Page Type: Elementary

Kids in Australia are finding hidden treasures! Thousands of books have been hidden all over a town called Braidwood for anyone to find.

The books are hidden in places like trees, bushes, and shop windows. They’re placed inside a plastic bag with a note that says, “You are the lucky finder of this book. Read it, enjoy it, and then re-hide it for someone else to enjoy.” 

Kids who find a book are asked to write their name inside the front cover before hiding it again. Then it’s easy to see how many people found and enjoyed each book.

Scientists found a rock from space in Antarctica! The rock, called a meteorite, is one of the largest ever found in that part of the world. 

Scientists found the meteorite during a trip to Antarctica in January 2023. The meteorite is about the size of a cantaloupe, which is a kind of melon. But since the meteorite is made up mostly of metal, it’s very heavy for its size. In fact, it weighs almost 17 pounds (8 kilograms)!

Meteorites are rocks that fall from space and land on Earth’s surface. Along with the planets, many other objects orbit the Sun. Some of them are pieces of rock. Sometimes a small rock gets close to Earth’s atmosphere and falls to Earth. That’s a meteorite. Scientists think the one they found fell to Earth tens of thousands of years ago.

Scientists often look for meteorites in Antarctica. That’s because Antarctica is a very dry place. In fact, it’s a desert! Most meteorites are found in deserts because there’s very little rain or snow to damage them. So they can sit in one spot and remain unchanged. Plus, Antarctica is frozen. Since meteorites are dark colored, they’re easy to spot on the white ice. So far, scientists have found about 45,000 meteorites in Antarctica. They think there might be 300,000 more!

When bees get sick, it can cause big problems for people. In 2023, scientists said they created a vaccine that can help honeybees stay healthy. It’s the world’s first vaccine for honeybees.

A vaccine is something that is put in an animal’s body to help protect the animal from a certain disease. There are vaccines for humans and many other species of animals. The vaccine that scientists made for honeybees protects them against a disease called foulbrood. Foulbrood can kill off entire hives of honeybees. 

Honeybee health is very important to people. That’s because honeybees are pollinators. They fly to plants that have flowers to collect pollen and nectar. The pollen and nectar are food for all the bees in the hive. When bees visit flowers, they end up spreading pollen from flower to flower. If plants aren’t pollinated, they can’t grow seeds to make new plants. And all the fruits and vegetables we eat come from plants. Without pollinators like bees, we wouldn’t have a lot of our food.

So, the bee vaccine isn’t meant to help just the bees. It’s meant to help humans, too, by protecting our food supply.

Many vaccines are given by needle, but bees are way too small for that. The bee vaccine is fed to the queen bee—the bee that lays all the eggs for the hive. Once the queen bee is protected from the disease, all the eggs she lays will be protected from the disease as well.

A new Barbie doll has been created to celebrate the life of a talented pilot named Bessie Coleman. Coleman was the first Black woman in the United States to earn a license to fly a plane.

The Bessie Coleman doll is dressed in a green aviator suit. (Early pilots were often called aviators, which means “fliers.”) Gigi Coleman is Bessie Coleman’s grandniece. She worked with Mattel, the company that makes Barbie dolls, to create the Bessie doll. 

“We hope through this doll more people will discover Bessie’s story and be inspired,” Gigi Coleman said.

You can make sculptures out of many materials, including clay, wax, and marble. But some people are really good at sculpting with snow! That includes a team of snow sculptors who took home the top prize at the 2023 World Snow Sculpting Championship in Stillwater, Minnesota.

First prize went to the House of Thune, whose team members included Dusty Thune, his sister Kelly Thune, and David Aichinger. The team is from Minnesota. They defeated 11 other teams from around the world. 

The winning sculpture is called “Journey.” It shows two people who are unhappy and tired. But the sculpture’s story isn’t totally sad. Dusty Thune says his team wanted to show that people can go through hard times and then pick themselves up and put themselves together again. 

Each team was given a giant block of snow to work with. They had 72 hours to sculpt whatever they wanted—and anyone was allowed to come and watch. The House of Thune team had tools that were made especially for sculpting snow. 

