6 O.C. Students Among Editorial Cartoon Winners

Six politically minded Orange County children beat out nearly 10,000 other youths in a nationwide editorial cartoon contest.

Their work spans such issues as tasteless school lunches, feminism, environmentalism, President Clinton and even the International Monetary Fund’s reaction to the Asian economic crisis.

The drawings have been compiled in “Editorial Cartoons by Kids,” a book published by Wisconsin-based Zino Press.

The winning Orange County cartoonists are Christopher Nowak, a third-grader from Laguna Niguel; Gina Cervino, and Jessica Hryniewicki, two sixth-graders from Orange; Peter Johnson, an Orange seventh-grader; and Darryl Stein and William Seith, both eighth-graders from Irvine.

They took home U.S. savings bonds as prizes.

But the real prize was the gift of self-expression that children learned during the process, said Matt Cibula of Zino Press, which has published the book annually for 10 years.

“Our philosophy is that if children believe they have the right to have their own opinions, they will express it,” Cibula said.

“Too much of our society is predicated on the notion that kids have to listen and adults have to tell. It’s fascinating to see how kids respond to issues.”

Schoolchildren across the country sent in their entries in April; the top 100 were sent for judging to Mike Luckovich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Luckovich advised children to “stay tuned to what’s going on in the world,” in the book’s foreword.

“One day your generation will be in charge.”