The Denver Post1

CK Reporter of the WeekRylie Ridpath, Littleton

“Anyone can be anything,” is the clear message of Disney’s new movie ‘Zootopia,” which sets out to break

stereotypes through the use of animals.Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) grew up in

Bunnyburrow with 275 brothers and sisters. Growing up, Judy had chosen one destina-

tion in life, and that was the ZPD, the Zooto-pia Police Department.

Her parents, being carrot farmers, want Judy to forget her dream and stay in Bunnyburrow to be a carrot farmer.

But after years of training, Judy fi nally makes it to ZPD.

When she gets there, though, nobody treats her seriously, calling her “dumb bunny.”

Judy sets out to break that stereotype, but is held back when she’s initially assigned park-ing duty.

This all changes when she literally stumbles

into a missing animals case.She hustles Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman)

into helping her solve the case. They are an unlikely pair, and, Judy being

the optimistic one and Nick believing ‘you are what you are,’ they don’t work well together at the beginning, but they manage to push away all their differences to solve the case.

“Zootopia” has a lot of twists and turns that keep the audience guessing. The movie also has a great deal of more sophisticated humor than you might expect, which will keep adults laughing and entertained.

One of the most enjoyable things to watch in “Zootopia” is how real the animals look. The animators did a great job of making the ani-mals believable.

Kira Lehtomaki, animation supervisor for the fi lm, told me “‘Zootopia’ took around fi ve years to complete, because of how slow

the animation process is. You work on four seconds of the fi lm every week, so it takes a while to complete the whole movie.”

Although young children may not under-stand the message, they will still enjoy watch-ing “Zootopia,” and this is a movie that most kids and adults will learn from.

You walk away thinking you can be anything you set your heart to.

I would recommend this movie for all ages; it was a great movie that kept me interested throughout.

March 8 , 2016

But how can you get to Zootopia?Follow your dreams, persevere, and don’t

give up were the themes of my inter-view with Kira Lehtomaki, animation

supervisor for “Zootopia.” Lehtomaki dreamed as a little girl to be a

“drawer” for Disney. That dream came true for her many years

later, but not without perseverance and hard work.

At a young age, she watched lots of Disney movies, her favorite being “Sleeping Beauty,” a fi lm that ignited her dream of working for Disney.

Despite becoming an animator for Disney, Kira had not majored in animation in college. Instead, she majored in computer science.

After taking a semester off just so she could draw, Kira graduated with her degree and applied for the young tal-ent program at Disney.

She never thought that when she started this program she would make it this far, but now, she says, she doesn’t want to let it go.

Her fi rst job as an animator was working on Rapunzel in the movie “Tangled.”

She said, “Rapunzel will always stay near and dear to my heart, because it was one of my fi rst animation jobs.”

She went on to work on projects such as “Big Hero 6,” “Frozen,” “Wreck it Ralph” and, now, “Zootopia.”

As animation supervisor, for “Zootopia,” she was in charge of making sure that the 70 animators creating Judy Hopps made her look as real and as consistent as possible throughout the whole movie.

This meant that Lehtomaki had to make sure Judy looked the same each time she ap-peared, even coming down to the smile, and making sure she looked like a living, breath-ing character you believe is real.

“The smile had to be the same every time Judy smiled, and I had to make sure her smile stayed cute and small,” Lehtomaki says.Working on Judy Hopps made her realize

that Judy is a miniature bunny version of herself. Both Judy Hopps and Kira Lehtomaki live up to “Zootopia’s” motto,

“Anyone can be anything.” In life, Kira followed this motto to accomplish her dream job by

working at Disney. “Persevere, don’t ever give up, and never stop learning. That will

drive you to do your very best work,” she says-- Ashley Gaccetta

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By Ashley Gaccetta,12, a CK Reporter from Longmont

Zootopia encourages ambition

photo/Becky Gaccetta

The Denver Post

Wolves, although fascinating, are not made to be kept as pets. Feo,

a young girl, knows this. She was raised as a wolf wilder,

which means she takes pet wolves peo-ple don’t want anymore and untames them. This allows them to survive in the wilderness, like they are meant to do.

