Generation Cures is a philanthropic movement of Children’s Hospital Boston. Founded in May 2008, the award-winning Foundation inspires kids to help cure other kids from cancer through various fundraising activities– to care about others, to believe they can make a difference and to mobilize their families to help find cures for the world’s most debilitating childhood diseases.

Over summer, Generation Cures launched a book initiative to inspire kids to make a difference. In fact, the last page of the book speaks about being an agent of change: “Change happens in two ways-to you or by you. You can wait around for other people…to make the world a better place or you – yes, you – can decide to do something.”

The book is called Zebrafish, published by Simon & Schuster.  It is an extension of an online animated series by the same name developed specially for Generation Cures. Zebrafish is named after the small, yet powerful, transparent fish used for studying disease and it tells the story of friends who form a rock band. The tween garage band uses music to make a difference and encourages kids everywhere to change the world.  Their first concert is a fundraiser for the hospital that treats their bandmate with leukemia.

Zebrafish has been endorsed by the Junior Library Guild and American Library Association for kids in middle grades.

It is recommended for kids between 10-14 years old and is written (and illustrated) in a comic-book-type format.

Local guy (and best selling author and illustrator) Peter H. Reynolds is the leading mastermind behind the book. He is a local owner of Fable Vision and his family has a great book/art store in Dedham called The Blue Bunny

Generation Cures has gifted two copies of ZebraFish for two lucky winners ($16.99 value). Simply check out the rules below and leave a comment on this giveaway by Monday, September 13th, to enter to win.

Rules:

Leave a comment about how you or your child has made a difference. One comment permitted per person; US entrants welcome.

Include your name and email in the appropriate fields so I can contact you if you win. (Including just first name or first name + last initial is OK!). Anonymous or SPAM-like comments will be discarded.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Monday, September 13, 2010.

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*Two lucky winners (drawn randomly via Random.org) will receive a new copy of ZebraFish. The winners will be notified directly via e-mail, then listed back at this post using first name only.

New fitness offerings for you in September.

See my video, by clicking on the image, to discover what is in store!

Stay tuned!

On my first morning without a baby in 9 months, 2 weeks and 4 days (who’s counting), I voluntarily woke up at 6:15am to run the streets of New York for the BlogHer 5k during the BlogHer conference.

God I am a freak. of. nature.

I started off running with Working Mom Fence. She was in her running splendor adorned with a tutu to support Tutus for Tanner. I give her “oodles” of “whoohoos” for that.

We were signed up for the Broadway portion of the BlogHer 5k.  The other route was Central Park. From a running standpoint, Central Park probably was the way to go. Why? Well, because you could run for a period of time.  For those of us in the Broadway edition of the BlogHer 5K, we dealt with this every 100 steps.

To give you a feeling of it:  run, run, run, stop. wait. run, run, run, stop. wait. run, run, run, stop. wait.

Also, when it would go to a white walk signal, you had to dodge these…

They are freaking everywhere, and do not give a $%&# if you have the white walk signal.

I probably had a different experience than my Central Park BlogHer 5k counterparts.

Pretty sure they did not have the stench of trash or trash to jump over.  At one point, there was a huge pile of trash bags. I stopped to take a picture but then started running for my life when a rat ran out from the pile. We will just call that the “Lost Photo”. Plus the lost photo of the guy peeing on the sidewalk, which really explained the urine smell during the 3.1 miles of running.

However, I got to see Times Square and the lights of Broadway. Not something I would see on my suburban mommy morning run. (Note the tail end of the cab on the left of the photo….damn things.)

I actually started getting tired during the run.  Between the cab-dodging, trash-jumping, walk-signal-intervals and holding my breath (not advised generally since one typically needs oxygen while exercising), I was really looking forward to stopping and taking a freaking shower.

But I got distracted….

Luckily they are not open at 7am.

I did not need the cab fare that was tucked in my sports bra, nor the Starbucks card I had for emergency sustenance. Thank goodness the streets in New York are numbered, because I was able to get back to the hotel.

After dodging one more of these.

I survived the urban jungle of New York City. While I think I carried the stench with me for days, it was a run I will never forget.

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(Many thanks to Shannon Entin of Mom Improvement for planning and hosting the run! And for Steaz and the other brands that sponsored the event!)