LM Oct.2017

News forKids ... cont’d.

“We try to flip the experience and lead with the ways that people are working to help and support after a crisis. It doesn’t mean we ignore the tragedy; kids deserve to learn about the seriousness of a situation,” Kahn said. “But if we can change the focus so that it’s not all about the number of dead or hurt, we’ll have created an approach that’s considerably more sensitive to young readers. And maybe we’ll have calmed some of our readers’ potential anxieties.” According to Kahn, the feedback has been “absolutely tremendous.” “Teachers are grateful to have a nonfiction literacy resource that actually engages their students with reading. For so many students, the very word ‘nonfiction’ equates to boredom. Now, teachers have a resource that includes videos from last night’s rocket launch, images

In reply, Kahn wrote: “I understand that our story cannot magically make scary stories go away. But what we hope to do is make kids feel safer and more secure by presenting the information in the most positive light.” A month later, Kahn said, the mother wrote back to thank News-O-Matic for providing Ebola facts so she could sit down with her daughter and explain what was happening. Still, determining which stories to run each day and how to present them in the proper light for kids remain daunting tasks for Kahn and his staff. Combined with myON’s personalized reading platform, the end result is to provide kids both digital articles and books that serve them and their communities well. “The range of stories must represent both genders and diverse cultures. Our readers need to understand at a glance that the world is a big place with many different types of people,” Kahn said. “It’s our mission to inspire kids to generate the daily habit of reading. Those are the kids who then will grow up to be well-informed, conscientious and empowered citizens.”

of a brand-new species discovered or a play-by-play account of their favorite sport. For parents, it’s a tool that allows them to generate a global discussion at the dinner table,” Kahn said. “The feedback is incredibly powerful. When we began to write stories about the Crimea crisis, we had a young reader from Ukraine write to us to thank us for giving her a way to actually understand what was happening in her own country.” The Ebola outbreak in 2014 was an example of a scary story that needed to be handled with kid gloves. “We waited as long as we could before running the story because it was a very scary event,” Kahn recalled. “Ultimately, we considered it our mission to help calm down some of the fears felt by our readers—and their parents and teachers.” A mother in Texas wrote Kahn complaining that she did not want her young daughter reading about the Ebola scare. In her email, the mother wrote: “I wish there was a way for my daughter to read News-O-Matic on her own while still being sheltered from stories on Ebola or ISIS or other scary topics.”

214