The author's four-year-old son Simon, with help from friends, finds the afikomen, hidden piece of matzo, after dinner, a Passover tradition. But was reading a Jewish picture book to Simon and his schoolmates crossing a church state line? (Courtesy of Linda K. Wertheimer)

Does mother's Passover picture book cross church state line?

By Linda K. Wertheimer, Guest blogger / 04.12.12

My son snuggled into my lap as his pre-school classmates clustered around me. I had offered to read a book to his class. No big deal, right? But this wasn’t just any book. It was the day before Passover, and I had brought in a Jewish children’s book.

When I mentioned my upcoming visit to my mother, she asked if I were worried about crossing that line separating church from state. I was not that worried. My son’s preschool is private. Besides, is it promoting Judaism to read a book about Passover?

I wanted to share a bit of my son’s world with his classmates, and his teacher embraced my idea to visit with a book and some Passover food. So did the teacher in the neighboring classroom when she overheard our discussion. She said the children hear plenty about Easter and need to know about Passover.

The 1992 book I read, Mrs. Katz and Tush, by Patricia Polacco, is not just about Passover. It’s a multicultural, intergenerational story about a widow from Poland and the friendship she makes with a black boy who lives nearby. The boy, Larnel, brings Mrs. Katz a kitten as a present, and the widow agrees to keep the cat only if Larnel helps with it.

The girl next to me burst into giggles when I read about how the cat got its name, “Tush.” The kitten has no tail, and tush, well, is a Yiddish word that refers to the derriere. I grew up with a smattering of Yiddish words, but tush was foreign to most of my son’s class and I later learned, some of his school’s teachers. I realized I was not just sharing something about a holiday. I was sharing culture.

In the book, Mrs. Katz and Larnel grow close, and one day, the boy hears the yearning in his friend’s voice when she talks of Passovers past. He asks if he could have Passover dinner with her. She takes him with her to shop and tells him the story of Passover. Mrs. Katz tells Larnel that Jews, like blacks, once were slaves, too.

I winced inwardly when I read the next part about the angel that brought death to the houses of Pharoah’s people, but not the Jews because the angel “passes over” the Jews’ doors. The children, though, seem unperturbed by the chilling part of the Passover story. They moved closer to stare at the colorful illustrations of Mrs. Katz and Larnel eating matzo together.

After story time, I served the children matzo and haroset, a combination of apples, grape juice, cinnamon, raisins, and honey meant to resemble the mortar the Jews had to use when they worked as slaves. I told the children that my son helped me make the haroset, and Simon grinned as he spooned in mouthfuls rather than put it on his matzo.

Did I cross a line with this pre-school visit? No, I don’t think so. The teacher next door asked to borrow the book and read it to her class the same day. No preaching went on through the reading of a book. It was much different than the way I was treated when I was the only Jew in my rural Ohio school in the 1970s; a church volunteer visited weekly to preach a Bible lesson with a Christian focus. My parents got me excused. That isolated me and prompted questions from my classmates. They wanted to know why I didn’t stay. They wanted to know what made a Jew different.

My son’s young classmates perhaps now have a sense of what my peers did not at a much older age. These 4-year-olds know that people celebrate different holidays, and that is perfectly fine. Of course, to be fair, I have to ask myself this: How would I feel if a parent came in and read a children’s story about Easter and how it celebrates the resurrection of Jesus? If the book is sensitive and not preachy, I would be fine with it. My son can benefit from learning about other religions besides his own. I don’t fear that he will suddenly want to change religions. It’s okay if he learns that Easter is about more than just a chocolate bunny.

– The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Linda Wertheimer blogs at Jewish Muse.

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Mitt Romney and Ann Romney at a campaign rally in Illinois March 20, 2012. She's been drafted into the 'mommy wars' for being a stay-at-home mom and not "working." (Steven Senne/AP)

Ann Romney drafted into new 'mommy wars' skirmish

By Stephanie Hanes, Contributor / 04.12.12

So, a day after we post about the end of the “mommy wars,” Ann Romney – wife of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney – and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen prove us wrong.

