A miracle of 100,000 copies!
It broke the stereotype that newspapers are difficult and boring.
The first children's newspaper book that opened a new horizon for newspaper reading!
The hot topic, "Smart Elementary Newspaper," has captured the hearts of 100,000 readers.
It's become even more powerful with 『Smart Elementary Newspaper 2』!

This book is Vol. 2 of "Smart Elementary Newspaper," the first children's newspaper book that opened a new horizon for newspaper reading.
Just like Volume 1, it contains 100 must-know articles for elementary school students from the past year (April 2023 - March 2024).
In order to introduce a wider range of topics than Volume 1, which covers five fields: economy, society, world, science, and environment, the field of ‘culture’ has also been included.
The author, a linguistics major and director of the Children's Language Research Institute, provides optimized children's newspaper articles by reducing the linguistic complexity within sentences while maximizing the lexical characteristics of newspaper texts to reduce children's cognitive burden through 100 recent news articles.
In addition, the author's subjective opinions on social issues are excluded, while meaningfully conveying what the article wants to convey, and the flow between sentences and paragraphs is logically arranged to encourage the reader to naturally develop logical thinking skills while reading.
In particular, this book provides an "advanced version" that describes the same article content using advanced vocabulary and expressions at a higher level through QR code.
This will be a rare learning opportunity for readers to compare the original text and the in-depth version sentence by sentence.
Reading and comparing higher-level sentences directly is an important learning process for improving vocabulary, reading comprehension, writing skills, and literacy.

Thanks to the explosive popularity of Pokémon bread, the food and distribution industries are continuing to introduce 'character marketing' that connects characters with products.
Sanrio bread has recently become very popular, and bubble gum with 70 Sanrio characters on the packaging is also attracting the attention of children.
Recently, distributors have been actively using product packaging and goods featuring characters such as Sanrio, Super Mario, Doraemon, and Keroro to sell their products.

--- p.16 From "Pokemon Go and Sanrio Come (Economics Part)"

At that time, the United States was experiencing great economic difficulties.
Stores and factories closed, and an average of one in four Americans lost their jobs.
But at that time, lipstick sales showed a significant increase.
Economists have coined the term "lipstick effect" to describe the surge in sales of inexpensive luxury goods during recessions.

--- p.46 From “Why Koreans Fall in Love with Nostalgia (Economics Part)”

When we watch short-form content that deals with provocative content, our brain releases dopamine, a hormone that makes us feel happy.
The problem is that when similar stimuli are repeated, less dopamine is produced.
People usually want to get the same level of pleasure they felt before, so they seek out more intense images and watch them for longer, which eventually leads to dopamine addiction.

--- p.66 From "I'm not addicted to 'short-form', am I? (Society part)"

Half of workers will earn more by leveraging AI, but the other half may see their wages lowered as AI replaces human roles.
In the worst case scenario, you could lose your job.
Younger workers can adapt to new technologies and make good use of AI, but older workers may fall behind because they cannot adapt to the AI ​​environment.
It is expected that there will be a significant difference in workers' income depending on the extent to which artificial intelligence is utilized.

--- p.76 From “The Future of You and Me in a World Living with Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Social Part)”

Israel and Palestine are places where fighting continues to rage, to the point that they are called the 'powder keg of the Middle East.'
The origins of these fights go back a very long time.
Jews believed that the Palestine region was the 'Land of Israel' where their ancestors had lived long ago.
For this reason, Jews began coming to Palestine in the late 19th century, and their desire to establish their own state gradually grew, leading to the establishment of a state in Palestine in 1948.
At that time, the Palestinians were living without a country, but the country called Israel was established first.

--- p.102 From “Will the Fight Between Israel and Palestine Ever End (World Part)”

With Sweden becoming the 32nd NATO ally, Russia is now completely surrounded geographically by its NATO allies.
Being surrounded by military alliances created to counter the Soviet Union is a very disadvantageous situation for Russia.
Despite this, Russia is taking a hardline stance.

--- p.119 From "Welcome to Sweden, NATO (World Part)"

Actually, watermelon snow didn't fall from the sky.
They say it's because of the magic of green algae that live in the snow of the perennial snow zone.
The name of this green algae is 'Chlamydomonas nivalis'.
This green algae is said to absorb heat and create its own pink pigment when exposed to strong sunlight or ultraviolet rays.
This red pigment protects cells from strong ultraviolet rays.
That is, 'Chlamydomonas nivalis' created its own red pigment to protect itself from strong sunlight.

--- p.132 From "When Watermelon Snow Falls from the Sky (Science Part)"

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Broad Institute in the United States used gene scissors technology to inject a treatment into mice that had become blind due to a genetic disease.
Then, not only was 20% of the abnormal gene corrected, but vision was also partially restored.
Because genetic diseases that appear in mice are diseases that also appear in humans, the possibility of developing treatments for humans has increased.

--- p.151 From "Cut it off! We'll edit out the sore spots with genetic scissors (Science part)"

As the climate crisis worsens, scrutiny of "greenwashing" is intensifying.
So far, companies have said they will reduce carbon emissions, but they have not actually disclosed specific details about how they will reduce carbon emissions.
They have been using vague and ambiguous expressions like ‘renewable energy usage has increased’ and ‘eco-friendly materials have been used’ without clearly stating what was used and how.

--- p.180 From "Don't Be Fooled by the 'Green' Illusion! (Environmental Section)"

Polar bears usually give birth to their cubs in late spring or early summer, and while they are weaning, they hunt seals and other prey on sea ice.
However, as climate change has led to a significant reduction in sea ice in the Arctic, polar bears are spending more time on land, and as they cannot find enough food on land, they are suffering from starvation.

--- p.192 From "Polar bears didn't lose weight because they were on a diet (environmental part)"

This year's Olympics, held in Paris for the first time in 100 years, attracted attention with the introduction of the street dance 'breaking' as a new event.
The fact that street dance, which originated from black youth in the slums, has been adopted as an Olympic sport has great significance.
Because it added a sport for the younger generation, expanded the concept of sport by including dance as a competition, and respected and acknowledged street culture.
--- p.198 From “Looking forward to a ‘young,’ ‘equal,’ and ‘romantic’ Paris Olympics (Culture Part)”

Many people criticized the casting of a black actress as Ariel in the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid," which was released in 2023.
The Little Mermaid character traits don't match with black people.
They claim that Disney is harming the original work by following a "PC" stance against prejudice and discrimination.
Is it more important to preserve the original work, or should the message of "pursuing diversity for a world free from prejudice and discrimination" take precedence? The debate on this issue is likely to continue.

--- p.210 From “The ‘Pure White’ Princess No Longer Waits for a Prince on a White Horse (Culture Part)”