‘Luke’ wins NAA award, ‘Noodles’ set to begin

KNNIE’s next literacy project starts Oct. 14

By Dana Ehlschide
News Bureau Director

With KPA’s Kentucky Network for Newspaper in Education second literacy project set to begin in October, last year’s series “Luke in a Really Big Pickle” is still receiving honors.

The series received third place honors in special projects last month when the Newspaper Association of America Foundation recognized the country’s Newspaper in Education Programs.

“We were really excited about the third place finish,” said Kriss Johnson, KNNIE chairwoman and educational outreach manager for The Herald-Leader. “We decided to enter it in the special projects category because we see it as being an innovative literacy project.”

The Lexington Herald-Leader also won first place honors for Best Literacy Idea among papers in the 75,000 to 150,000 circulation category of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association’s NIE and Literacy Awards in February for its leadership role in the Luke series.

“I had had big dreams and hoped big things for the project,” Johnson said. “If five newspapers had participated it would have been great, but we had 43 (participate).”

Last year’s series was co-sponsored by KPA, Kentucky Educational Television and LG&E Energy Foundation.

The idea, Johnson said, is a take- off of a similar project the Kentucky Educational Television station had done where viewers were asked to read the same book.

“I thought, ‘What if all Kentucky newspapers published the same story for everyone to read?’ ”

Johnson said the project was not just created as an education tool inside of the classroom, but could be used as a circulation vehicle to get newspapers in more homes and encourage literacy.

Coming off the heels of last year’s success, a new seven week literacy series will begin in October. Johnson said the goal this year is to have 50 newspapers participate in the program.

“Noodles” is a chapter story written by Kentucky authors Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones with artwork done by Kentucky’s own Chris Ware. It tells the tale of a brother and sister conducting a science fair experiment.

Each week participating newspapers publish a chapter from the series written for second through sixth grade students.

As members of KPA, there is no cost to newspapers publishing the series. KNNIE is picking up the tab. All member newspapers must do is donate the space for the columns to run for seven consecutive weeks. Johnson also encourages newspapers to do as several did last year and find local sponsors for the space. Their name and logo could be placed at the end of the chapter each week.

The project will run Oct. 14 through Nov. 29, 2002. The newspaper must publish the first chapter any time during the week of Oct. 14 and follow with a new chapter each week. The chapters will run about 750 to 800 words.

LG&E will once again provide newspapers that sign up before Sept. 15 with 1,000 free scrapbooks to send to the schools or give to their subscribers. These scrapbooks provide readers a space to cut and save each chapter into one book. Additional scrapbooks can be ordered ahead of time at a rate of $50 per 1,000 plus shipping.

There will also be on-line activities on the KPA website at www.kypress.com which will feature learning activities to go along with the story.

New to the project this year are NIE workshops in September to introduce the newspapers and show teachers and families how to use newspapers with the stories. To obtain more information about the workshop call Johnson at (800) 264-5721 or send her an e-mail at kjohnson@kypress.com.