coute
La barque chavire et l'amour s'�coule."
Which in English is rendered thus:
"A man courts a woman
She listens
The boat overturns and love flows away."
Others, like Jean Gauthier, try their hand at definitions - and come up with some great one-liners. A shoe, Jean writes, is simply this:
"Une maison pour les araign�es quand vient le soir." (A house for spiders when night comes.)
Sunflower: Poems by Children of the Americas - For more information, call editor Suzanne C�t�-Gauthier at (514) 287-1134 or send her an E-mail at [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2002/12/31/ED133528.DTL
No helmet, no wheelie
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle
USA-DESPITE THE GROANS and protests of adolescents, California enacts the toughest child safety helmet law in the nation Wednesday. From that day forward, helmets are required headgear for anyone under age 18 while riding skateboards, in-line skates, scooters or anything else with wheels.
Any child caught violating the law will be fined $25. If the child doesn't have the money, the parent or legal guardian must pay. The bulk of the collected fees (72 percent) will go to fund safety education campaigns and purchase safety helmets for low-income children.
Of the raft of new laws that go into effect Wednesday, few surpass this one's potential for immediate impact. Since 1994, when a similar law mandated helmets for bike riders under the age of 18, there's been a 31 percent decline in deaths and a 28 percent decline in injuries to cyclists younger than 15, notes the advocacy group Safe Moves. It's reasonable to expect similar declines in fatalities and injuries from other kid-powered vehicles.
Nationwide, skateboard-related injuries alone cause 50,000 emergency room visits and 1,500 hospitalizations a year, according to an estimate by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2000, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found nonpowered scooters involved in 9,400 emergency room visits within an eight-month period. Ninety percent of those injuries were to children under the age of 15.
Of course, nothing saves young daredevils from pain if they wear their gear incorrectly or attempt ill-advised stunts. Still, even if hard to enforce, the law carries one benefit: Parents now have something to back them up when they say no helmet, no ride.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2615251.stm
Royal honour for lollipop lady
UK, 31 December, 2002-A lollipop lady from Cardiff who has helped children cross the road safely for three decades has been awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List.
"This has come as such a shock, I can't quite believe it," said Mrs Higgins who lives in the Whitchurch area of the city.
"I utterly enjoy the work and I have even got used to the bad weather conditions I have to stand in sometimes.
"Being in the job as long as I have, I've seen a lot of the youngsters grow up and now I am even helping some of their children across the road.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/4841652.htm
Hundreds of Haitian street kids find haven in the capital's huge cemetery
BY TIM COLLIE
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti-
(KRT) - By night they sleep outside the gates of the city's largest cemetery, huddled in raggy heaps only a few feet from the graves of this troubled country's former dictators, presidents and moneyed elites.
By day they roam the cemetery's narrow walks and hidden spaces, doing laundry and hoarding food and water among collapsed graves, overturned coffins and dusty corpses looted by grave robbers.
It's as close as the street children of Port-au-Prince likely will ever come to finding a place among Haiti's rich and famous. Malnourished, cut and bruised, they are the poorest of the poor in the most impoverished country of the Western Hemisphere.
An estimated 7,000 street children live in Port-au-Prince, according to the best estimates of international charities.
"Calling someone a street child is a very relative term here since so many children and their parents live out on the streets," said Jean-Robert Chery, a university psychology professor who runs a shelter for homeless children in central Port-au-Prince. "But what it means here is children who have no parents, who may be young as 3 or 4, and who sleep outside and find their own food.
"Partly out of a survival instinct, partly out of simple human need for love, the children form informal families known as cartels. Many are children who don't even know their age, barely remember their parents and have reddish hair, the most visible sign of malnutrition. Badio is a mother figure who watches out for several younger children, including Esai Kertidor, 10, who said he's been sleeping in the streets for three years.
In a country as poor as Haiti, where more than half the population is unemployed, climbing out of poverty as a child in almost impossible. The luckiest may stumble into some orphanage or charity that truly cares about them - the equivalent of winning the lottery.
"To protect children, you need a society of laws, and it's simply impossible to have such laws in this atmosphere of violence and political problems," said Chery, the psychologist.
"Children don't want to live alone in the streets," he added. "It's not their natural condition. They want families. But if they don't have families then it takes a government of laws and culture that cares about childhood to protect them. We simply don't have that here."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.mlive.com/news/advancenewspapers/ottawa/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news-0/104135170844410.xml
Adopted teen joins family as a new sister and daughter
By AMANDA CLAPP
USA, Dec 30, 2002-Marlene Brown received a different kind of Christmas present this year. She received a family.On Dec. 19, 14-year-old Marlene was adopted by Mike and Lisa Brown. Besides receiving cards and gifts from friends and family, she received a mom and dad, two brothers and a sister.
And she couldn't be happier.
"I'm really excited today," Marlene said. "It's a really good Christmas present." Since she is an older child, she had to consent to her adoption. Judge Kathleen Feeney presided over the hearing, and wearing her red Santa's hat, she walked Marlene through the process. During the hearing, 6-year-old Sara, the Brown's biological daughter, let Marlene know how happy she was to get a big sister.
"She loves me and I love her," Sara said.
Bethany Christian Services social worker Suzanne Parks said adoption processes like Marlene's make her job gratifying.
"It is hard to find families willing to adopt older children because most families want the infants," she said. "That is why this family is so special. It was a good fit from the beginning."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washtimes.com/technology/20021230-10535060.htm
Dalmatian leads way to fire safety
By Joseph Szadkowski, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
THE INTERNET, December 30, 2002-A cold winter and the holidays means space heaters, hot stoves, fireplaces, twinkling lights and even candles are being used more often to keep warm and festive. Combine this increased use with an uninformed child's fascination with flames, and it could lead to tragic results.