“The Wolf Wilder” by Katherine Rundell tells the story of Feo as she goes on an impressive journey, in a book good for ages nine to twelve.

General Rakov is cruel, and when the wolves Feo has trained attack him, he is set on ruining her life.

Her mother is soon arrested, and Feo has to run if she wants to survive.

However, before her mother is torn away from her, she meets someone who may be able to help her.

“The Wolf Wilder” is a great novel because it successfully manages to paint the pain, wonder, and strength that fill Feo.

The characters have intriguing personalities that set them apart from one another, and set the story into motion.

In order to survive the brutality of General Rakov, Feo will have to be swift, cunning, and cooperative.

Just like a wolf.

It all began in the Sixties when Deborah Wiles was just a little girl, she explained at the CCIRA Conference last month.

The Cold War was going on, and the country was living in fear.

For two weeks straight she would have duck-and-cover drills multiple times a day.

Her uncle even built a bomb shelter in the backyard to prepare for the bombing they thought was inevitable.

Despite these times of distress, Wiles still enjoyed many things the Sixties are widely known for, such as the Beatles and roller skat-ing.

Her life in the Sixties sounds a lot like a book and now, because of Wiles’s love for literature, it is. A trilogy, in fact.

The Sixties was a fun yet important time in the 20th century and Wiles wants to share a snippet of that world with today’s youth.

She originally started out writing picture books but, as she added on to them, they grew lengthy and slowly developed into novels.

Her Sixties trilogy is fiction but is based purely on her life. She decided to write it as fiction because she wanted to explore more possibilities and let her characters “be able to do things (she) didn’t have the courage to do.”

However, her novels aren’t ordinary realistic fiction, and she calls them “documentary novels” because of their unique sections of po-ems, songs, newspaper clippings, photographs and more.

The inspiration for this type of writing came from “The USA Trilogy” by John Dos Passos.

“It showed me I could do something more with writing,” she says.

Her son, who is now a DJ, also has been a big part of Wiles’s writing journey. He used to tell her “Everything is a remix.”

When Wiles began her writing she took this to heart, “remixing” layouts and ideas from some of her favorite books and authors.

Her style of writing has been a hit in class-rooms across America, and she was a finalist in the 2014 National Book Awards. Wiles’s advice for young writers is to “read anything and everything; it’s gotten me pretty far.”

She writes her books by thinking about what she knows, what she feels, and, most import-ant, what she imagines.

“Life is long. Stay present, and tell your story.”

Deborah Wiles has been able to do just that with her documentary novels, giving youth a peek into her life in the Sixties.

2

‘Documentary fiction’ captures reality

Monarch butterflies offer good news and some hopeIf you’ve been paying atten-

tion to monarch butterflies in recent years, you know that they have been having hard times.

The colorful insects have been falling in numbers to the point where monarch fans began to worry about their survival.

But this year’s migration to Mexico provided a bit of good news: Numbers were

up in the valleys where the monarchs cluster in winter.

Nobody tries to count the individual butterflies.

They group together in such tight clusters that, instead, experts total up the number of acres they cover, and this year, that came to almost 10 acres.

This was about three times as large an area as they cov-ered last year, and well up

from the lowest total of 1.67 acres in 2013.

That’s certainly very good news, but it doesn’t mean we can stop worrying.

Logging operations in Mexico still threaten their winter habitat, while the loss of milkweed in the US and Canada hurts in summer.

Butterfly gardens here and good timber laws there are still needed. photo/C. Tucker

A new movie comes out. Everything is perfect. The buzz feed level is high, all is ready. Until the set starts receiving threats, and they are

not part of the movie. Agatha, kid detective, reporting for duty in “Agatha

Girl of Mystery: The Hollywood Intrigue” by Sir Steve Stevenson.

Agatha and her mystery-solving sidekick and cousin, Dash, get a call from the movie producer asking for help in finding the person sending threats to the movie set of “Fatal Error.”

She calls up some of her detective friends to help her solve this mystery: Uncle Bud, her cat, and Chandler, her butler.