 During an interview on CNN yesterday, Ms. Rosen suggested to host Anderson Cooper that Ms. Romney should stay out of a growing campaign debate about the struggles of working women.

“Guess what, his wife has actually never worked in a day in her life,” Rosen said.

Sigh.

Really, Hilary? Do we have to play that way? 

Politics aside, I think a number of the sleep-deprived, oatmeal-covered moms taking care of their kids might disagree about that whole “work” concept. (Oh wait, that’s me this morning.) 

“I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys,” Romney responded quickly on Twitter – her debut on the social media site. “Believe me, it was hard work."

Five kids at home.  I shudder.

Rosen has clarified her point. All she was saying, Rosen explained, was that Mitt Romney probably shouldn’t be using his wife as his guide to women’s economic problems. 

“I’ve nothing against @AnnRomney,” she wrote on Twitter. “I just don’t want Mitt using her as an expert on women struggling $ to support their family. She isn’t.” And this: “When I said @AC360Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women! #Truth”

Well, the political point might be a valid one to debate. (Not going there on this site.) But it would be kinda nice if we could stop throwing dirt and value judgments around on other moms – even in a presidential campaign.

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Actress Victoria Justice (right) greets Alex Libby, who was featured in the documentary "Bully," at the Los Angeles premiere of the film. "Bully" is opening in theaters across the U.S. on April 13, and Modern Parenthood is thinking about bullying and how to help a child who is dealing with a bullying. (Danny Moloshok/Reuters)

Leaving the bully behind: why kids stay silent about bullying

By Anne Collier, Guest blogger / 04.11.12

A lot of adults wonder why kids don’t often reveal that they've encountered a bully, or why they don't tell a parent or “trusted adult”  that they’re experiencing bullying.

What Aaron Cheese, 15, told his mom, finally, after years of dealing with it in silence, probably strikes a chord with a lot of young people: 

“He said it was that he didn’t want to bring that home. Like, he wanted to walk in the door and just be a normal, regular kid,” his mother, Jean Cheese, told NPR host Michel Martin. “And he also really kind of felt ashamed of how he was treated and was worried about how I would see it or how my husband would see and what our reaction to it would be.” 

Author and educator Rosalind Wiseman deconstructed that reasoning on a teen’s part a little further: “I think Aaron actually sums it up, that you want to put it behind you when you walk in the door. You want some peace. You want a way of looking at yourself in a different way, because you feel, when kids are bullying you, that that becomes your identity. And you want … a different way of being when you walk in the door.”

That makes so much sense to me, too, as a parent. Just plain “home” is a refuge but also a space where the fray at school can drop away and where you see yourself in the eyes of people who just love you. Telling those people about it brings the pain and drama home, so the refuge goes away.

Researchers tell us, too, that, developmentally, adolescents typically feel they’re supposed to be working things out themselves, not running to an adult, but especially if they feel there’s any possibility the adult could overreact or act without them and make things worse in the tricky social milieu at school.

Seattle-based Committee for Children offers more reasons. And the Youth Voice Project found, after surveying 12,000 students throughout the US, that the advice we adults typically give kids – e.g., “tell the person how you feel,” “walk away,” “tell the person to stop,” “pretend it doesn’t bother you” – did make things worse for the respondents “much more often than they made things better.” 

What helped? The survey found that, when an adult is brought in, the Top 3 most helpful things were “listened to me,” “gave me advice” on how to handle the situation, and “checked in with me afterwards to see if the behavior stopped." Very often that helper adult is someone at school.

The Top 3 ways friends or peers could help “Spent time with me,” “Talked to me,” and “Helped me get away.” And note this about peers: The Youth Voice Project authors found that “positive peer actions were strikingly more likely to be rated more helpful than were positive self actions or positive adult actions.” PHOTO

So if we want our children to involve us and if we want to help, our course of action seems quite clear: listen a lot, calmly, and collaborate with our children on developing a plan for dealing with the problem. If we go in “with guns blazing,” as Ms. Wiseman put it in a 2010 interview, we really can make things worse for our kids – and we’ll only give them more reason to avoid adult intervention. 

– The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.

