Newsletter
Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Thompson

Busy, busy, busy…

by

I haven’t post­ed any new arti­cles for quite awhile now, so you’re prob­a­bly think­ing I’ve been sit­ting at home all day eat­ing bon-bons and watch­ing Oprah. No way! I’ve actu­al­ly been tak­ing a con­scious break from arti­cle writ­ing to focus on a book… or two. What start­ed out as an idea for one mid­dle grade book has now become a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy of Emmanuel Yeboah AND a teen how-to guide for Youth Ven­ture! I’m not sure work­ing on two so total­ly dif­fer­ent books at the same time is a good idea, but they’re slow­ly mov­ing along.

I also joined the Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of our region­al SCBWI chap­ter last year, and was very busy help­ing to orga­nize our 17th Annu­al Writ­ing and Illus­trat­ing for Chil­dren Con­fer­ence. It was one of the most daunt­ing, eye-open­ing and reward­ing expe­ri­ences of my life, and I tru­ly can’t wait to do it again!

And now, back to work…

Wheel‑y cool!

by


What has more kid appeal than a gigan­tic truck that dri­ves from town to town look­ing for tires to chomp? One that cleans up the envi­ron­ment at the same time! Here’s one com­pa­ny’s lat­est inven­tion intend­ed to help clean up waste tires in the U.S. and Canada.

Child specialists

by


No, not the spe­cial­ists who know a lot about chil­dren. Rather, the chil­dren them­selves who know a lot about their cho­sen spe­cial­ty. Is it bet­ter for today’s kids to be well-round­ed gen­er­al­ists or hyper-focused elites? That is the ques­tion I exam­ined over the sum­mer. You can read all about it here.

The risks and rewards of ‘spe­cial­iz­ing’ ear­ly, Learn­ingMap, Octo­ber 2007

FACES Magazine — Riders for Health article

by


FACES: Peo­ple, Places, and Cul­tures is a Cob­ble­stone Pub­li­ca­tion for kids ages 9–14. I pro­filed an orga­ni­za­tion called Rid­ers for Health for their March 2007 glob­al health issue. By using fair­ly sim­ple machines, Rid­ers for Health has solved a com­plex prob­lem. They use motor­cy­cles to deliv­er med­ical sup­plies and ser­vices to regions of Africa with lit­tle or no infra­struc­ture. Sim­ply elegant.

Put those kids to work

by


You cer­tain­ly can’t tell by look­ing, but our kids love to help clean the house. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is one thing I’m sure they did­n’t learn by exam­ple. If I enjoyed it even half as much as they do, we could prob­a­bly do some­thing crazy like invite peo­ple over for din­ner once in awhile. Maybe some­day they’ll be able to do it all by them­selves, but until then, here are some help­ful techniques.

Choos­ing age-appro­pri­ate chores, Par­entMap, Jan­u­ary 2007

Unprecedented victory against measles

by

Here’s some encour­ag­ing news. The Measles Ini­tia­tive part­ner­ship recent­ly announced that world­wide measles deaths fell 60% from 1999 to 2005, from 873,000 down to 345,000 deaths per year. That’s 528,000 lives saved every year.

“One of the clear­est mes­sages from this achieve­ment is that with the right strate­gies and a strong part­ner­ship of com­mit­ted gov­ern­ments and orga­ni­za­tions, you can rapid­ly reduce child deaths in devel­op­ing coun­tries,” said Dr. Julie Ger­berd­ing, Direc­tor, Unit­ed States Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC).

We’ve seen that it can be done. What’s next?

Get talking, America!

by

Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders recent­ly released a list of the 10 most under-report­ed human­i­tar­i­an crises of 2006, which they say “account­ed for just 7.2 min­utes of the 14,512 min­utes on the three major U.S. tele­vi­sion net­works’ night­ly news­casts for 2006.”

  1. Cen­tral African Republic 
  2. Tuber­cu­lo­sis
  3. Chech­nya
  4. Sri Lan­ka
  5. Mal­nu­tri­tion
  6. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Congo 
  7. Soma­lia
  8. Colum­bia
  9. Haiti
  10. Cen­tral India

KNOW Magazine — Spot the spots

by


Sci­en­tists at ECOCEAN are using pat­tern-recog­ni­tion soft­ware devel­oped for NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope pro­gram to rec­og­nize indi­vid­ual whale sharks, which are cov­ered with small, white spots on a dark back­ground sim­i­lar to a star­ry night sky. I wrote a short news piece about it for the May/June 2007 issue of KNOW–The Sci­ence Mag­a­zine for Curi­ous Kids.

NEWSLETTER
SIGN-UP