The soaring price of gold was driving a rush of unregulated wildcat mining there.

That frantic search for gold was also contaminating local villages with toxic lead dust.

That’s because in many cases. gold deposits are found in rocks together with lead.

More than 170 people were reported to have died at the time, mostly children.

Well, 18 months later, gold mining has only expanded in the area.

And that’s led to a crisis that Human Rights Watch says is the worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history.

The group says 400 children have died in Northern Nigeria and thousands more are in need of urgent medical help.

Jane Cohen of Human Rights Watch says children are dying very quickly after they’re exposed to the lead.

There are no figures, but the fact that children are actually dying from lead poisoning indicates that the levels of lead dust in the affected areas must be extremely high.

Lead dust is usually associated with developmental and cognitive problems, especially in children.

So Cohen says the deaths are just the beginning of this disaster’s long-term impact.

Cohen says the Nigerian government has been slow to respond to the crisis.

And just cleaning up the area won’t solve the problem.

She says what’s needed is both direct medical intervention and a switch to safer mining practices.

The BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou reports from Athens.

By Carol Zall

I absolutely love children’s books – especially really great ones. And for those of you who’ve come here looking for a list of the great books we talked about on air, I won’t keep you waiting. Here they are:

• “Mr Benn – Red Knight” by David McKee
• “The Iron Giant” by Ted Hughes with illustrations by Laura Carlin
• “I Want My Hat Back” by Jon Klassen
• “Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet” by Paul Thurlby
• “Math Girls” by Hiroshi Yuki, translated by Tony Gonzalez
• “Akata Witch” by Nnedi Okorafor

Every year we try to find the international kids’ books that stand out from the crowd, and every year I come across some incredible books. I especially look for terrific artwork, and like to find the books that transcend the children’s genre and appeal to readers of all ages.

This year saw the re-release of “Mr Benn – Red Knight,” which was originally published in the UK in 1967. It was the inspiration for a very popular British children’s tv show, also called Mr Benn (you can check out the show here). “Mr Benn – Red Knight” was re-issued this year to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the tv show. The eponymous main character is a bowler-hatted, rather proper gentleman who’s looking for a costume for a party. He comes across a costume shop, and “as if by magic,” the shopkeeper appears. (I believe the phrase “as if by magic” has made its way into the British lexicon from this show). Mr. Benn tries on a knight’s costume, and suddenly finds himself in a medieval setting. Once there, he sets about having adventures with kings and dragons. The story itself is very charming, and the artwork is stunning (click on the booklet below to see some of it).

My second pick is another re-released British kids book, this one originally published in 1968. It’s “The Iron Giant” by poet Ted Hughes (the same Ted Hughes who was married to Sylvia Plath). In the UK this book is called “The Iron Man,” but for copyright issues it’s “The Iron Giant” in the US. It’s well known in Britain and is on many a school curriculum there. This new edition is loaded with drawings by artist Laura Carlin. She told me that she created paper cut-outs of the iron giant, then had them photographed in a studio so that they would cast a shadow on the paper. None of the other drawings in the book cast shadows – until the end, when the characters, having redeemed themselves in a fashion, become more three-dimensional. It’s a pretty cool idea – you can see an example of it in the illustrations above. The book also has lots of interesting features like cut-outs and fold-out sections with full page drawings.

Next there’s “I Want My Hat Back” by Canadian author Jon Klassen. It’s the perfect marriage of dry wit and beautiful art. It’s all about a bear who loses his hat and questions many animals about whether they’ve seen it. He runs into a rabbit (wearing a hat) who claims that he hasn’t seen the bear’s hat. The bear thanks him and moves along… but later he suddenly realizes what he’s seen on the rabbit’s head. At the end of the book we see that the bear is once again wearing his hat… and he claims that he has not seen a rabbit, and would never eat one. If that made you smile, you’ll like this book.

“Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet” is a wonderful book. On one level, it’s a traditional alphabet book, but it breaks all the rules by choosing unusual words (Y is for Yoga, V is for Vicious) to illustrate each letter. The artist also incorporates each letter into the illustration for that letter – so for instance, the ‘N for newspaper’ page shows a large letter N made of what appears to be the New York Times, complete with photographs. Thurlby drew the newspaper himself, and told me that he snuck a photo or two of himself into it (he’s the boy in the photo under the “Missing” caption). Each of his letters is meticulously conceived – he often uses old books and pieces of paper for backgrounds, and his art has a very stylized, retro feel. He told me that his publisher wants to create a Paul Thurlby brand – hence the title, “Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet” – so look out for more Paul Thurlby books in the future.

