Star-quality laughs and juggling, priced right for a crowd

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Family Picks

Tickets sold out at least a week in advance when TheatreworksUSA was in the Triangle last month. That show was part of the NCSU Center Stage Kidstuff Series; the national theater for young and families audiences performed "If You Give a Pig a Pancake."

The touring group, the largest nonprofit professional theater for children and families in the United States, will be back in the Triangle on Sunday. And there are still plenty of tickets.

Johnston Community College Performing Arts will present a 60-minute musical version of the popular children's book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Cuts won't do it

I am the mother of two autistic children who receive services through the state, and executive editor John Drescher's June 6 column gave me chills. The piece implied that the state's $4.6 billion budget deficit is due to the relatively tiny appropriations for some politically popular but perhaps ineffective programs. All totaled, eliminating the programs highlighted in your series would save North Carolina only a fraction of the deficit.

State legislators are finally coming to the realization that cutting their way out of this fiscal crisis will mean decimating programs that hundreds of thousands of families depend on, especially when times are tough. No doubt, as the conversation turns to ways to raise revenue, the anti-government forces in this state will cite this N&O series as evidence that state spending is wasteful and cuts are all that is needed. In the end, it will be families like mine that suffer.

Diane Morris

Heels, Gore get ESPN experience

Senior catcher Mike McKee is in Omaha, Neb., with the North Carolina baseball team for the College World Series. McKee will provide daily snapshots to The News & Observer.

Thursday the Tar Heels did more than just make the highlight reels on ESPN -- they introduced them.

Senior right fielder Garrett Gore, a communications major about to graduate in December, spent all day Wednesday with the ESPN crews, and his handiwork was scheduled to be aired in excerpts during Thursday's game.

Child-labor bill heads to Perdue

The penalties for child labor law violations will double under a bill that received final approval Wednesday from the legislature.

Advocates say the new law will make North Carolina, which has some of the nation's weakest child-labor protections, safer for young workers.

"Workplace safety is important for everybody, but it's especially important for young workers who have less clout to make sure it's safe," said Carol Runyan, who leads UNC-Chapel Hill's Injury Prevention Research Center. "This sends a message that the state is serious about protecting young workers."

A strong start to a new mystery series

"City of Dragons" by Kelli Stanley; Minotaur (352 pages, $24.99)

Unconventional characters provide the backbone of the mystery genre. And Kelli Stanley's riveting new series about 1940s San Francisco private investigator Miranda Corbie revels in the character's uniqueness without resorting to cliches.

Miranda's former life as an "escort," a euphemistic attempt to soften that she sometimes was a prostitute, is only part of the back story of this very complex character with a dark past.