Do your kids’ eyes glaze over when you try to talk to them about current events? My parents used Sunday funnies to lure me to the newspaper. But what about the venerable, funnies-less New York Times? My preteen won’t go near it as, in her perspective, every article is fifty pages long and far less interesting than Honey Boo Boo.
The Times may have come up with a cure-all for mini news-phobics like mine: Kids Draw the News, an online feature in which kids 12 and under can submit their own drawings of stories from the local news, which the Times then posts on its City Room blog.
Picture this. For a recent story on a Park Slope beer garden that encouraged customers to bring kids, a nine-year-old Brooklyn native portrayed a colorful scene of kids “having fun, hanging upside down on the table.” A story on a heckler who called the Mayor “Pharaoh Bloomberg” for his opposition to increased worker pay inspired renderings from as far away as Burundi, including artwork by a four-year-old that included the commentary “thats inappropriate [sic].”
The current assignment? Kids can illustrate “Peacock on the Loose,” an story about an escaped peacock that roamed the streets of Kew Gardens for two weeks. Quick–hand your child a pencil and paper and start talking news!
For information on how to submit your kids’ drawings, visit nytimes.com/kids-draw-the-news