Finally, a couple of books for older kids. The first is “Math Girls” by Hiroshi Yuki and translated from Japanese by Tony Gonzalez. This is a novel, but it’s like no novel you’ve ever seen. There are mathematical equations on almost every page. I don’t think it’s for everyone (or even for most kids – or for me!) but it was a big hit in Japan, and for the young teen who loves math, this might be a great – and very different – book.

Finally, one other intriguing book is “Akata Witch” by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor. It was described to me by one book buyer as “Harry Potter in Nigeria” – but better. The main character is Nigerian by ancestry but was born in the US. As a child, she moves with her family back to Nigeria. Once there, she discovers that she has magical abilities…. and once she has become friends with other kids who have magical powers, the group find themselves trying to help catch a serial killer. For kids who have the Harry Potter bug but also are interested in other cultures, or perhaps have the experience of straddling two cultures themselves, this book is an obvious choice.

• More than 200 migrants ‘missing off Tunisia coast’
• Save the Children: Official site

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Lisa Mullins: The uprisings across the Middle East have sparked mass migrations. Thousands of people have fled the unrest in Tunisia and Libya by boat. In most cases the migrants make the journey across the Mediterranean in overcrowded vessels that are barely seaworthy. Just yesterday one such boat capsized off the coast of Tunisia. The Tunisian Coastguard estimates that more than 200 people are now missing at sea. Such tragedies have not deterred many others from attempting the same crossing. So far this year 30,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, halfway between Tunisia and Sicily. Those making the journey have included nearly 800 unaccompanied children. One young boy who reached Lampedusa described his dangerous journey to an aid worker with the group, Save the Children: “The trip was very difficult. It was a very small boat. We were squashed in like potatoes. There was so many of us. We were very scared.” Save the Children’s Michele Prosperi has spoken with many of the migrant children on Lampedusa.

Michele Prosperi: I was in the harbor when the survivors of a shipwreck came to Lampedusa. The boat was bringing more than 300 people and shipwrecked 39 miles to the Lampedusa coast. And only 53 were the survivors. It was really a dramatic moment. They were saying nothing. There was a big silence. There was one unaccompanied minor; he was from Mali. He moved to Libya when he was 12 years old, along with other adults leaving the country to get to Libya to work. And then when the fight started, he decided to take the chance to get to the boat but was convinced by a friend that was saying, “We have to go. We have to escape. We have to find another chance for the future.” And this friend was able to find the money for him. So, they got on this boat, and the friend was among those that sank in the shipwreck.

Mullins: And what happened to the boy, himself?

Prosperi: Oh, he has been transferred to a children’s home in Italy, and he’s now taking for a new chance for a new future.

Mullins: Who operates these boats? Are they official boats, operated by the international community or Angio[?]?

Prosperi: Well, the boats, they are really in bad conditions, you know. Most of the boats, they were abandoned. And they, you know, got recovered just to make this trip. If you take an example: on the 7th and 8th of May that weekend, five boats landed in Lampedusa, and all five boats needed assistance In open sea from the coastguard because they were, you know, somehow in failure. And one of the boats shipwrecked against the Lampedusa rocks. And there were about 600 people on the boat. And 575 were saved by a human chain. You know, many people from the boat were just throwing the young children, you know, to the people. And there were 20 young children and 47 unaccompanied minors, and many, many women. And three didn’t have the chance to survive.

Mullins: Do the coastguard officials try to stop the boats from leaving in the first place? I mean these are unofficial boats. Does anyone try to stop these, especially the children, from coming?

Prosperi: What the coastguard can do is just to become aware of a boat that is coming and make notification to the Italian Coastguard that goes into open sea and gets in contact with the boats and confine them to Lampedusa. What we asked at Save the Children, we made an appeal to open a humanitarian corridor in Libya to let the people that have the right to request the political asylum as refugees to get in a secure travel to Europe…

Mullins: You mean not to go to Lampedusa?

Prosperi: Or just, you know, to be transferred in a more secure way. You know, sometimes it happens that the people who are driving the boat are one of the migrants who didn’t have any knowledge of sailing. One story was about a driver who, after five hours of navigation, got seasick because he wasn’t accustomed to the sea at all. So, this is something that is, you know, it’s really a kind of lottery, because these boats are in so bad conditions that what could happen in the open sea is that they get, you know, broken and suddenly sink in the sea.