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Some say the "Disney Princess wars" are the new "mommy wars," with parents splitting over whether they are pro- or anti- Disney Princess. Here, the leading ladies in a 2007 "Heart of Gold" campaign to benefit Toys for Tots. (Business Wire)

The Disney Princess divide: The next mommy wars?

By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / 04.11.12

So, what do you think about the Disney Princess phenomena? 

We ask, because according to Rebecca Hains, an author and academic who is working on a book about princess culture in America, the “princess wars” may well be the “mommy wars” of the 2010s. 

Haven’t heard those terms before? 

“Mommy wars” is a phrase that started to get a lot of attention in the mid 2000s, and described the tension between stay-at-home moms and mothers who went back into the workforce. According to the mommy wars concept, American women are really judgmental about how others manage the career-parenting balance. The stay-at-home moms think the working moms are abandoning their kids, or at the very least missing out on what matters in life. The career moms think that the stay-at-homes are anti-feminist and, well, boring.

That’s the theory, at least.

There are some critics who think the mommy wars phenomena was media driven, and that mothers tend to be far more supportive of each other than divisive. These critics believe the whole mommy wars concept is passé, a relic of the Brangelina, pre-YouTube era. 

Indeed, take a tour through the world of parenting websites and mommy blogs today, and people seem to be bending over backwards to show their acceptance of anyone who is just trying to figure out this crazy, overwhelming, joyful, exhausting thing called motherhood. 

When it comes to princesses, though, the gloves come off. 

Over the past couple of years, there has been a growing number of written critiques of Disney princesses. (For the uninitiated, the "Disney Princess" is Disney’s brilliant marketing idea to combine all of their fairy tale leading ladies, from old school Cinderella, Belle, and Snow White to the more modern Jasmine and Tiana, into one pastel-colored collective.)

Skeptics see the ladies as limiting girls’ play, focusing attention on appearance, and training girls to be little consumers rather than little people with their own creativity. Last year journalist Peggy Orenstein pushed the debate mainstream with her book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter,” connecting the Disney Princess pretty-in-pink phenomena to early sexualization of girls. (We wrote about the same in our piece, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess effect.”) 

A lot of these princess detractor moms wonder how on earth other mothers don’t see the problem with steering their girls into this cotton candy world of waiting for the prince. As the blog Cinematica put it: “Snow White’s hormones almost kill her, Aurora is married off in the crib for politics and saved years later with a kiss (or sex and slavery when Anne Rice has her say), Jasmine is a pretty girl saved by a street rat, Ariel gets to look pretty and say nothing, Belle works her sexuality, and Cinderella is saved because of her beauty.”

Yikes, right?

But on the other side, along with the princess detractors have come princess defenders. A slew of the Disney faithful have taken to the blogosphere, pointing out that princesses are sweet, nice, like to read (Belle), work without complaining (Cinderella) and actually pretty spunky if you look closely. (Doesn’t Pocahantas stop a murder?) 

“They are good people,” wrote one blogger. “Name one mean thing that any of the Disney princesses say, ever. It isn’t possible, because they’re all incredibly kind, even-tempered, and accepting. Shouldn’t kindness be a trait to aspire to?”

Others are a bit more touchy; some say they feel the need to fight back against yet another feminist attack. 

“Please, stop underestimating the ability of our future women to tell the difference between fantasy and reality,” another blogger wrote. “The girls are fine. If they want a pretty little doll in a fancy dress, then allow them their joy. They’ll make the right choice when it really matters.”

One of the reasons the debate has become intense, Ms. Hains says, is that Disney princesses are just everywhere. Much of the $4 billion Disney princess empire (yes, billion) is based on an amazing amount of branding. The princesses are on coloring books and winter coats and cereal boxes and bedspreads; they are on plant seed packets and television shows and rain boots. Hains says she even saw Disney princess-branded grapes.

The princesses are so overwhelmingly everywhere that some academics say they have managed to become synonymous with girlhood itself – a phenomena Hains calls “lifestyle branding,” which is when a particular brand becomes so embedded into all aspects of a consumer’s life that it shapes her very identity.

