C10

BOOKWORLD FOR KIDS

Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.

For reviews of poetry books, see Page C4.

W

Kathryn B. Ridder, then and now!

e love publishing your birthdays ev- ery Monday, but we have a big one of our

own to report this week: On Sat- urday, KidsPost turns 10. We can’t believe it: double digits! We don’t need to tell you that 10 years is a long time. Of the 35 Kids- Post readers whose birthdays we pub- lished this week, 22 weren’t even born when KidsPost first appeared. (That doesn’t include Fairfax’s Katie Gugino, who was born the same day KidsPost was first published!)

Some of our earliest readers are adults now. The

first child KidsPost wished a “happy birthday” to was Kathryn B. Ridder of Fredericksburg, who turned 12 on May 16, 2000. We caught up with the now 21-year-old college senior, who will graduate next month from the University of Virginia with a degree in mechanical engineering. “I loved KidsPost. I read it all the way through high school. My mom used to lay it out on the counter each morning, and I

APRIL 10, 2000 MARCH 20, 2003

Turns

10

R

KLMNO

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010

TODAY: Sunny

and warm

HIGH LOW

86 62

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN GREEN, 8, BURKE

used to read it all the time,” she said. It has been an incredible dec- ade of news, fun, contests and

goofiness. We’ve interviewed im- portant people, explained the news in a way that makes sense to you and given you countless ways to use Kids- Post. So what does 10 years of Kids- Post add up to? Consider that we have:

 Published more than 2,500 editions — each with a weather drawing by a KidsPost reader.

 Wished about 13,000 kids happy birthday.  Run more than 500 Score columns by sports-

writer Fred Bowen, who really gets kids and sports and somehow never runs out of ideas.  Had 8,200 kids join our Summer Book Clubs.  Used the word “poop” roughly 60 times. (That’s just six times a year — we thought it would be a lot more!) Here’s a look back at 10 memorable pages we pub- lished in the past decade. But don’t stop reading — we’ve got lots more planned!

—Margaret Webb Pressler

JUNE 24, 2004

Our sports columnist, Fred Bowen

SEPT. 4. 2007

KidsPost loves contests, and our Color the Pandas contest was the biggest in KidsPost history, with 2,596 kids sending in their creative ideas for panda statues. Narrowing the entries down to the 18 we published was really hard!

The first KidsPost page told the heartbreaking story of a Cuban boy who was rescued at sea off the Florida coast and was caught in a fight over whether he should stay in this country with U.S. relatives or go back to his father in Cuba. He was sent back to Cuba.

SEPT. 12, 2001 MARCH 24, 2005

Each year we have run the names of all the kids who entered our Summer Book Club. Some years we had so many kids in our club it was hard to fit all the names on the page!

SEPT. 8, 2009

KidsPost is typically finished before the rest of the newspaper, but on the day President George W. Bush declared war against Iraq, we scrapped our original page (top) after the presses had already started running and created a new page about this major decision affecting the country. It remains the only time KidsPost was ever changed between editions.

We have interviewed many important people in Washington, including Sen. John McCain, first lady Laura Bush and, here, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s always interesting to hear about their childhoods!

NOV. 16, 2005

KidsPost has not shied away from important news. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, KidsPost tried to help kids understand the tragedy.

FEB. 27, 2003 SEPT. 23, 2003

Readers have taken KidsPost all over the United States and to some seriously faraway destinations, including spots in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America — and we have the pictures to prove it. (Don’t forget to do it again this summer!)

KidsPost has published numerous bilingual stories in English and Spanish, such as this one. Would you be able to read both?

FRAZZ

JEF MALLETT

KidsPost has always tried to be interactive. On this page we showed a true-to-life outline of Chinese basketball player Yao Ming’s foot. Readers across the area were stepping on our page to see how their feet compared.

This was the first in a groundbreaking 10-part series on the history of Washington. These pages were reproduced in poster form and have been used by countless teachers throughout the area. The idea for this series came from a KidsPost reader.

MARCH 20, 2003

Since joining KidsPost in March 2004, I’ve

shared more than 300 nuggets of cool — and sometimes useless — information with you. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60