Mullins: That’s Michele Prosperi of Save the Children talking about the refugees, including some 800 children traveling alone, who’ve made the journey by sea from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

A poster of the 'disappeared' Argentinians created by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Photo: Pepe Robles)

Claudia Poblete Hadzic wishes she could find a Spanish equivalent for the word “hindsight.”

“It’s a good word for me,” she said. “Hindsight helps me understand some things about my life.”

Poblete said with hindsight, she thinks she knows why she named her first doll Pepe and why she used to pretend an office chair was her wheelchair.

Poblete gained that hindsight in a court room 10 years ago, when a judge ordered the then 22-year-old to submit to a genetic test to determine her true identity.

Up to that point she had refused to cooperate with the investigation. She asked the only parents she’d ever known what to do. They told her it was her choice whether to go the hospital for the test.

“I went because I really didn’t believe it would come to anything,” she said.

When the judge announced the test results, everything changed – her name, her age, her family.

“The family that I knew had disappeared,” Poblete said. “The other family I distrusted because I didn’t know them and they belonged to a part of the world that for me was completely unknown. I felt very alone.”

Poblete is not alone. She is one of hundreds of young adults who were stolen as infants. They’re the children of political prisoners who were “disappeared” during Argentina’s Dirty War in the 1970s.

The grandmothers of those stolen grandchildren never stopped looking for them. The grandchildren are adults now, and some are being forced to learn who they really are.

“It’s an incredibly difficult and painful situation that these young adults are put into,” said anthropologist Lindsay Smith. She is writing a book about these stolen children and their struggles with being identified.

She says the grandmothers of these children pioneered the use of DNA testing to help find and identify them.

“It’s an important legacy to honor, but with it, comes profound moral and ethical dilemmas that are different than the kind we face around DNA data banking for criminal purposes,” said Smith.

A key question is, do the grandmothers’ rights to know the truth trump their grandchildren’s rights to privacy? A controversial Argentine law passed last year sides with the grandmothers. The law stipulates that anyone suspected of being a child of the disappeared can be forced to take a genetic test to determine their identity, even if it’s against their will.

“On a gut level, it feels wrong that someone can tell you who your family,” said Smith, “but you have to understand this debate within the larger history of the repression.”

You can see some of that history in the Navy Mechanics’ School in Buenos Aires. It is now a memorial with tour guides, but in the 1970s, the school was a notorious detention center. Those deemed politically suspect were detained, tortured, and often killed there.

The school also served as a clandestine maternity ward for pregnant prisoners. Once the babies were born, the dictatorship took them and gave them away to political supporters.

It was the peculiar logic of the dictatorship: They killed a whole generation of young adults, but they didn’t kill their children.

Smith said, “They thought by putting them with new families, good Argentine citizens, they could make new citizens.”

Meanwhile, the families of the children had no idea what happened to them, or their missing parents. Burcarito Roa’s son, Pepe disappeared in November 1978. He was a wheelchair-bound activist for the disabled. When Pepe disappeared, his wife and 8-month-old baby daughter, Claudia, were taken as well.

“We looked everywhere for them,” Roa said.

Roa said she joined the mothers in white kerchiefs going round and round the Plaza de Mayo, demanding to know what happened to their missing children.

Roa became a founding member of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the grandmothers who were also missing grandchildren. Then ten years ago, an anonymous tipster came to the Abuelas with new information about Claudia’s disappearance.

“We found out Claudia was still alive,” Roa said, her voice cracking. She learned that her granddaughter had been raised by a military colonel and his wife, who called her Mercedes.

Roa and her family started the process to prove Claudia’s identity, but Claudia resisted. Roa credits the judge in the case, Gabriel Cavallo, for ordering Claudia to take the DNA test. “He was a very good judge.”

Judge Cavallo himself said it was a difficult case. Cavallo is now retired, but he said he’ll never forget the look on Claudia’s face when he told her the results of the test.

“I spent two years in therapy talking it out, to make sure I had done the right thing,” he said.

Claudia Poblete’s case proved to be a landmark in Argentina’s reconciliation process. Judges here can act as investigators, and in the course of investigating Claudia’s disappearance, Judge Cavallo ruled that amnesty laws protecting those who helped the military dictatorship were unconstitutional. That ruling paved the way for prosecutions of crimes committed during Argentina’s Dirty War.

According to Claudia Poblete, prosecution is the reason some stolen grandchildren resist being identified. When she ultimately agreed to get tested, the results became evidence against the couple who raised her.

