This Issue:

Table of Contents

Cover Story

Cover Story - Spanish Version

Mini-Lesson

Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

And the Award Comes from...

By Laura C. Girardi

Robert Du Grenier, 47, is not nominated for Favorite TV Actor, Movie Star, Wannabe or any other category in this year's Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. But when the bright-orange blimp trophies are handed out on April 12, Du Grenier will feel as proud as the winners do! He and his design team make the eye-catching blimps as well as other award-show trophies.

Du Grenier, a sculptor, designed the blimp award in 1991. "Nickelodeon wanted to give something that's interactive in a creative way," he says. So he put a taleidoscope inside a 3-D model of Nickelodeon's blimp logo. Unlike a kaleidoscope, which shows bits of glass or colorful objects reflected in a tube of mirrors, a taleidoscope shows patterns from the world around you. "Images of the outside world reflect back into the mirrors so you can see multiples of what you are looking at," Du Grenier explains.

He and up to 10 workers make the awards in his Townshend, Vermont, farmhouse. They also make trophies for the MTV Movie Awards, the TV Land Awards, ESPN's ESPY Awards and others.

When designing awards, Du Grenier spends weeks sketching ideas. Once his clients pick a design, he makes a prototype, or model. His team then usually creates a mold for the trophy and uses it to cast multiple copies. At the awards show, winners receive a prototype. Du Grenier and his staff later send the actual award, engraved with the winner's name and the award category.

"I look over the list of people who have the pieces that we created and it blows my mind," he says. What could possibly top that? "No one's done an award for the best award," says Du Grenier. "That would be kind of cool!"

Next: Top 5 Cheapest Baseball Tickets