The group flies to Los Angeles, where Agatha searches the movie set and questions actors in the movie to find clues.

What she finds next is where the fun begins. This book is for kids 8 and up. There are a few spots of shooting talk but there is

no violence besides the talk of guns and this book was nicely laid out, clue after clue.

However, if kids younger than 8 want to read this, I would suggest reading with a parent.

Either way, this book can be read pretty quickly. It’s kind of confusing in parts and kind of slow in

others along with some funny parts mixed in, and Stevenson does have you at the edge of your seat at times.

I would highly suggest getting this book.Agatha Girl of Mystery, out!

Agatha returns to save the day in Hollywood

By Haley Deison,11, a CK Reporter from Arvada

By Vivian Weigel,12, a CK Reporter from Arvada

By Jasmine Douglas,12, a CK Reporter from Thornton

Readers sent a pretty clear message to their schools with

their answers to our question!They were pretty evenly divid-

ed on what changes in food would improve school lunches, but the overwhelming choice was that, whatever you put on their plates, they want more time to eat it.

Here’s what we asked you, and what you told us:

What one thing would you change about school lunches?

A. More choices in the fruits and vegetables they offer. 16%B. Don’t serve the same main dishes so often. 19%C. More desserts and snacks. Junk food isn’t so bad. 20%D. More time so we can eat at a relaxed pace. 45%

Now here’s our next question:How do you get to school in the morning?

A. Private carB. School bus or public transitC. Walk or ride my bikeD. I’m already there

To answer this question, go to http://nextgen.yourhub.com

We asked you, you told us:

Put more time in lunchtime!Making wolves wild once more

The Denver Post3

To be honest, Kolponomos might have been scary to more than just the clams

and mussels it ate.Then again, there were so many gigantic

animals in North America during the Mio-cene epoch that something the size of a bear might not have been very frightening.

In fact, when the fi rst Kolponomos fossils were discovered half a century ago, pale-ontologists thought it might be a relative of the modern raccoon.

It’s still hard to fi t this megafauna into a modern family, but it is thought to be a bear of some sort, with perhaps a hint of sea otter, and that second part had scien-

tists working to try to fi gure out how it broke the shells of the crustaceans it ate.

Did it use rocks to break clam shells like modern sea otters do?

But one of the paleontologists had also been working with Smilodon, the sa-bre-toothed tiger, and saw similarities between the jaws of Smilodon and Kol-ponomos.

More study of the fossilized skull make it seem likely that the jaws of Kolponomos were strong enough to simply yank a clam off its rock, then fl ip it back into his molars to be crushed and swallowed.

What was big and hairy and had giant fangs and scared clams?

When Iran makes news in the West, it’s not always pleasant.

The nation has had a very conservative group of leaders for many years who apply strict religious laws within their country and who keep Iran separate from the more modern, Western nations.

As we saw just a few weeks ago, those conservatives even have their own mil-itary force that turned a simple case of US boats accidentally going into Iranian waters into a confrontation.

But more moderate government offi -cials managed to calm things down then, and now the Iranian people have given those moderates even more power.

In past years, conservative leaders have been able to keep moderates from being able to run for positions in Iran’s parliament.

In 2009, the conservatives were ac-cused of faking the election results to make their choice for president win, and protesters were jailed and even killed.

But many people in Iran, and espe-cially in the capital city of Tehran, want to live modern lives and to be more in touch with the rest of the world.

Encouraged by the way moderates were able to negotiate an agreement with nine Western nations over their nuclear development, they went to the polls recently and voted to put more moderate candidates in parliament.

Although many of the women who tried to run for offi ce were disqualifi ed by conservative offi cials, the number of women in parliament was still doubled.

Conservatives in Iran objected to the nuclear treaty and they were also not happy to see more moderates come into offi ce with plans to reform the nation.

Things won’t change right away; Iran’s conservatives still have plenty of power.

But the moderate, modern Iranians who voted for change, for equality and for reform were happy to see progress in their nation.

