?Guardian se­nior re­porter Michelle Loubon and car­toon­ist Kei­th An­der­son con­duct­ed an in­ter­ac­tive ses­sion on jour­nal­ism for chil­dren at­tend­ing the Va­ca­tion Read­ing Pro­gramme Camp at Nalis Li­brary, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The theme of the camp is I've Got the Pow­er. The chil­dren aged from sev­en to 12. In his avun­cu­lar man­ner, An­der­son com­mu­ni­cat­ed well with the 47 chil­dren drawn from pri­ma­ry schools in Port-of-Spain. Armed with his crayons and pen­cils, he tapped in­to the chil­dren's knowl­edge on po­lit­i­cal pro­tag­o­nists like Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day for the car­toon.

Then, the chil­dren vot­ed on Best Car­toon Idea. The win­ning piece fo­cused on Warn­er and Pan­day. They laughed hys­ter­i­cal­ly while An­der­son pen­ciled in their thoughts. Steal­ing the show with a slew of sug­ges­tions, was Nkosi Black­man. When the votes came in he walked away a rich man. He took home An­der­son's crisp $20 with a sat­is­fied grin. His clos­est ri­val was left teary-eyed.

He sat in the front row and fold­ed his arms un­til Loubon took cen­trestage.

His frown mor­phed in­to a grin. He proud­ly gave a work­ing de­f­i­n­i­tion of a jour­nal­ist. "Miss, is some­body who does go all over the place and get news and put it in the pa­pers," he said. Soon, they were set­tling down and lis­ten­ing to tips on jour­nal­ism like the im­por­tance of ac­cu­ra­cy and the im­por­tance of read­ing. She quizzed them on the pass­ing of Michael Jack­son the late king of pop and as ex­pect­ed they knew his panoply of hits.

Among those they list­ed were Beat It, Thriller, Man in The Mir­ror and Heal the World. One boy sang a verse of Beat It and his peers joined in singing lusti­ly. Pre­sid­ing over a di­dac­tic ses­sion, Loubon told them it was im­por­tant to read be­cause they would de­vel­op bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. "You would build a bet­ter vo­cab­u­lary, have bet­ter knowl­edge of lo­cal and for­eign news and a bet­ter speak­er," she said. The chil­dren, too, gave a good ac­count of them­selves.

They said their favourite car­toons were Garfield and Archie. Jaws dropped when a girl said she had nev­er been to the zoo. So her friends filled her in all the types of an­i­mals liv­ing there. One girl took the mi­cro­phone and pre­tend­ed to be a tele­vi­sion re­porter. "I see an­i­mals like snakes, tigers, li­ons, fish­es and birds," she said. The four-week camp opened on Ju­ly 13 and ends on Au­gust 7. – With Re­port­ing by Christo­pher Boy­ack