Lionfi sh now an invasive

species inthe Atlantic

Lionfi sh are a beautiful addition to saltwater aquariums, but they have become a very unwelcome addition to the Atlantic Ocean. These na-tives of the area where the Indian and Pacifi c oceans meet have few

natural enemies in the Atlantic and fi nd many fi sh to dine upon.Begin with the fact that they have barbs tipped with a deadly venom

and grow to a foot-and-a-half long and you can see why hoping other fi sh will eat them is not a very practical way to deal with this invasive species. Add the fact that a female lionfi sh can lay 2 million eggs a year and you have the makings of an ecological disaster.

Fortunately, they are good to eat, but people in restaurants can’t eat them as fast as they are eating other fi sh in the Atlantic. Photo by Albert Kok

ColoradoKids CK ReporterKendall Downs,

Highlands Ranch

aN iNSpiriNG royal MouSeWhat do Kate Middleton

and a tiny mouse have in common? Both

were part of the inspiration for Richard Peck’s newest novel, “The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail.”

Author Richard Peck has written a total of 43 books, with about one releasing per year.

“The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail” is his second book starring mice. The others have been about humans.

Peck lives in New York City. He is a very kind, tall, and talk-ative fellow who came to Tat-tered Cover Bookstore in Den-ver recently for a book signing and storytelling.

Asked how he came up with the idea for “The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail,” Peck replied that both of his mouse books (with the fi rst one be-ing “Secrets at Sea”) “fi nished on the same day in history, one room apart from each other,” in England.

Before, he had always writ-

ten books about humans, but he decided to try something new.

Also, since many people loved his friend Kate DiCamillo’s “The Tale of Despereaux,” he decided to write a book starring a mouse as the protagonist!

Peck based his current book around mice at the Royal Mews, the stables within Buckingham Palace in London, because he and his sister were visiting there to see Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, which was on display for tourists. Suddenly, a mouse ran over his shoe!

Peck thought, “he lives here,

he’s a mouse of the Royal Mews!”

The story built on from there, with many funny adventures and cute illustrations.

Peck is already working on his newest adventure. He doesn’t want to go straight from writ-ing about mice to humans so quickly, so he is writing about a four-legged animal that I look forward to.

Peck asked to share the fol-lowing message with the kids of Colorado: “within the pages of a book, and only there, you can go anywhere, and be anyone!”

Next time you go on a fi eld trip, watch where you step: You could

become famous!Well, famous at least among

experts. Kevin Terris was a high

school student in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah a few years ago when he noticed something sticking out of the ground.

He had studied paleontology enough to know it looked like something that mattered, and indeed it was. Kevin had dis-covered the fossilized skeleton of a baby dinosaur, a plant-eat-er from 75 million years ago, known as Parasaurolophus.

The skeleton was nearly complete and the baby had been less than a year old. It is giving paleontologists a lot of information about how these dinosaurs developed.

They’ve already learned that the long curved crest on adult heads was a tiny bump on a baby dino. graphic by SteveOC

teeN diScoverS foSSilof diNoSaur BaBy

By Emily Balog,12, a CK Reporter from Boulder

them as fast as they are eating other fi sh in the Atlantic.

October 29, 2013

Photo by Emily Balog

Good book, bad kid!

Alexander Baddenfield is exactly what his name suggests: bad.

Well, not exactly bad, more like a horrible, lying, cheating, scoundrel.

Alexander’s family has a bad reputation for dying horrible deaths at young ages.

So, like any main character in a story, Alexander makes a plan.

He decides to transplant nine lives from an ordi-nary house cat into his own body so he can live longer and avoid death’s call.

As soon as you pick up this book and start reading it, the idea of doing anything else but read seems impossible.

Full of humor, suspense, and creativity I can assure you that you will not be disappointed.

The author had a way of writing this book so you were always on the edge of your seat.

Another great quality about

this book is how descriptive it is.

It paints a great picture in your mind so you can imagine what is going on in your head while you are reading.

Each chapter also had an illus-tration that was very well drawn even though they were in black and white.

What I like about this book the most is how likeable the

characters are. Alexander is so

cruel yet the way he thinks is very interesting.

Alexander’s servant Winterbot-tom has an almost motherly nature that you see in your parents every day.

And, my favorite character: the Nar-rator.

The Narrator does a spectacular

job of telling the story and can be very humorous at times.