Iranian voters support reform candidates

The adventure-packed, award-winning book “Call of the Klondike,” by David Meissner, brings a whole new perspective about the

historic Klondike Gold Rush. You get to follow Stanley Pearce and Marshall

Bond on their adventure! In 2009, Meissner was having dinner with his

inspiration for this book, Kim Richardson. Richardson mentioned a huge bag full of histor-

ic letters from an ancestor, Stanley H. Pearce. After Richardson asked him to shape the letters

into a story, and once an editor got involved, Meissner agreed to the proposal.

Meissner knew little about the Gold Rush, but he traveled far and found the facts.

In 1897, gold was found in the border area of Alaska and Canada, and was worth millions.

Thirsty for money, people quit their jobs and headed towards Canada and Alaska.

They trekked a perilous journey for months before arriving at Dawson City, in Canada.

There, Pearce and Bond met Jack London, au-thor of “White Fang” and “Call of the Wild.”

Buck, the famous sled dog in “The Call of the Wild,” was even based on one of the two adven-turers’ dogs, Jack.

Many folks didn’t make it, and tens of thou-sands of horses wouldn’t make it, either.

The White Pass Trail was re-named the “Dead Horse Trail” because of all the horses that died there. As for the Gold Rush itself, only four percent of 100,000 people made money.

Meissner wrote his book using primary sources such as the letters

and Bond’s diary Richardson had provided, put-ting it together with his own research.

As a reader, I liked how the book would show the actual letter, along with the words.

To get these facts, Meissner got up-close and personal. He even hiked the Chilkoot Pass in misty weather like the old-timers had.

“It’s super cool,” Meissner told me, at the re-cent CCIRA conference.

“The reason I did it was because of research, and I was following in their footsteps.” Meissner said he twisted his ankle in the long hike.

In the steep parts, he discovered artifacts such as boots, a razor, picks, shovels and a stove.

Once done with his hike, he arrived at a town and began writing.

Today, Meissner, who has been a teacher him-self, is glad to come to schools and teach about the historic event.

His book is exciting and informing, and the author recommends it for fifth grade plus.

Tag along in history with Bond and Pearce and experience the Klondike Gold Rush!

Author relives history before writing about it

photo/Tedford et al

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.

It’s International Women’s Day, and this year’s theme is “Pledge for Parity,” so our answers will begin with “P.”

1. A word that means being equal, especially in pay or in power

2. A small, stocky, black-and-white seabird that dives for fi sh in the ocean and whose beak becomes very colorful in the breeding season

3. The nation that was once the center of the Inca Empire

4. A geometric shape with fi ve sides, or a large building in Washington

5. In England and Australia, this bird is called a “budgerigar” or “budgie” for short. What do Americans call it?

6. A ball game played on horseback using long-handled mallets

7. A brand of automobile, or the Native American chief it was named for

8. Type of banana eaten cooked, especially in African and Caribbean food

9. A natural number greater than 1 that cannot be evenly divided except by one or by itself

10. She has played many roles including Padmé Amidala in Star Wars fi lms(answers on Page Four)

As she prepares to vote, an Iranian woman shows the numbers she and her friends wrote on their hands as a way to show their support of reform candidates in Iran’s elections.

(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

By Abby Greiner,11, a CK Reporter from Golden

The Denver Post4

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:

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

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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. parity 2. puffi n 3. Peru 4. pentagon 5. parakeet 6. polo 7. Pontiac 8. plantain 9. prime

10. (Natalie) Portman

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To read the sources for these stories

Prehistoric clam eater

Monarch butterfl ies

Iranian election results

go to http://www.tinyurl.com/ckstorylinks

Cupid and Psyche (Part Four)

(Our story so far: With a bit of mysterious help, Psyche has done everything Venus has demanded. Now, the angry goddess has ordered her to visit the Underworld and bring

back a small box of beauty from Pluto’s queen, Proserpina.)

Psyche walked slowly away from the temple of Venus. To visit the

Underworld was frightening, but she was willing to take the risk. But how? She didn’t know how to get there, or what to do in order to return.

