A Little Surprise For the Prize-Giver
No Rules or Exceptions Apply In Award for Child's Antiwar Essay

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2007

Behold the easy-publicity, make-ya-feel-good corporate kids' contests: The Fruit Roll-Ups $1,000 search for the funniest child comedians?! The McDonald's $2,500 prize for the most active child! And from Lego, the big kahuna: a $5,000 prize for each of 10 kids who display "creativity."

That last one's winners were announced last week, and Bethesda's Kelsie Kimberlin, 8, got the nod. The judges of Lego's first annual Creativity Awards got more than they bargained for.

When the third-grader is asked to describe her winning entry to Lego's Creativity Awards, her explanation -- with just a little prompting from her dad, Brett -- is on message: "I don't want kids to lose any parents in the war."

She wrote this in her application essay, saying that her creativity came through singing songs like "Happy Springtime," a reworking of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas" with nearly 50,000 YouTube hits.

A team of judges, including novelist Dave Eggers and Wired magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson, scanned 1,000 entries, voting Kelsie one of 10 winners. Five grand for peace. Nice.

Except . . . had anyone, other than those 50,000 YouTubers, actually seen "Happy Springtime"?

"We were judging the basic creativity of the essay," says Lego spokeswoman Julie Stern.

Ah. That would mean no? Correct.

So, a synopsis: "Happy Springtime (Bush Is Over)" is more than five minutes of John 'n' Yoko footage, of birds fluttering past a billboard reading "Imagine Peace" and of beautiful children singing, cherubically, "Buuush is ooover!" which, incidentally, is also what their T-shirts say. "Bush Is Over. If You Want It." A credit at the end leads viewers to Justice Through Music, a civic engagement nonprofit run by Kelsie's father.

Pro-peace? Guilt by cherub? Having nothing whatsoever to do with Legos? You decide.

And, insert obvious joke here about the editor in chief of Wired -- Wired!-- not taking the time for a YouTube search.

According to Stern, the folks at Lego did not watch "Happy Springtime" until after Kelsie had already been declared a winner, when her proud mother, Tatiana, e-mailed the company links to the video. "I'll be honest. We were a bit surprised," Stern says.

So does Lego endorse --

"We do not endorse her message," says Stern, who says the company didn't think it could renege on an 8-year-old. "But we do applaud her creative spirit . . . and her message of peace."

Incidentally, Kelsie did not write "Happy Springtime," though she is a budding composer. Her work at Willie Mae's Rock Camp for Girls in New York this summer, says her dad, led counselors to suggest she apply for a Creativity Award. Sample catchy lyrics she penned at camp: "Feeling Rock-i-fide! Feeling good inside!"

The credit for "Springtime" goes to Kelsie's dad, musician-activist Brett Kimberlin.

Remember that guy who said during the 1988 election that he'd peddled pot at a Burger Chef to a dude named Danny Quayle? That was Brett. His Quayle revelation came from the clink, where he was serving time for a series of Indiana bombings, one of which wounded a Vietnam veteran. Kimberlin always contended he wasn't guilty of the bombings and would have been paroled earlier, except for the government machine trying to keep him quiet about Quayle, who said he never had met the man.

Championed by "Doonesbury's" Garry Trudeau and the New Yorker's Mark Singer, who wrote a 22,000-word article on him, Kimberlin was released in 1993. He moved to Bethesda to live with his mom, had two kids and recorded "Happy Springtime."

In Lennon's original, the Harlem Community Choir provided backup vocals. For the "Springtime" takeoff, Kelsie recruited kids from the World Children's Choir, a McLean chorus focusing on making cross-cultural connections, of which she's a member. Sixteen children, 7 to 14, thought they'd like to sing about peace, and named themselves the Harmonic Angels.

The other kids (and their parents) have been nothing but harmonic and angelic in supporting Kelsie's windfall.

"We said, 'Oh, that's so cool!' " says Diane Hinson, whose daughter, Robin, sings in the choir.

"Springtime" is not the Kimberlins' only father-daughter collaboration. Brett also enlisted the Harmonic Angels to sing in an antiwar reworking of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall." (Kelsie and the Angels do not appear in "Exile," a music video in which Brett underwent waterboarding as an "it's definitely torture" argument.)

"All of the kids in the choir are very liberal," says Brett Kimberlin. "They wouldn't do this if they weren't in the cause."

Kelsie agrees. "I don't like Bush because he sends people to be killed," she says. And FYI, her younger sister Karina already knows all of the words to "Happy Springtime." She's 3.

So what is Kelsie planning to do with her $5,000? Record more songs, of course. Says her father, "She was just saying, 'Dad, I want you to learn this Hannah Montana song and then write the lyrics for it.' "