I would recommend “The 9 Lives of Alexander Bad-denfield,” by John Bemelmans Marciano, for an age group of 12 and older because there are some very gory parts and some very confusing long words.

This is not your regular fairy-tale type of book.

ck Kids and adults can find live links to information about stories in Colorado Kids at www.ColoradoNIE.com

Just as we’re beginning to feel the approach of winter, those in the Southern Hemisphere are starting to prepare for summer. Imagine that you just woke from a deep, magical sleep and have no idea what date it is. Look through the ads in today’s paper and make note of the ones that would tell you just what time of year it is.

Beyond these four pages

A

BC

DTrick-or-Treat still rules among CK readers

There will be a lot going on next week and a lot of choices for Halloween celebration, but when we asked CK readers what their top activity was go-ing to be, trick-or-treat ran away with the prize.

While some have (heh-heh) given up the ghost and made parties their main event, and others focus on Dia de los Muertos, three out of four readers who answered said that

trick-or-treat was Number One for them.

Not that it stops you from do-ing more than one, of course.

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

What will be the main part of Halloween for you this year?

A. Trick-or-treating 76%B. A Halloween party 15%C. Neither: I celebrate Dia de

los Muertos 7%D. I don’t do either holiday. 2%

Now here’s our new question:What is your most frequent

approach to helping the less fortunate?

A. I like to volunteer and help out in person.

B. I participate in fundrais-ers.

C. I donate money or things like canned goods.

D. Maybe when I’m older.To answer this question, go to

www.yourhub.com/NextGen

we asked, you answered

By Sophia Khan, 11, a CK Reporter from Northglenn If peer pressure changes

how kids behave, why not change it with this: Most

teens don’t drink.It’s not even close, accord-

ing to a survey of high school students taken by State Farm Insurance and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

They asked 695 students about the topic and were told that 77 percent, more than three-quarters, don’t drink al-coholic beverages, and half of the teens said they’d be less likely to hang around with kids who drink.

Students gave five main reasons to avoid alcohol:

1. It’s against the law.2. It’s bad for your health.3. It messes up your grades.4. It can mess you up with

your parents.5. They don’t want to be like

the kids who do drink.While kids sometimes just

tell adults what they want to hear, 77 percent is well over half, even if it’s maybe not the exact number.

So if someone says, “Don’t you want to be like the other kids?” just say “Yes!”

Survey SayS: No, theydoN’t all do it!

Colorado Kidsis produced by

Denver Post Educational ServicesExecutive Editor: Dana Plewka

dplewka@denverpost.comCK Editor: Mike Peterson

coloradokidseditor@gmail.comWe welcome your comments.

For tools to extend the learning in this feature, look under“eEdition lessons” 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

(303) 954-3974(800) 336-7678

Australians are seeing something in their news that is only too familiar to

Coloradans: Wildfires are whip-ping through the countryside, people are being evacuated and homes are being lost.

It’s not unusual, but it’s early.Australian firefighters are used

to missing Christmas at home. December is the start of sum-

mer in the Southern Hemisphere, and it seems that Christmas week is when the bushfires begin every year, particularly in New South Wales.

That’s the southeastern cor-ner of Australia in which you find major cities like Sydney and a lot of smaller towns scattered through the bush, which is what Australians call their grassy, scrubby countryside.

This year, three major fires broke out and spread well before summer, and more than one ex-pert is saying that, with climate change, this is not surprising.

Even those who disagree with the idea that climate change is

caused by human activity say that the fires this spring have been worse because of dry weather that meant the bush was ready to burn.

At the point at which the fires began, the weather was no help at all: Winds were coming from the northwest, sweeping across Australia’s center, the dry, dusty outback.

The bushfires got a good start before the wind shifted and be-gan coming up from the south, with a little more moisture and less heat as well.

There were three major fires burning last week, but good work by firefighters combining back-burns and firebreaks managed to direct two of them into a single fire that was easier to fight.

However, 200 homes have been lost and another 100 damaged, and about 60 fires were burning in the bush at the week’s end.

And if the bushfire season has started early in Australia this year, there’s no reason to expect an early end as well.

Bushfires of Summer arriving in Spring

BrainteaserOn this day in 1923, Turkey became a republic, so this week’s answers will each begin with “T.”