“If you love the people who are going to go to jail because of you, it’s impossible to make the choice,” she said.

Claudia’s adopted father was sent to prison and her adopted mother was held under house arrest.

“I was crying all the time,” she said. “The world as I had known it stopped existing. I had to start building a new one.”

It has taken Poblete some years to reconcile her identity issues. She has decided that experience matters more than genetics.

“Who I am is everything that has happened to me,” she said. “It’s the 21 years that I’ve lived as Mercedes and the 10 years I’ve been living as Claudia. And the eight months that I had with my parents after I was born.”

It is not always easy, but Claudia now enjoys relationships with both her biological family and the one that appropriated her.

“Nobody can tell you who to love,” Poblete said.

She looked down at her eight-month-old daughter, the same age that she was when she was taken.

I asked Claudia when she’s going to tell her daughter about her past. Claudia said as soon as she can understand, but she added that her daughter will always kind of know.

“Photos of my parents are everywhere,” she said, opening up an album. There are old Polaroids of Claudia as a baby, her father Peep in a wheelchair, and her grandmother, Buscarita Roa.

There’s also a photo of Claudia’s mother. Guadalupe looks just like the grandmother she will never know.

Claudia says despite all the pain, uncovering her past has been all for the best. “An uncle used to say to me, ‘The truth is sad, but it has no remedy.”
Download MP3

Claudia Poblete’s story had some resolution, but others in her situation are still struggling over their identity. In fact, the judge in Claudia’s case is now defending a brother and a sister who don’t wish to be identified. Hear reporter Julia Kumari Drapkin talk about that case and some of her personal observations in reporting the story. Download MP3

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JEB SHARP:  Some call it hyper-parenting.  It’s the case of women opting to stay home with their kids and turning motherhood into a high powered profession.  It’s spawned heated arguments in some circles about whether American mothers are driving themselves crazy.  Some observers point to France as an island of sanity when it comes to caring for kids.  There’s government funded day care and universal kindergarten at age three.  But now a new book warns that French women are falling prey to the same pressures to be perfect mothers.  Genevieve Oger reports from Paris.

GENEVIEVE OGER:  France has one of the highest birth rates in Europe, so this is a common sound in French households.  But feminist philosopher Elisabeth Badinter says that may start to change.  In her new book The Conflict, Woman versus Mother, Badinter says new pressures are pushing French women into long term breast feeding, using cloth diapers and co-sleeping.  She says it’s all conspiring to trap women at home.  Clearly Badinter’s book has hit a nerve.  It’s become the subject of numerous debates on television and runaway best seller here.  Badinter argues that instead of being oppressed by men, women are now being oppressed by their infants and parenting experts.  She cites the push to breast feed as a prime example.

INTERPRETER:  The new obligation being pushed on women is long term breast feeding, 24 hours a day, whenever the baby wants.  It brings women back into the home and under the pretext this breastfeeding will keep the baby from a host of diseases.

OGER: Badinter points out that France, unlike its neighbors, has long provided services that make it possible for French women to work and not feel guilty about time away from their kids.

INTERPRETER:  In France when a woman goes back to work after her maternity leave and leaves her three or four month old baby in a nursery everyone considers this normal.  There is no finger pointing, but in other European countries, leaving your child with a stranger is frowned upon.  The fact French mothers are helped when they go back to work and allowed to have outside interests means French women find motherhood less burdensome than in other countries.

OGER: Badinter argues that’s the reason France’s birth rate remains higher than in countries like Germany and Italy.  Her provocative arguments have drawn criticism from French doctors, breast feeding advocates and environmental activists.  And French women in general aren’t siding with her either.  Segolene Finet is a 41-year-old mother of three.  She runs a small company out of her home with her husband selling nursing clothes online.  Finet says Badinter has raised some interesting points about motherhood in France, but she’s gone too far on some things.

SIGOLENE FINET:  I have breastfed my three children.  I have an MBA.  I have always worked.  I have had a career.  I run my own company.  Breast feeding has changed nothing.  It’s not because you breast feed two months, three months, three years, that you’re going to be this submissive woman who goes back home and cooks all day.  This is a little bit of a caricature she makes.

OGER: Finet says the difference in perspective may have something to do with an evolution in feminist thinking.  She says Badinter, who is 66 and has grandchildren, represents an earlier generation, one that fought hard for the freedom that comes with bottle feeding and going back to work.