Luckily, a pooch who has spent 51 years teaching the world about fire safety has a great cyber-presence available to lend an educational paw. His site comes packed with colorful images and clever ways to teach families about the dangers of Mother Nature's hottest invention.
Sparky the Fire Dog- Site address: www.sparky.org
"We created this site knowing it would be a great way to reach kids and families with positive, technically accurate fire and life-safety lessons that would deliver our message in a fun and creative way," says Meri-K Appy, vice president for public education at NFPA [National Fire Protection Association].
With a wink of his eye, this intelligent Dalmatian points children 7 to 12 years old toward a circus midway of fun, all the while reminding them about fire safety. A click on any of the flashing billboards � Fun With Fire Trucks, Ask Sparky, News Flash, Family Stuff, Sparky's Arcade Games, Cool to Do, Hot Diggity Dalmatians or the Story of Sparky � reveals an educational adventure that balances on-screen games with printable activities and prudent advice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://headlines.sify.com/1501news4.html?headline=Teenager~develops~new~language~in~six~months~
Teenager develops new language in six months
INDIA, Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 1 2003 ANI -A new language 'Kaathi', touted as an alternative to Malayalam, has been developed by a 13-year-old boy, Girish of Thiruvananthapuram.
The language not only includes 58 alphabet but numbers too. There is also an addition of grammer to the language structure.
The young boy says his love for Tamil and Hindi movies led to the invention of this language which has been regarded as an "alternative to Malayalam".
Says Girish: "I simply felt the need to create an alternative language that would serve as an alternative to Malayalam. I don't have a TV set. But I used to watch it in my neighbourhood. This influenced me to develop an alternative language. My grandfather who knew Tamil, also influenced me."
Girish's teacher Babu is all praise for the wonder kid's creativity.
"Girish thought, when so many languages exist, why not have another. There are many differences in Girish's idea. He is creative. He has a sixth sense or something like that. In a few months he has done this, he has invented a perfect language," Babu said.
Girish has in fact begun teaching Kaathi to a few people around him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Swedish King visits world scouts |
|
THAILAND, Chonburi, Jan 4,2003 (TNA): Swedish King Carl Gustav XVI on Saturday visited world scout camps at Yao Beach in this eastern province of Chonburi amid well-placed safeguard and security measures provided by the Royal Thai Navy, according to TNA reporter.
Upon his arrival at the camps, the Swedish monarch, who chairs the World Scouts Foundation, was welcomed by Thai authorities who are in charge of taking care of world scouts taking part in the ongoing 20th World Scout Conference, said the reporter. About 30,000 scouts, both male and female, from nearly 150 countries, including Thailand, are taking part in the 20th World Scout Conference, scheduled between December 28, 2002 and January 7, 2003.
King Gustav XVI visited the C5 village, in which Swedish scouts and others are staying.
He then had lunched simply and cordially with world scouts, which was impressed by the crowd of scouts, said the reporter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=366321
Young hero in blaze rescue
IRELAND, JAN 3 2003-THE quick-thinking actions of an 18-year old Londonderry man were today hailed as "very courageous" after he dragged an elderly neighbour from her burning home in the Rosemount area of the city.
Stephen Magill was walking past his neighbour's Cedar Court home around 9.15 last night when he heard the elderly woman's smoke alarm going off.
And without hesitation, the young hero - who lives at Glenview Street - kicked the pensioner's front door in and dragged the woman from the burning home to safety.
She was rushed to hospital where she was today recovering from the effects of smoke inhalation.
Sergeant David McFettridge said the elderly woman owed her life to the heroic actions of the young man, who heard the alarm and kicked in the front door of the house to rescue the woman.
Sergeant McFettridge said: "The young fellow had no idea what faced him behind the front door when he forced it open.
"It was a very brave thing to do indeed and we would like to commend the very courageous actions of the young man, without which we could possibly be dealing with yet another tragedy as a result of a house fire in the city."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.freep.com/sports/othersports/bowl4_20030104.htm
BOWLING: Canadian alley becomes toddler-friendly
CANADAJan 4, 2003- The Canadian sport of five-pin bowling has always been child-friendly, but Phil Prentice of Parkview Lanes in Windsor has made it more so. He shortened four of his 12 lanes from 60 feet to 40 feet. That was easily accomplished by filling in the gutters and putting down carpet in the approach area and down the lanes. The scoring consoles and ball-return racks also were moved down.
The 3-pound, 10-ounce five-pin balls were replaced with balls that weigh 2 1/2 pounds, and the 12-inch pins were replaced with eight-inch pins. The carpet runs right up to the new throwing line, and the tots, or their parents, bowl from a set position.
"Years back, some places wouldn't accept anyone under the age of 6," Prentice said. "Now we have 2-year-olds bowling."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200301040084.html
Mukono Rescues Abandoned Kids
Kampala Jan 4, 2003 [New Vision]-They look good and healthy now, but they were weak and hungry when they were picked from garbage bins, just a few hours between life and death.
Nicholas Kajoba, reports that concerned residents of Mukono town recently rescued two children, one about one month and another about six months, from two garbage dumps where they had been abandoned.
The Good Samaritans took the babies to Mukono District Probation Office.
"We shall take them to any orphanage centre to be taken care of," the district probation officer, James Ntege, said.
He advised frustrated parents to take children to orphanage centres rather than damping them in garbage.
He said cases of abandoned children had increased in the district during the past few months. Ntege said the district council was, through his office, sensitising parents against child neglect.
He advised parents not to produce children they could not look after.
------------------------------------------------------------
News for Kids Editorial Team
http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/newsforkids/index.html