1. Communication device invented by Samuel Morse

2. Colorado town at the base of Raton Pass on I-25.

3. The Denver Mint is part of this US Department

4. Wooden sled with curved front and no runners.

5. Spanish language TV network owned by NBC

6. Greek hero who killed the Minotaur

7. Mountain range that runs south of Yellowstone National Park and includes the town of Jackson Hole.

8. If you skip school, you could be charged with this.

9. Alice met this quarrelsome pair of twins when she went through the looking glass.

10. Brook, rainbow and Dolly Vardens are types of this fish.(answers on Page Four)

NIE is N-E-W!Visit our brand-new website this summer

The Denver Post’s Newspapers In Education (NIE) is getting a brand-new look online! New site features include:

• Colorado Kids on Tuesdays• Mini Page on Wednesdays• Kid Scoop on Thursdays • “This Week in History” quizzes to help teachers• New ways to compare and contrast local media content

Visit the new website today atwww.ColoradoNIE.com.

Above, a familiar sight to Coloradans as an Aus-tralian firefighter works through the night, work-ing on a “back-burn” to remove fuel from the path of a bushfire 46 miles from Sydney. AP

photo Rob Griffith

“One out of 3 dogs will get cancer, and 1 out of 4 dogs that

have cancer will die from it,” says Hope Parker.

She’s the local coordinator for the “Puppy Up!” dog walk, which will take place in Denver for its third year this Saturday from 10 to 2 in Stapleton Central Park. Registration will be from 8 to 10 a.m.

The walk is one of many across the nation spon-sored by 2 Million Dogs, a national nonprofit that funds can-cer research benefiting both pets and humans. It was formed in 2010 to educate the public about common links between cancer in humans and in companion animals.

“Dogs get the same types of cancer people get,” said Parker, “and undergo the same types of treatment.”

The event is a fundraiser. Walkers who don’t collect

pledges ahead of time can pay $30 to register. Kids under 14 walk for free.

Walkers who raise at least $100 get a “Puppy Up!” T-shirt and bandanna.

The event has raised about $10,000 in each of its two years. In 2012, 200 people and dogs walked.

Each year, the group picks a human cancer hero and a

canine cancer hero to lead the walk.

This year’s heroes are Hunter Baker, a 15-year-old osteosarcoma survivor, and Rowan, a 7-year-old Kerry Blue terrier who has survived lymphoma.

Parker has been the coordinator of the walk since 2010.

“I was inspired to

volunteer to organize the local ‘Puppy Up!’ Denver walk after having two dogs with cancer at the same time,” she says. “Dogs truly are our best friends because research done on dogs with cancer can also lead to improvement in medical treat-ment of people with cancer. ”

“Make health a hobby!” says Dr. Travis Stork.

Dr. Stork, originally from Colorado and now host of TV’s “The Doctors,” was a guest speaker at the “King Soopers Health Expo 2013.”

He started by explaining how eating the right food helps your body.

If you are eating healthy foods you will be ready for the day and feel great.

Next, Dr. Stork discussed the importance of activity.

He wants you to be moving as much as pos-sible and said that working out does not have to be structured: Little bits of activity throughout the day do add up.

The doctor also believes that sleep is a very important part of your life.

You do not want to be hyper when you go to bed or else you won’t get a good night’s sleep. If you sleep well, you will be

ready for what the next day brings.

Finally, Dr. Stork talked about stress.

Kids have a lot of stress put on them which can come from homework or pressure about their grades.

Dr. Stork recommended taking a deep breath and also getting exercise to help manage stress.

Some kids and adults use food to relax, but sadly not all the food they consume is healthy,

and that can make it worse.

I got the opportunity to visit with Dr. Stork after his presentation and he said that he would like to see more fruits and vegetables as snack foods for kids.

He likes to have his veggies with hummus

or fruits with peanut butter because they are a good source of protein.

But there are some things that the doctor wishes not to see.

For instance, he would like to see that wrapped or packaged snack foods are limited.

You can live the best life you possibly can by following the steps Dr. Stork recommends.

doG walk fiGhtS caNcer iN Both pupS aNd people

a colorado Native offerS health tipS

BrainteaserSolution

(see Page Three)10 right - Wow! 7 right - Great! 5 right - Good

3 right - See you next time!

1. telegraph 2. Trinidad 3. Treasury 4. toboggan 5. Telemundo 6. Theseus

7. Tetons 8. truancy 9. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee 10. trout

Youth-written stories that appear here also appear on

Come read more stories, and maybe write one yourself!

By Megan Lindsey,10, a CK Reporter from Fort Collins

By Kaden Porter,11, a CK Reporter from Denver

Allies Hunter Baker and Rowan, his partner in the fight against cancer.