FINET:  You can say well you know what, I’m a woman so I want society to adapt tome as a woman.  I want to nurse my child so when I go back to work I want the company to provide a pumping room.  I want to have a long enough maternity leave so that I don’t come back to work tired and everything.

OGER: But Badinter isn’t giving any ground.  She has been quoted as saying that French women may not be the best mothers, but they’ve tended to have happier lives.  For The World, I’m Genevieve Oger in Paris.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

>>> Purchase these books here and support The World

• Holiday Books 2009
• See book illustrations and books covers

THE LITTLE PRINCE: Deluxe Pop-Up Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
translated from the French by Richard Howard. English Translation
copyright (c) 2003 by Richard Howard. Illustrations by Antonie de
Saint-Exupery, copyright 1943 by Harcourt, Inc. Copyright renewed (c)
1971 by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery. Present edition (c) 2009 by Gallimard
Jeunesse. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company. All rights reserved.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is the World. You’ve gotten gifts for pretty much everyone on your list, or at least you’ve thought about what to get them. Here’s the problem. What about the kids? You’ve ruled out the zhu-zhu pet, Elmo Live, and anything to do with High School Musical. Well, you can’t go wrong with a good book. The World’s Carol Zall has been talking with writers and getting suggestions. Carol, the first book on your list is a really intriguing book called Tails from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan.

CAROL ZALL: That’s right. Shaun Tan is an Australian writer. He is probably best known for his book The Arrival, which got a lot of attention a couple of years ago. Now he has this new collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia, which is a really hard book to describe. It’s got a lot of short pieces in it and a lot of illustrations to go along with the pieces. Shaun Tan presents this kind of quirky world of outer suburbia.

MARCO WERMAN: This is like a suburbia I’ve never seen before. We’re in suburbs of somewhere in Australia and there is weird things that happen. For example, there is this kid named Eric who is like this weird looking adorable house guest exchange student who lives in the pantry but he’s the size of Stuart Little and his head is shaped like a leaf. He is also kind of scary looking.

CAROL ZALL: Yes, he’s a very funny weird little drawing. I actually spoke to Shaun Tan and I asked him where he got the idea for Eric. This is what he told me.

SHAUN TAN: In my sketch books I do a lot of random stuff. One of them was this tiny little drawing of a character with three points on his head, something like a diamond that the third point made and looked fairly immaculate. I had written the name Eric underneath. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious. This weird little character had such an ordinary familiar name.

CAROL ZALL: That’s where Shaun Tan got part of the idea for this little story, which ends up in the book called Eric.

MARCO WERMAN: It’s just a surreal and delightful book. You know the thing about Tales from Outer Suburbia is that it may fall into a kid’s book category but an adult would easily appreciate getting this book. The next book also works the same way.

CAROL ZALL: That’s right. The next book is very different. It is called The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. She’s an American writer but the book is set in this kind of mythical Eastern European city. This is a novel of 200 pages. At the center of it is this magician who was trying to conjure up lilies but instead got an elephant that came through the roof.

MARCO WERMAN: Not good.

CAROL ZALL: Not good. The person who recommended this book to me was author Brian Selznick. This is what he had to say about why he thinks this book works so well.

BRIAN SELZNICK: There is a sense from the very beginning that you are dealing in a place where everything means something larger. When you have this image of an elephant crashing through the roof in this miraculous way, it feels very much like a parable. You start thinking about things in your own life that are impossible or things that have come crashing down around you and how things that are a miracle and are beautiful also have these dark sides.

MARCO WERMAN: [SOUNDS LIKE] Julian’s author Brian Selznick there who we interviewed a couple of years ago when he came out with The Invention of Hugo Cabre. The Magician’s Elephant is kind of like a road runner cartoon where its really dark underneath but on the surface it’s just an elephant falling from the sky and messing things up.

CAROL ZALL: You could say that. You could also say that it works on a lot of different levels.

MARCO WERMAN: Right and although you said it’s 200 pages, the print is spaced out. I can easily see an 8 year old reading this book. The other books that you’ve picked are more straight ahead children’s books aren’t they. Let’s start with Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser.

CAROL ZALL: That’s right. This is a book for little kids. This is a German writer. The book has been translated into English. We picked this just because it’s a really fun book. It’s about a squirrel. The squirrel wants to stay up. It doesn’t want to hibernate. It wants to stay up until it sees the first snowflake of winter. A lot of the pages are just white with brown or black sketches of trees but you have these little dashes of color.