She decided to visit the oracle and ask for advice. She went to the grove where the oracle lived, and told her what Venus had ordered her to do.

“It is a dangerous thing,” the old woman said. “But I see that your heart is set upon doing it. You will need to be prepared, however. It is easy to get to the Underworld; we all get there eventually. But very few mortals have ever come back again.”

The oracle told Psyche exactly where to find the passageway to the Under-world and what to do on her journey.

“When you get to the palace of Pluto, do not sit on the chairs, but only on the floor, and do not accept any food or drink except plain, rough bread. And this above all: Do not look in the box that Proserpina gives you, but bring it straight back to Venus without opening it. You must not become too curious about the treasure of divine beauty!”

And so Psyche found herself traveling to Greece, to the land of the Spar-tans, and to a particular mountain, Taenarus, where there was a passageway into the Underworld.

In each hand, she held a piece of bread soaked in honey, and between her teeth was a silver coin; another coin was in a small purse tied around her waist.

As she walked down the dark path under the mountain, she saw ahead of her a donkey, limping under its load, and an old man. As she came near, the old man asked her to help him gather up the sticks that had fallen from the donkey’s back. But the oracle had warned her to ignore him, and Psyche walked past them without speaking or even looking over at them.

Ahead, she saw a river, and a dark figure waiting with a boat. This was Charon, the boatman who took souls across the Styx. Psyche put her head a little forward so that Charon could take the coin from her mouth, and, still holding the sops of bread, she climbed into his boat.

As they crossed the river, an old man swam alongside, holding up his hands and begging to be taken into the boat, but again, Psyche remembered the oracle’s warnings and ignored him.

At the other side, she stepped out of the boat and walked past a group of women who were spinning wool into yarn by the side of the road, and who invited her to sit and rest a moment with them, for, once more, she knew that they were a trick by Venus to get her to lose the sops of bread in her hands.

The first sop of bread she needed quickly, for now she had come to the gates of the Underworld itself, where a terrible, three-headed dog, Cerberus, was on guard. Psyche gave him the honey-soaked bread, however, and he stood aside and let her pass through the gate.

Now Psyche stood before the thrones of Pluto and Proserpina, but she did not stand for long. She fell to her knees and told Proserpina her entire story, beginning with the day she had first come to the mysterious mansion.

Proserpina listened quietly, and, when Psyche had finished, the queen called for a small wooden box to be brought to her. She handed the box to Psyche and said, “Take this to my cousin, Venus, with my compliments. And good luck to you, too, my dear.”

Psyche left happily, but there was still danger on the way home. She gave the second bit of bread to Cerberus, walked past the women spinning wool on the riverbank, and paid Charon for a ride to the opposite shore, ignoring the old man who swam alongside the boat begging to be allowed to come aboard.

Again she walked past the man and his donkey, and up into the light of day on the sides of Mount Taenarus.

And as she walked along in the sunshine, Psyche finally began to smile, re-membering the kind words of Proserpina. At last, the immortals were smiling upon her, she thought, and she soon would be back with her husband, Cupid.

She thought of that happy day, and then she thought of the box in her hand. Would it not be good, she wondered, to have just a touch of beauty to make up for the horrible trip she had taken?

Surely, it could not hurt to at least see what kept the goddesses forever young?

She paused by the side of the road and opened the wooden box just a crack. A great, dark cloud immediately poured out of the box, covering her face, and Psyche fell to the ground in a deep sleep.

When she awoke, Cupid was kneeling over her. He had gathered the cloud from her face and placed it back in the box. “Wife, must you always be so curious?” he asked, but he was smiling. “It is good I found you. Come, bring the box to my mother and let us go home together.”

And as he helped her to her feet, Cupid handed her a cup and said, “Here, this is a gift from Jupiter. Drink this ambrosia and become an immortal. Then no-body can object to our marriage and we shall, indeed, be together forevermore.”

Psyche drank from the cup, and then went home with her husband.

retold by Mike Peterson, c. 2005 - illustrated by Dylan Meconis, c. 2005

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

Tales of the Ancient World