So when a little girl throws a fit because her father is trying to get her to wear a sweater – and princesses don’t wear sweaters!!! – it’s because dad is trying to get her to do something that goes against everything she believes she is. Which is why parents are so interested in the phenomena – in a lot of ways, Disney Princesses are defining their girls’ lives.

To critics, this is sinister – a prime example of manipulative marketing to children, good for Disney’s bottom line and not much else. To the princess faithful, though, this “I will not take off my Little Mermaid outfit” phase is just that – a phase. It’s at worst an annoyance, and, more likely, a sweet, pretty-in-pink part of growing up.

What do you think? Are you pro or anti? Or do you think that, like the mommy wars, this division is overblown?

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Ashly Judd took a strong stand for positive body image this week – a treatise Modern Parenthood sees as a true role model for girls. (Carlo Allegri/AP)

Thank you, Ashley Judd, for positive body image treatise

By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / 04.11.12

Thank you, Ashley Judd. After a barrage of nasty media speculation about the actress’s looks – everything from questions about possible plastic surgery to denigrating comments about her weight – Ms. Judd this week decided she needed to respond. 

And it was none too soon. This has been nightmare of a month for parents who worry about the body image messages we’re sending our little girls. There has been chatter about whether a thinner-than-normal Miley Cyrus was anorexic, with her response that she had food allergies and was on a gluten-free diet. 

(As a mom, I wonder, do we need to focus on the size of Hannah Montana? Really? And do we have to toss around anorexia as if it were in the same category as botox? But I digress.) 

Jennifer Lawson, of Hunger Games fames, faced criticism for, well, looking like a woman. And this comes on a slew of other body critiques of women in entertainment – nothing new, sadly, but perhaps particularly virulent. 

Which is why Judd says she stepped in. Normally she would not worry about criticism, she says – she says she long ago gave up reading about herself in the press – but the comments last month just felt different. They made her upset about the message we, as a society, are sending our kids. 

So she wrote a response in the Daily Beast: “The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us,” she wrote, “while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted. 

She continued: 

“As focused on me as [the barrage of comments] appears to have been, it is about all girls and women,” she wrote. “In fact, it's about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood.... It affects each and every one of us in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings."

Who knows what Judd’s response will change. But at least she is speaking up. And that, it seems, is a true role model for our girls.

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Teen text messaging volume has increased, but as a measure of teen communication, it may not be much different than the level their parents engaged in. Here, Hadde Jones text on a Blackberry in Boston in July 2010. (Melanie Stetson Freeman / Staff)

Teen text messaging up – but do they yack more than parents did?

By Anne Collier, Guest blogger / 04.10.12

Three-quarters of US 12- to 17-year-olds text on cellphones, and the volume of texts they send and received is now 60 a day for the median teen texter, up from 50 a day in 2009, according to a study released March 19 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

“Older teens [14-17], boys, and blacks are leading the increase,” Pew says, but “older girls remain the most enthusiastic texters, with a median of 100 texts a day in 2011″ (when this survey was done).

Texting has clearly passed up all other modes of communication for American teens: 39 percent do voice calling every day, compared to the 63 percent who text daily; 35 percent engage in face-to-face socializing outside of school; 29 percent messaging via social network site; 22 percent instant messaging; 19 percent talking on landlines; and 6 percent e-mailing.

Among those who actually talk on the phone, Pew found that those who use landlines are declining quickly: 30 percent did in 2009, and now only 14 percent do, and 31 percent of teens say they never talk on a landline with friends.

As for in-person socializing, it has “declined slightly to 25% from 33% in 2009,” Pew says, but “teens who say they talk with friends face-to-face outside of school several times a week has increased to 37% from 28% in 2009.” More than three-quarters (77 percent) of US teens now have cellphones and 23 percent smartphones.

So what do these numbers say?

I think not a whole lot besides the fact that texting has replaced our favorite mode of communication when we were teens.

Of course it also shows that we all have a lot more options to choose from – for matching communication mode to our intention for communicating (and what device is at hand) at any given moment. I’d like to see more research on why teens love texting so much, but most parents have their hunches: that it’s basically silent, so it allows for privacy, and texting conversations can happen virtually anywhere without anyone around know what’s being said.

