Interview with Olympic Swimmer Lia Neal!

Olympic Swimmer Lia Neal

The Olympics are almost upon us, and we here at the STACKS are SO EXCITED!

I'm extra-excited because my friend, Lia Neal, has made the U.S. Olympic swimming team! At the U.S. Olympic Trials she made the women's team for the 4x100 freestyle relay. After beating out her competition – a number of them past Olympic medalists, like Natalie Coughlin – Lia, at only 17 years old, was 4th to the wall in the event, securing a spot as a member of the 2012 team. It was so incredible! She immediately burst into tears. Called a "source of inspiration for a younger generation" by The New York Times and "Official 2012 Olympic Athlete of The Sports Section" by New York Magazine, the teenage girl from Brooklyn, New York is making a name for herself as an athlete to watch! She's also one of the nicest people I know. Now training in France with the rest of the U.S. swim team, she was kind enough to take a break from her rigorous training schedule to answer a few questions for the STACKS.  

Kid Power: Malaria Nets!

Imagine if a mosquito bite could kill you. There are parts of the world where they can! Mosquitoes in tropical regions around the Equator can carry malaria, a really scary disease that can be deadly. Treatment of malaria is very expensive for most families living in Africa, and they often don't get treatment until it's too late. But there is a simple solution: sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets so the mosquitoes can't bite.

Here are some net facts:

SPONSORED POST Travel Adventures Essay Contest

This post is sponsored by People to People Ambassador Program.

Calling all 5th to 8th graders! Enter The 39 Clues-inspired creative writing contest for a chance to win a trip to Europe!

Imagine that you're a member of the Cahill family and you're suddenly on the hunt for the 39 Clues! Using this story starter, write a 200-word essay for a chance to win an exciting People to People Ambassador Trip to England and France during the summer of 2013.

Story Starter:
You wake up in a hotel room. You look around you. The room is empty. On the mirror is a note written in thick black marker. It says, “The final clue is just around the corner. Be careful!!” You hear a knock on the door. Your heart is thumping in your chest. You look through the peephole. What happens next?

Enter now! Essays are due December 3, 2012!

Olympic Sports Books

The Olympics are almost here! The athletes competing in London are so inspiring they have us all hoping for gold and dreaming of world records. Did you know there is a world record being broken right now that you can be a part of? It's true! You can still go for the gold . . . with reading!

Readers around the world just blew past the summer reading world record with the Scholastic Summer Challenge. But we don't want to just beat it, we want to crush it! How many more minutes can we log by the end of the summer? How much can we beat the record by? We can’t wait to see where we end up but we need you to help us get there! How? Exercise your reading muscles with a literary Olympics!

Olympic Games Trivia

It's almost time for the Olympics! Ringing in day 2 of our Olympic Games-themed week is this fun trivia quiz on all things interesting, weird, and plain silly about Olympic years past. I like to joke, when people ask me if I play any sports that I do marathons all the time . . . marathons of my favorite TV shows that is! So, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, here's a little multiple-choice action fun:

Create a Caption: Olympic Games

The Olympic Games are almost upon us!!!!!!!!! Is anyone else as excited as I am? I can barely hold it in!

We thought it would be a great idea to build up our anticipation here at the STACKS by having an Olympics-themed week on Ink Splot 26. The Games begin on Friday, July 27th. We've got all sorts of fun stuff planned until then (with a few surprises), so stay tuned!

To kick things off, let's CREATE A CAPTION! What do you think would be a great caption for the photo of this Olympic Table Tennis player in the heat of a competition?