animal house; Fifteen-year-old Heather Herman is fighting to free animals from performing in circuses and parades and she just might win.

Byline: As Told To Louise Jarvis

People have come up to me and said, The circus is a Denver tradition, there's a neighborhood here named for P.T. Barnum how can you try to stop the circus? Or, You're

a kid, you're supposed to love the circus! But this isn't about

the circus; it's about the animals. There are so many people in our generation who believe that using wild animals for entertainment

is just wrong. If we do something about this now, watching elephants, tigers, and other animals perform won't be a tradition by the time we grow up. We'll have a new tradition, our own tradition.

I've been learning and thinking a lot about animals since I was in fourth grade, when my dad showed me some brochures about animal cruelty that he'd gotten from a co-worker. I looked at them and thought, This is so awful. I want to do something to …