There’s nothing inherently negative about that, unless we choose to make it so.

The volume of texting isn’t particularly negative in itself either, since each text is only a tiny piece of a typical conversation. Sixty texts a day could easily be just 2-3 conversations (and they can be a little asynchronous, which adds flexibility too).

What we all need to be mindful of, probably, is the context of texting – most important, if it’s going on while driving, but also the various kinds of impact it’s having on the feelings of people around us during those private text-based conversations. Because the devices on which we text are mobile, the context is very fluid, so mindfulness needs to be too. Which is probably why parent-child conversations about the appropriateness of texting need to be contextual and thoughtful as well.

– The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.

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Texting and driving remains the norm among teen drivers, a new study shows. But parents aren't talking about it. (Pat Wellenbach/AP)

Most teens are texting and driving; parents silent

By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / 04.10.12

Texting and driving is still the norm among teen drivers, a new survey says, and few parents are talking about it.

Only 22 percent of parents talk regularly about safe driving with their teenage children who have driver's licenses, the study found, while most young drivers continued to view texting and driving as less dangerous than drunk driving.

And despite years now of high-profile campaigns against distracted driving, 57 percent of teens with driver's licenses admit to texting while driving, according to the report commissioned by State Farm insurance.  While 83 percent of these teens agree that they will get into an accident if they regularly drink and drive (which makes you wonder, really, what’s up with the other 17 percent), only 63 percent feel the same about texting behind the wheel.

Yikes.

It’s worth recapping here: When people text, it’s as if they are closing their eyes behind the wheel – often for the length of football fields, depending on how fast one’s driving.

The dangers surrounding texting while driving are so intense because there are multiple sorts of distractions wrapped up into one act – physical (the actual texting takes hands off the wheel), visual (the driver takes his or her eyes off the road), and cognitive (the driver’s mind focuses on something other than the road).

And while lots of people think they can multiprocess – they’re the ones, of course, who can text and drive without danger – research shows the vast majority of people far overestimate their abilities.

At the University of Utah’s Applied Cognition Laboratory, for instance, David Strayer and other professors used neuroimaging and a drive simulator to observe  people who claim to be able to text, tweet, or talk at the wheel safely.  For 98 percent of the population, the likelihood of a crash while on the cellphone increases fourfold. And that number goes up exponentially when you look at texting and teen drivers.

If that’s not scary enough, study after study add to the details. (Although some critics do wonder why, if this is all so dangerous, we haven’t seen even more deaths on the road.) In 2010 the National Safety Council estimated that at least 200,000 crashes a year are caused by texting and driving. Teens are more likely than any other age group to be involved in a fatal crash where distraction is reported, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Association.  And 40 percent of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger, according to the Pew Research Center.

None of this information, though, seems to have impacted behavior among teens. Neither have a slew of new state laws against texting and driving.  The State Farm survey shows almost the exact same results as a similar survey taken two years ago.

But the silver lining for moms and dads:

What does seem to work, the survey discovered, was parent intervention.

Teens who do not text and drive were more likely to report having frequent talks with their parents about safe driving – 82 percent compared with 67 percent who do text and drive.

The survey showed that teens and parents tend to talk less about safe driving after the teen actually gets his or her license – just the time when those conversations should increase.  

So start talking.
 
 

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Hunger Game fans in Hurst, Tex. on March 22, 2012. Our contributing blogger doesn't get what's so great about children who are forced to compete in a live, televised death match. (AP)

Hunger Games: What's so great about a teen fight to the death?

By Lauren Parker-Gill, Contributing blogger / 04.09.12

I know I am going to make myself pretty unpopular with this post but … here goes nothing.

I do not “get” what is so great about “The Hunger Games.” There. I said it. I started this book weeks ago and got to the point where Katniss and Gale were out in the woods, just before the reaping – I believe I was on page 11. And then I put it down because – seriously? – 24, 12 - to 18-year-old children fighting until their deaths? Horrifying!