MARCO WERMAN: That little charcoal and crayon drawings are lovely.

CAROL ZALL: Overall it’s just a really nice book.

MARCO WERMAN: Speaking of illustrations, here is a new edition of Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know how the original illustrations from way back then could be topped but somehow this manages to work really well.

CAROL ZALL: Yes, this is a new edition of Alice in Wonderland. The illustrations are done by Rodney Matthews. He is a British fantasy illustrator. All of the images in this book are really colorful, fantastic and kind of drawing from the visual idiom of fantasy.

MARCO WERMAN: The talking cards.

CAROL ZALL: Exactly. We’re looking at this double-paged spread. You have these talking cards.

MARCO WERMAN: Pink sky, purple castle and red roses.

CAROL ZALL: Exactly, and something that kind of looks like outer space behind them and they are painting the roses. There is a lot of just really beautiful illustrations in this. We thought it would be a great gift for someone on your list if you wanted to give them a classic but with a twist.

MARCO WERMAN: It really capitalizes on the trippy side of the story of Alice in Wonderland. Now Thumbelina is a slightly different case.

CAROL ZALL: That’s right. It’s like an updated classic. This is a re-telling of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale story. In this case, it is retold by Brian Alderson. The illustrations are by Bagram Ibatoulline. This is obviously for little kids. For that reason, we decided to go to an expert. We talked to our technology correspondent Clark Boyd’s daughter, Sophia.

SOPHIA: Thumbelina, Thumbelina, Thumbelina.

MARCO WERMAN: Translation, two enthusiastic thumbs up.

CAROL ZALL: Ha, ha. No pun intended. She also had a little bit more to say. Here is what it was.

MALE: What do you think of this book?

SOPHIA: Good. Ouch.

MALE: Is your thumb caught in the book?

SOPHIA: Yes.

MALE: It’s a very heavy book isn’t it. Let’s get your thumb out of there. Ah, your thumb is stuck. There we go.

MARCO WERMAN: Janet [PH] Maslins thumbs never get stuck in the book I bet. You’ve got one more book for us Carol. What is that? I don’t even know what this is. You said it is a surprise.

CAROL ZALL: That’s right. We have one more book. It is yet another classic that’s been redone with a twist. This is a pop-up edition of The Little Prince. I have saved it Marco. I have forbidden you to see it because I wanted to get your reaction here in the studio. I’m actually going to hand it over to you.

MARCO WERMAN: Any special place I should get it? How about right in the middle?

CAROL ZALL: Okay. I want you to get something that pops up.

MARCO WERMAN: That’s already very impressive. This is a street sweeper on whatever planet that is and it pops right out of the book. Oh my gosh, here is the Little Prince on top of a mountain. This is very impressive. I thought they had kind of worked the Little Prince franchise as much as they could but they actually squeezed one more thing out. Oh, and they turn. This is very cool.

CAROL ZALL: It’s really nice. For people who love the Little Prince, this is just a great gift.

MARCO WERMAN: The World’s Carol Zall. Thank you very much for making this selection of children’s books for us this year.

CAROL ZALL: You are welcome. It was fun reading them.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Article and video from London’s Telegraph newspaper
• BBC coverage

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: Andrea Crossan’s report was funded in part by a fellowship from the International Reporting Project.  And here’s another news item about a lack of animals.  Not lions, but zebras.  This comes from the Gaza Strip.   It concerns the Marah Land Zoo in Gaza City.  According to zookeepers, two zebras starved to death during the military conflict with Israel last January.  So the zoo has come up with a creative way to replace the missing animals.  It took two white donkeys, some masking tape, and black hair dye, and it hired a professional painter to give the animals zebra-like stripes.

NIDAL BAROOD: And now that’s ever been.

CLARK: The zoo’s administrator, Nidal Barood, said he created the fake zebras for two reasons.

First, he said the zoo smuggles all animals from Egypt through tunnels, and it’s difficult to smuggle zebras.  And second, he said zebras are very expensive.  Besides, according to news reports from Gaza the local children don’t seem to mind that their new zebras are, well, not quite authentic.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Photo by Matthew Bell

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar. And for Jews around the world, it’s a day spent at home and at synagogue to ask God for forgiveness. In Israel, the “day of atonement” means that much of the country simply stops. Stores are closed, there’s no school, no newspapers and no Israeli television. And much less traffic. In and around Tel Aviv, the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children. The World’s Matthew Bell has our story.

