Wish the Cat in the Hat happy birthday and give a kid a free book!

It’s the Cat in the Hat’s 50th birthday, and to celebrate, Random House is donating to First Book for every birthday card sent to the cat. So do it now.

More Home Alone girls

It’s not every day that Good Morning America and People Magazine call the office, looking for me. (Which is to say, they never do.)

But the Delgadillo girls and their situation are a near-perfect story subject, so it’s no surprise that other outfits have been calling here trying to get in touch with them. (I take their numbers and pass them onto the Delgadillos; I can’t imagine they want the whole world calling them at home.)

The People writer seemed especially eager to interview them now (I’m guessing they’re worried about their direct competitors getting to them first), so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them in the magazine in a week or two.

NewsMania quiz

The Newseum has an online trivia game called NewsMania up as a feature on its new Web site. (The online store is currently offline, though.)

No matter which level I play at, I get a 90 score. Grr.

The return of the Home Alone girls

Back in December, there was a tremendous outpouring of support for the Delgadillo girls after I profiled them in a story I called Home Alone. The story of a girl raising her four younger sisters while both parents are in Iraq seems to speak to a lot of people, and it shows up on the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times: Soldiers’ daughter is on duty at home. They expanded the interview to include the parents, which is the logical next step and definitely improves the story. No, that’s too mild: They did a fantastic job on the story, talking to the army, the mother via Instant Messenger and spent the day shadowing Audrey and, as a result, got fantastic quotes from the girls that I couldn’t get in my hour-long interview. I would have killed for that final kicker quote the LA Times got. Good stuff.

The new new HesperiaStar.com

Just got off a phone conference about the new upcoming Web sites for all the Daily Press papers — memo to self: the Handfree Mute button on the phone isn’t really muted — and it looks like the end result is going to be pretty nice for readers and make HesperiaStar.com a site area residents will want to use as a home page, with all the new features.

The plan, I gather, is to roll out the new Desert Dispatch and El Mojave sites first before getting to us. The end results will look similar, so keep an eye on those two to catch a glimpse at what the Star and Daily Press sites will look like.