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Cook County YMCA Day Campers in the Story Scouts program of Minnesota Children’s Press enjoyed a field trip Wednesday to the Cook County News Herald office. Staffers Brian Larsen and Jean Marie Modl welcomed them with tales of their journalism career highlights and a tour of 100-year-old archives of the News Herald! Staff photo Brian Larsen
A marvelous group of energetic youngsters came to the Cook County News-Herald to ask questions about how news is gathered, formatted and printed on pages.
Where does news come from? What types of stories do you cover? Does anyone ever try to have “fake” news printed? These very polite, courteous young ladies asked these and other interesting questions.
Who are Story Scouts?
These are the current and next generation of journalists and community storytellers.
As an organization, Story Scouts started in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Anne Brataas, a long-time journalist who loves working with children, formed the group. Story Scouts partnered that first summer with the Cook County YMCA Day Camp. The kids began interviewing community elders, visited the Cook County History Museum, and learned about important historical events in the county.
In 2021 Story Scouts published its first book, a Children’s History of Grand Marais, Minnesota: Ice Cream & Fish. And how was that book received? Well, Ice Cream & Fish was a 2021 Minnesota Author Project Award Finalist!
So, what’s next?
The children, under the tutelage and guidance of Brataas and help from other contributors, now have published five books covering 200 years of Cook County History.
Book 1 is called Berries & Beavers. This book covers the time of the Anishinaabeg Territory and the early 1800s fur trade.
Book 2 is titled Pickles & Horses. These pages take a look at the time from the 1850s to the early 1900s. The book covers logging and early transportation by horse, which was a significant part of the lifestyle in Grand Marais. That and the importance of pickling fruits, vegetables and fish because there was no electricity to run refrigerators.
Book 3 is called Donuts & Boats. This looks at the time from the 1880s to the early 1900s when fishing for white fish, lake trout and herring was a big part of our local lifestyle and frying dough into doughnuts was and still is part of our culture.
Book 4 is called Ice Cream & Fish. Covered here is the period from the 1930s to the 1980s when Grand Marais was growing so fast it had two ice cream shops! It also looks at the decline in commercial fishing due to the lamprey. The Sea lamprey came from the ocean into the Great Lakes. The lamprey almost wiped out commercial fishing until Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan joined forces to combat and beat back this invasive species.
Book 5 is titled Pizza & Broadband (and a Pandemic, too!). In these pages, written and illustrated by the Story Scouts, is a local modern history from 1970 to the present. Featured is the story about the arrival of a famed and well-loved pizza parlor in Grand Marais (Sven & Oes) and then the technology of broadband that made the internet and online life possible here in our rural county. And, of course, the book talks about the arrival of the coronavirus that has traumatized us all.
So, is that all Story Scouts has been doing for the past two years?
Nope, not by a long shot.
Story Scouts just published its very first Children’s Aerobic Newspaper. It is called The Awesome Story Scouts Star! Brataas said the newspaper is aerobic because “we move as much as possible, starting with a walk down from the YMCA building to the Story Scout’s clubhouse across from the harbor, and all over for our interviews. In addition, we practice the Norwegian celebration of outdoor life called Frilufsliv.”
In the first edition of the Star is an interview with Gordon Lindquist as part of the Wisdom Project. The story was written by Runa, Leah, Emily and Tib. Here are two paragraphs of this well-written, must-read piece.
“Mr. Gordon Lindquist rode his tractor to hear our stories we are creating for Story Scouts Newspaper Camp during Story Board Hour. He rode his lawnmower because he is a neighbor and lives close by, and he’s not supposed to drive a car anymore.
“In his 93 years of life, Mr. Lindquist has seen a lot of the animals we have in stuffed animal form, but not the dragon because dragons are extinct now.”
You can find that entire story on page 10 of the Awesome Story Scouts Star!
The Wisdom Project is funded thanks to an Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Operation Round-up Grant.
Then too, there is the Virus Trap project & Coronavirus Comics that were designed to help keep the schools open.
Starting in the spring of 2022, Story Scouts made virus traps and illustrated comics to help explain the health risks of COVID- 19. Brataas explains it this way, “In classroom workshops with kids in grades 4-6, our goal was to keep schools open by preventing the spread of coronavirus aerosols n classroom air. So we built do-it-yourself virus traps that use box fans to pull the air through MERV- 13 hospital-grade filters that trap and remove viruses and other air pollutants. We also wanted to help people understand that COVID- 19 is airborne. So we drew comics explaining that coronavirus spreads when a person breathes in virus particles contained in the air exhaled by a person infected with COVID-19.”
Story Scouts is a great group for kids to take part in and participation is free. Funding for Story Scouts comes from a variety of sources. The Virus Trap project was supported by grants from the Northland Foundation of Duluth, and the Lamson Family Trust of Wadena, Minnesota. Other sources of funding have come from the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation of Duluth and the Blandin Foundation’s Arrowhead Intelligent Region (AIR) grant.
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