Page Type: Elementary

Something wonderful happened when Storybook Maze started reading to her niece on her front steps in Baltimore, Maryland. As Maze got deeper into the story, more and more kids from the neighborhood gathered at her feet, wanting to hear what would happen next. Maze was thrilled. “Go home and read a book!” she told her audience when story time was over. When Maze found out that many kids don’t have books at home, she wanted to do something about it.

Maze became a librarian, but that didn’t solve the problem. Many neighborhoods don’t have libraries, so there’s no easy way to get books. That’s when Maze decided to take the books to the neighborhoods.

A cat named Galena is back with her family after taking an unexpected journey in an Amazon shipping box.

Galena, a 6-year-old housecat who lives with her family in Utah, disappeared on April 10. Her owner, Carrie Clark, looked everywhere for her. When she and her husband couldn’t find Galena in the house, they posted “lost cat” notices in their neighborhood and online. Clark says Galena is a special member of the family who’s always there when Clark needs her.

“She just has this extra great part about her personality that’s very loving. And she can tell when you don’t feel well,” Clark told the Associated Press. “And she’s just really, really special to me.”

There’s good news for travelers who get bored on long car trips. A company is building a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Los Angeles, California, area, making the trip between the two places a lot shorter.

The company, called Brightline West, began construction on the railway on April 22.

“This is a historic project and a proud moment where we break ground on America’s first high-speed rail system,” said Brightline founder Wes Edens.

The United States already has a couple of fast trains. One of them runs between New York City and Washington, D.C., and the other connects Miami and Orlando, in Florida. But neither of those trains is as fast as high-speed trains in many other parts of the world.

Brightline’s new train will be able to travel up to 200 miles per hour (320 kilometers per hour). This will allow it to complete the 218-mile (351-kilometer) trip in just over two hours. That’s pretty fast. The same trip takes about four hours by car.

Every April, sculptors gather in Port Aransas, Texas, for a contest that attracts onlookers from around the world. The contest takes place on the town’s wide, sandy beach. A beach might sound like a weird place to show off artistic masterpieces, but it makes perfect sense when those masterpieces are made of sand!

Texas SandFest is the largest beach sand-sculpting contest in the United States. Tens of thousands of people travel to the Port Aransas beach to watch professional sand sculptors do their thing. Sculptors are allowed to create whatever they want, which sounds easy enough. But anyone who has tried to make a sandcastle knows that shaping objects out of sand isn’t so simple.

This year’s sculptors arrived on the beach on April 18, one day before SandFest officially began, and set up wood bases that would support their giant sculptures. Each sculptor gathered about 20,000 pounds (9,070 kilograms) of wet sand, set it around the base, and started sculpting. The sculptors had about two and a half more days to finish their work. In addition to the wooden base, the sculptors were allowed to use biodegradable glue to hold the sand in place so it wouldn’t blow away.

Each sculptor had their own way of working. Some made detailed plans before they even touched the sand. Others had a general idea but started sculpting before they were sure what they’d end up with.

This year’s winning sculpture was called “Sweet Dreams Are Made of These,” by Abe Waterman of Canada. It was of a young woman dreaming about a vampire, who appears behind her. Waterman took home a $2,000 prize.

Like most sand sculptures, the ones at SandFest didn’t last long. After the contest, a bulldozer knocked them down so the beach would be ready for summer fun.

Check out the slideshow for more pictures from SandFest!

When Ruby Reynolds was 11, she came across something remarkable—pieces of a prehistoric creature’s jawbone. The discovery led scientists to identify a species they hadn’t known about before.

Ruby found the jawbone fragments in 2020 along the River Severn in southwestern England, where she was fossil hunting with her dad. The pair contacted paleontologist Dean Lomax and fossil hunter Paul de la Salle, who told them the pieces had been part of the jawbone of an ichthyosaur that lived more than 200 million years ago. Ichthyosaurs, which went extinct about 90 million years ago, were marine reptiles that looked a bit like dolphins. There were more than 100 species of ichthyosaur, ranging from just a few feet long to gigantic.

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month is all about celebrating the achievements of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Artist Jasmine Cho honors these achievements all year long—with cookies.

Cho, who owns a bakery called Butter and Joy, bakes up batches of cookies and then decorates them with the faces of admirable Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Her portrait subjects include actor Daniel Dae Kim, civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs, and Olympic diver Sammy Lee.

Cho, who is Korean American, says she didn’t see many Asian Americans on TV shows or in books when she was growing up. Painting faces on the cookies she sells is her way of spreading knowledge about the amazing things the AAPI community has done. Why cookies? Because cookies make people happy.

If a robot were dressed up as a predator, would a bird be fooled? Officials in Alaska are about to find out. The state’s transportation department will use a robot disguised as a fox or a coyote to try to scare birds and other animals away from a busy airport.

The robot, which officials named Aurora, is the size of a large dog. It travels on four legs and is controlled by a human using a computer or tablet. Aurora can move through snow and rain with ease and even climbs rocky areas or flights of stairs if needed. Its outer panels can be replaced with panels that make it look like a fox or a coyote.  Check out the video to see the robot in action.

There’s an unusual farm in the middle of London, England. Unlike many other farms, this one doesn’t produce vegetables or raise cows and chickens. What it does raise is flies…tons of them.

The insect farm is operated by a company called Entocycle, and the black soldier flies are being bred as part of an effort to change the way livestock is fed. Here’s how it works: The flies lay hundreds of eggs, which hatch to become worm-like larvae (the stage of development before adulthood). The larvae can be fed to farm animals like pigs and chickens instead of the foods these farm animals currently eat, such as soy and corn. Some of the larvae are allowed to grow into adulthood. They are fed food waste as they lay eggs for the next generation of larvae.

Jane Goodall has spent her life connecting with and learning about the natural world. When Goodall turned 90, on April 3, 2024, she had a message of hope for our planet and all living things.

Goodall first became famous for her observations of chimpanzees in the wild. Beginning in 1960, Goodall saw chimpanzees using tools to get their food, lovingly holding their babies, and, at times, fighting each other. She concluded that these animals were far more intelligent and complicated than people had assumed. Since then, scientists have drawn similar conclusions about many other species. Over the years, Goodall began to focus on protecting animals and their habitats, or the places where they live.

Today, Goodall continues this work, along with the Jane Goodall Institute, which she founded in 1977. The institute helps not just animals but people as well. As Goodall says, “Everything’s connected.” People, animals, and the environment affect each other. They also need each other.

A 10-year-old from Canada just earned a world record for collecting the most aluminum can tabs for recycling in one year. Jace Weber of Ontario said record setting wasn’t his goal. He just wanted to raise money for charity.

Jace got the idea to start collecting tabs after watching a YouTube video about a man who had done this. Jace learned that the March of Dimes, an organization that helps newborn babies and their mothers as well as people with disabilities, has a can tab program. Metal tabs from cans of soda and other drinks can be recycled for money, which the March of Dimes will gratefully accept as a donation. Jace began putting away used can tabs from around his home.

Pretty soon, others heard about Jace’s collection and began giving their can tabs to him.

“There were always tabs sitting at our doorstep,” Jace’s dad, Curtis, told CTV News. “Every day when we’d come home, there would be more.”