News Bites: Kids Can Win Dinner at the White House

And the Winner Is…..

Healthy eating: Kid chefs ages 8 to 12 can submit a delicious but nutritious recipe for a lunch to win a trip to Washington, DC, where they can attend a Kids’ State Dinner at the White House in August. Let’s Move, Michelle Obama’s initiative to fight childhood obesity, is teaming up with Epicurious, the Department of Education, and the USDA to find healthy and tasty lunch recipes. To enter, children should check out the MyPlate nutritional guidelines to be sure that they are making healthy choices. Each of the food groups should be represented-either in one dish or as part of an entire lunch meal. June 17 is the absolute deadline for submitting recipes online.

Granted

Minigrants: The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation has just awarded 50 Minigrants to teachers and librarians in public schools and libraries in 26 states. The Minigrant program is now in its 24th year. The Foundation was founded by the late Caldecott award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats. Applicants for the award of up to $500 apply for funding for a specific program that “fosters the love of learning, enhances creative expression, and optimizes interaction between educators and students.” The program must be able to be enacted by students along with their teacher or librarian. Among the winners this year are: Glendale Acres Elementary School, Fayetteville, NC, for an Earth Day Recognition program; Plant Your Dreams: Container Gardening by Stark County District Library, Canton, OH; and Snowy Days and Puppet Plays, North Merrick Public Library, NY.

Here’s a link to the complete list of this year’s winners. “Direct funding to educators is especially important now as public library and school budgets continue to be slashed at unprecedented levels. It is essential that outstanding teachers and librarians have the resources to create special programs that reach beyond the standard curriculum-programs that inspire and encourage their students in a creative and cooperative context,” noted Deborah Pope, Executive Director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. If you want to apply for a grant next year, visit the Ezra Jack Keats Minigrant website for the rules and apply by March 15, 2013.

2B Seen

Animated series: Gertrude Chandler Warner’s “The Boxcar Children” books will debut as a direct-to-video animated series in Spring 2013. Albert Whitman & Company has hired Hammerhead Productions to develop the series, which has been wildly popular with kids for more than a half century. To promote the animated show as well as the September release of the new prequel, The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm by Patricia MacLachlan (Albert Whitman, 2012), the publisher and production studio are sponsoring a contest to select a child to voice a small part in the series. Check out The Boxcar Children Facebook page during the summer to get details of the contest. The first three books in the series are available in audio format from Random House Audio. Oasis Audio has already published numerous audio titles and will release the audiobook versions of the remaining titles in the 130 book series in 2012 and 2013.

Encouraging Diversity

Songs and rhymes: If you know a children’s song or rhyme in a language other than English, the Burnaby Public Library in British Columbia, Canada, would like to hear it. Embracing Diversity: Sharing Our Songs and Rhymes is the library’s public education project that encourages diversity and promotes inclusiveness. Videos of 30 songs and rhymes are available on the project’s website. The library has been collecting songs and rhymes in 15 spoken languages of British Columbia’s Burnaby and New Westminster communities. There are more songs and rhymes available on the Embracing diversity Vimeo channel. If you want to help the collection grow, you can record yourself performing and add it to Vimeo using these instructions.