Published: June 19, 2008 10:24 pm         

Kids audition to be ‘smarter’ fifth-graders

Most children are not happy campers after a test, but 10-year-old Blake Thompson was literally jumping up and down.

Thompson and several other youngsters put their brains and stage presence to the test Thursday — outwitting adult after adult — as they auditioned for FOX’s “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

“I might be able to be on TV,” the Maple Fork boy and student at Bradley Elementary School said, happily jumping up and down. “I would scream! I would run up the walls — literally!”

The FOX game show asks grade-school level questions to adults, who are often outwitted by a panel of children. FOX is now auditioning children going into the fifth grade this fall for the coming season’s panel, said Jeff Morrison, director of operations for WVNS-TV. WVNS, which offers both CBS and FOX programming from its Ghent studio, conducted its own auditions Thursday at Crossroads Mall. About 16 children had participated as of the early evening.

A three-judge panel graded the children on their knowledge and overall stage presence, Morrison said. One child chosen from the Crossroads Mall auditions will go in front of a casting agent from FOX. Morrison said he believed a West Virginia student being selected for the show would help combat negative stereotypes about the state.

“All of the kids have been phenomenal,” he said. “The show itself is a good example of what kids in America are all about.”

Adults handling the audition admitted the fifth-graders often answered questions that left them outright stumped.

For example, the children were asked, “In which continent is the largest desert in the world?” Morrison said. The answer is Antarctica — not Africa. Morrison explained the definition of “desert” — a landscape or region that receives less than 10 inches of precipitation of year — allows regions that are both hot and cold to be classified as such. Antarctica has 5.5 million square miles of desert.

“A kid got that right,” he said. “They answered a lot of questions I didn’t know.”

“Several times, I got a question dead wrong,” said Mount Hope Mayor Michael Martin, who was one of three judges. “It’s been a year or two since I’ve been in the fifth grade. Sometimes we were told a question was a fourth-grade one. I thought, ‘What? Fourth grade? Did we do this in the fourth grade?’”

Lori Dufour, media coordinator for Mountain State University, and Jack Scott, local sales manager for WVNS, complimented the children’s knowledge and stage presence. They noted several children did not hide their excitement and were not intimidated.

Nine-year-old Shady Spring resident Alison Stewart said she was just a little scared as she waited to audition, but she was ready to go. She was particularly hoping she would be asked a question about Nancy Drew books. Her mother, Angela Stewart, said Alison’s grandmother encouraged her to audition.

“I have a lot of confidence in her,” Angela Stewart said. “(Alison being on national TV) is hard for me to imagine, but I’d be very proud of her.”

However, both Angela Stewart and Thompson’s mother, Angela Ruff, said their children being national TV stars would not give them a chore-free life.

“She’ll still have to keep her room cleaned,” Angela Stewart said.

“I might give him a little bit of slack,” Ruff said.

— E-mail: apridemore@register-herald.com