So I put it away for a few weeks because I was mad at it. Yes, mad at a book – I get that way sometimes. Nevertheless, after hearing all of the hype this past weekend for the opening of the movie, I decided to give it another chance. This time, I got to page 39. Katniss has volunteered as tribute to take the place of her younger sister Prim, whose name was pulled as the reaping winner for the girls of District 12.

And then, Peeta Melark, was named the reaping winner for the boys. “Peeta looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze," says Katniss. "Oh well, There will be 24 of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.”

Next they are taken into custody, where they say emotional goodbyes to their families, who will have to watch them compete with the other winners from the districts, and fight until there is one left standing. Meaning, all of the other 23 children have been killed. It’s just … how do you …how do you keep reading from that point?

Back when the Harry Potter books were coming out, they captured my attention early in the first few pages. Same for the Twilight books, although I never did finish the fourth book as I also found that to be incredibly disturbing. I guess that’s where I need the die-hard fans to step in and tell me what I’m missing because I simply don’t get it.

So dear readers, I’m handing this dilemma over to you. It’s yours now. Help me get it.

– The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. This blogger's own site is Spill the Beans.

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A Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology concept drawing from remains found of Y. huali made us wonder if the big fuzzy – extinct – T. rex was somehow related to the PBS Kids Barney and what this means for evolution of kids' toys. (Brian Choo/Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology/AP)

Could PBS Kids Barney be an extinct T. rex – in a good mood?

By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / 04.09.12

I feel bad even writing this (it doesn’t seem fair to give parents even more to keep them up at night) but a great piece the other day by the Monitor’s science writer, Pete Spotts, made us at Modern Parenthood wonder: Could the PBS Kids Barney be real?
 
The news, in case you missed it, is that scientists have discovered the remains of a great, big, fuzzy dinosaur – the first one that could be, well, Barney-like in appearance. (Pete assures us that it was not, in fact, purple, but we’re not letting down our guard.)
 
Since dinosaurs are big around here (most households with kids go through at least a short T. Rex phase, even if they miss Barney and Friends), we asked Pete to tell us more. Will this new creature change the image of Tyrannosaurus Rex? Will we soon see stuffed dinosaurs covered with feathers? (Hello, choking hazard.) Is there any chance that this Barney-like creature has modern day descendents? 

RELATED: Dressed to kill: A feathered tyrannosaur is discovered in China

Here’s his parent slice of the story:

Remember museum sleepovers, where kids jostled each other to unroll a sleeping bag under the towering, ferocious T. rex?
 
How intense would the jostling be if T. rex looked more like Barney? Not purple, perhaps, but still fuzzy – covered with chick-like, downy feathers?
 
A new look for T. rex is not out of the question now that scientists have found the first giant Tyrannosarus-like dinosaur covered with feathery down. The creature, Yutyrannus huali, lived between 145 million and 99.5 million years ago, stomping around what is now northeastern China. It is one of T. rex's ancestors.
 
Researchers studied three extremely well-preserved, nearly complete specimens. The largest of the three animals would have tipped the scales at about 1.5 tons and stretched 30 feet from snout to tail.
 
Scientists have found feathered dinosaurs before, but the creatures were much smaller. The little guys needed the insulation feathers gave them to help them retain body heat. Because of their bulk, big dinosaurs, however, are at greater risk of overheating than of getting too cold, so they didn't need feathers – or so the thinking goes.
 
Yutyrannus huali's downy coat suggests otherwise, at least in some cases. Scientists who made the discovery suggest that the creature needed the coat because it lived at a time when Earth's climate was cooler than it was during the later period when T. rex lived.
 
Some scientists say baby T. rexs may have had feathers when they hatched, but lost the coat as they matured and grew. This new discovery leads some researchers to suggest that even a full-grown T. rex may have sported feathers as well, although no feathery T. rex fossils have year appeared.
 
Hans-Dieter Sues, who is in charge of animal fossils at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., calls the new find “remarkable.”
 
“It's very intriguing to think of this very large fuzz ball running around with a mouth full of killer teeth,” Dr. Sues says.
 

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