• See more of Matthew’s photos
• More information about Yom Kippur

A couple of videos Matthew shot on the streets of Tel Aviv:

And more pictures:

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: The revelations of Iran’s nuclear facility and its missile tests may have made the holiest day of the Jewish calendar more somber than usual in Israel.  Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement.  It began at sundown yesterday.  TV and radio stations in Israel went off the air.  There were no flights in and out of Israel’s international airport.  And nearly all businesses closed.  But The World’s Matthew Bell reports that not all of Israel came to a halt.

MATTHEW BELL:  Hundreds of Jews gathered to pray in front of the western wall in Jersualem’s old city hours before the start of Yom Kippur.  They were mostly men and boys.  The women and girls were cordoned off to one side.  They all faced the holiest site on earth for Jews, the Temple Mount.  Many rocked back and forth as they recited from books of scripture.  It was an example of the kind of religious devotion that makes Jerusalem Israel’s most pious place.  On the other side of Israel, less than an hour’s drive away, a different kind of preparation for the holiday took place, at bicycle shops.  Six-year-old Itimar was with his dad to pick up a few last-minute items.    Itimar wasn’t exaggerating.  Traffic in most of Israel completely stops for Yom Kippur.  And so the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children, especially in and around Tel Aviv.  Karen Brima and her husband assembled a new Spiderman bike with training wheels for their three-year-old son.  They got it ready just in time for the big day.

BRIMA:  Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv might seem like a carnival, with all the kids on bikes.  But it’s also a solemn day.  This is when we fast and repent, and it’s the most important day of the year for the Jewish people.

BELL:  But for the young kids, who don’t fast, Yom Kippur is mostly about having fun.  By sundown, the normally traffic-clogged streets of Tel Aviv were free of cars.  That’s when the kids took over.  These kids say the best things about Yom Kippur are being able to ride as fast as they want, pop wheelies in the middle of the street, and stay up past their bedtime.  Lots of people in

Tel Aviv also go to the beach on this holiday.  But many secular Israelis here still fast and go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, even if they aren’t especially observant throughout the year.  Some people see all the bikes and the people at the beach, and are saddened by the growing secularization of Tel Aviv, but Raafi thinks it great.

RAAFI:  It is a very, very special atmosphere that suddenly, the city stops all the usual daily activity and becomes a unique capsule of quietness.  And the kids and the noise of laughter and all that is not something that is continuing the daily aspect.  Because it’s very, very different.  Usually, you have cars and the kids have to be very afraid and suddenly everything opens. It’s an amazing experience.

BELL:  Raafi says there’s something else that makes Yom Kippur special this year.  2009 is the 100^th anniversary of the official founding of Tel Aviv.

RAAFI:  We are really a fantastic place.  And every week almost you have an event that is happening here that is exciting, artistic, whatever.  You walk in the streets and see all the paintings.  So it’s a very exciting year, very strong acknowledgement of how far Tel Aviv came in terms of simply love of life and happiness and optimistic view of the future.  And Yom Kippur is simply part of the fun in that sense.

BELL:  The holiday ended tonight for many families with a meal to break the fast.  Tomorrow, Tel Aviv returns to the faster rhythms of modern-day city life.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Tel Aviv.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Click for cool Lego films: BrickFilms 

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: They’re small and colorful. They’re a perennial kid favorite. And they’re strewn across many a household floor. We’re talking about LEGOs. In spite of the global recession, profits for the LEGO Company jumped 23% during the first half of this year. So what gives? Well LEGO CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp believes there are a number of things at work here.

JORGEN VIG KNUDSTORP: The traditional toy market is under a great deal of pressure because children are finding that they have less time to play and when they play they are also using electronic toys quite a bit. But I do think certain activities such as reading a great book or playing a game of soccer or any other kinds of sports is activities that will never go out of fashion. And I think LEGO belongs in that category because it allows children to be finding their inner creative urge which is the urge to create something where they can say this is something I did on my own. It’s a universal joy of building things up and…

MULLINS: And tearing them down. There’s a certain joy in that I think as well. But you know tie this then…

KNUDSTORP: Absolutely.

MULLINS: Tie this to the economy.

KNUDSTORP: Generally we’re not tied to development in the economy and for two reasons. One the consumption of toys is a very small item in households in general and secondly I think a brand like LEGO is of known durable quality which we find a lot of families return to when times are tough.

MULLINS: It’s just interesting to note that you know it’s so popular in so many places. I can imagine there have to be some cultures where it just doesn’t work.

