Book Runs 9 Editorial Cartoons From 1 Class

Since its first printing in 1989, the book “Editorial Cartoons by Kids” has usually contained works by students from the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies. But this has been a banner year for Don La Franiere’s eighth-grade honors U.S. history class.

The 1996 edition, just off the presses last week, contains nine cartoons by his students, including the first- and third-place winners. They were chosen from among more than 8,000 entries. One hundred cartoons are selected for publication each year.

La Franiere said he has discovered the best way to interest students in history is “to relate it to something in the present.” He uses four or five editorial cartoons as a springboard for discussion during each class and has his students participate each year in the cartoon competition.

This year’s first-place winner, jointly created and drawn by Rak Sam of Mission Hills and Kevin Warden of Northridge, depicted President Clinton at an easel. Taped over a President Kennedy administration map of Vietnam is a map of Bosnia.

The third-place winner, also by both youths, comments on the death of Haing Ngor, an Oscar-winning actor who survived the Cambodian killing fields, but who was found murdered outside his Chavez Ravine home Feb. 26.

It is a subject close to home for Rak Sam, whose parents, two uncles and a grandmother were the only family survivors of the Khmer Rouge massacres in the mid-1970s that killed dozens of relatives.

The seven other students whose works are in “Editorial Cartoons by Kids, 1996”: Luciano Diaz, Mike Hunter, Eli Kase, Alex Leslie, David Morris, Justin Nadigoo and Felipe Tetelboin.

“They must have a pretty good program out there to have had that many chosen,” said Linda Endsley, an editor with the Madison, Wis., firm that publishes the book. “The Sherman Oaks entries showed a strong awareness of current events and a thoughtful analysis of those events.”