KNUDSTORP: No it’s not the case. You know I’ve had Chinese professors, Japanese professors, Korean professors, education minister of Singapore telling me that LEGO was really an Asian idea. And I’m just smiling because it’s great to be part of something that is really universal. I don’t think a lot of products could claim to be that.

MULLINS: Do you tailor the designs – even the designs on the boxes I assume in terms of what can be built – do you tailor them to different cultures?

KNUDSTORP: We really don’t tailor this to particular cultures. Most of the sets I would say, if anything, they have a continental European flavor to it. The Scandinavian influence in the design is quite visible. And I think we should keep it that way because that’s our heritage.

MULLINS: That’s the heritage. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that heritage. I mean this all started with a Danish carpenter.

KNUDSTORP: Correct. The founder was a carpenter who actually founded LEGO because he found himself in the middle of the great depression in 1932 and could no longer build houses and furniture so he started producing toys.

MULLINS: Do you mind if I ask you how old you are?

KNUDSTORP: I’m 41.

MULLINS: Forty-one. So you may have played with LEGOs as a kid.

KNUDSTORP: Oh yes absolutely. I grew up on LEGO and joining LEGO eight years ago was to me [INAUDIBLE].

MULLINS: Maybe if you have kids, your kids might feel the same way. Especially if they’re a part of the test department.

KNUDSTORP: Yeah. I do have four children aged two to eight and they’re quite excited but they’re also too spoiled with the LEGO toys. They think it comes too easy.

MULLINS: That’s Jorgen Vig Knudstorp who’s the CEO of LEGO. The company reported a 23% increase in net profits during the first half of this year. Nice to talk to you.

KNUDSTORP: Thank you very much for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: In central China today angry villagers broke into a smelting plant. They tore down fences and smashed trucks to protest the poisoning of hundreds of children living nearby. Nearly all of the children in the village show high levels of lead in their blood. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad says three years ago when the plant first opened authorities ordered the owners to relocate villagers to protect their health.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They did not move the villagers. They said it was too complicated. But now three years later more than 600 of the children there have dangerous amounts of heavy metals in their blood and of course this can cause muscle damage, brain damage, nervous damage particularly in small children. So not surprisingly the parents are very upset and today they went out to protest.

MULLINS: They went out to protest. In fact some people call this protest riots. And we should say you mentioned about 615 children have been sick. This is out of 731 in the entire village. So it’s understandable the parents are upset. What was the nature of their protest?

MAGISTAD: Well basically that the government doesn’t care about them. That it didn’t protect them. That it cares more about making a profit from factories like this then about their lives and the health of their children. And local governments ignore these sorts of concerns at their peril. This has happened several times in recent months and years. You remember the melamine scandal from a year ago. You remember the schools that collapsed in Szechwan in the earthquake. And both times you had parents who were saying you know you only allow us to have one kid and then this is what you do to those kids.

MULLINS: So what’s the company itself saying – this lead and zinc smelting company?

MAGISTAD: It was kind of interesting that they had a very long piece on this on state-run television where they were showing the factory managers and local officials looking very uncomfortable on camera. They weren’t trying to make excuses for them. They let them speak for themselves and they showed how concerned the families were. What the factory managers were saying was you know look we would have moved the village but it was complicated and there are 20,000 jobs here and if we were to shut down the factory people would lose their jobs and that would be a big economic loss. And they didn’t really address the point that there were a lot of very sick kids and that their factory had caused it.

MULLINS: I wonder… You know what you said about the company’s reaction sounds fairly cavalier. Is the government any more aggressive in terms of trying to help the families and take care of the kids?

MAGISTAD: I think the government’s recognizing that it needs to step in and be more proactive in this case. And the fact that it covered it in a sympathetic way on state-run television at a national level suggests that once again it’s trying to show the central government cares about situations like this. And if there’s a problem it’s at the local level. And this is something that many Chinese people believe. Although there is actually an issue where the central government, if it really wanted to, enforce environmental standards that do exist could be more proactive in doing that. But it has a constant negotiation it has to do with provincial-level leaders and even county-level leaders and it kind of has to pick its fights. So if it wants those local leaders to get behind it on certain things maybe it has to be a little bit more relaxed on other things. In the past those other things were often environmental standards.

MULLINS: Alright thank you very much for the update. From Beijing, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad. Thank you.

MAGISTAD: Thank you Lisa.

MULLINS: This is PRI.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.