Unlike sculptures made of clay or marble, the snow sculptures won’t last long. Even though Minnesota winters are usually cold, “Journey” will eventually be gone forever. But new snow will fall—and new sculptures can be made!

What would you make out of a big block of snow?

Molly Sampson has always loved fossils, especially fossils of shark teeth. In December 2022, Molly, who is 9, spotted one of the biggest shark tooth fossils you can find. The 5-inch (13-centimeter) tooth had once belonged to a giant shark species called megalodon. Megalodons lived millions of years ago. Today, megalodons are extinct, meaning they have all died out. 

Molly discovered the megalodon tooth on a beach in Maryland. She and her older sister were wading in the Chesapeake Bay and using tools called fossil sifters. With the sifters, they were able to sift through sand and see if there were any fossils in it. The sisters hoped to find shark teeth, but they had no idea what was waiting for them. Standing in water up to her knees, Molly spotted the amazingly large tooth.

“I went closer, and in my head, I was like, ‘Oh, my, that is the biggest tooth I’ve ever seen!’” Molly told National Public Radio (NPR). “I reached in and grabbed it, and dad said I was shrieking.”

About a week later, the family took the fossil to a museum. Experts at the museum studied the fossil and said Molly was right. It was a real megalodon tooth!

Are snowflakes really as beautiful as everyone thinks? The answer is yes! We know this thanks to a man named Snowflake Bentley, who spent his life studying and taking photos of snowflakes. Now, these photos can be seen online!

Bentley, whose real first name was Wilson, was born in 1865 in Vermont, where winters are very snowy. Luckily for Bentley, he loved snow. 

When he was a teenager, Bentley started looking at snowflakes under a microscope, which is an instrument that makes small objects look bigger. Bentley was amazed when he noticed that each snowflake seemed to have its own special design. He felt as if snowflakes were beautiful art. There was just one problem—snowflakes melt, and the art is lost forever. So Bentley decided he needed to capture pictures of snowflakes before it was too late. He started by trying to draw snowflakes, but that took too long. So, instead, he began to photograph the flakes.

Over the course of his life, Bentley took more than 5,000 photos of snowflakes. He never found any two that were the same. In 1899, the Natural History Museum in London, England, bought 355 of Bentley’s photos. The photos are now online so that anyone can look at them. 

Bentley and his hobby were also celebrated in a 1998 picture book called Snowflake Bentley.

If you live in a place where it snows, see if you can catch a few snowflakes. You’ll never see the same design twice!

When Ruby Bridges was 6 years old, she was the first Black student ever to go to her school. Bridges became famous as a brave girl who helped make the country a fairer, more equal place to live. Now, she’s telling her story in a book for kids called I Am Ruby Bridges.

Bridges was born in the 1950s, at a time when many public places in the southern United States were segregated. There were separate public schools for white and Black children. But in 1960, a court ruled that schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Bridges lived, could no longer be segregated. They had to be integrated. This means that schools had to allow both white and Black students to attend. A small group of children were selected to become the first Black students at different schools in the city. Bridges was chosen to go to William Frantz Elementary School. 

Many white people were angry that the schools were being integrated. They turned their anger on Bridges. When she arrived at school, a crowd of people yelled at her and made it clear that they didn’t want her there. Bridges had to enter the school building with four federal marshals—people who were assigned to protect her. 

When Bridges got to her classroom, she saw that she was the only student there. The other students’ parents had taken them out of school. All year, it was only Bridges and her teacher, who treated Bridges with kindness and respect. The two women are still close friends today.

Bridges played an important part in the civil rights movement and Black history. Her courage helped paved the way for schools in New Orleans to become fully integrated. But what was it really like for 6-year-old Ruby to go through this experience? In I Am Ruby Bridges, Bridges describes her experience, through the eyes of a kid. 

“That [experience] shaped me into a person that is not prejudiced at all,” Bridges told the Associated Press. “And I feel like that little girl is still inside of me, and that it’s my calling to make sure kids understand that you can’t look at someone and judge them.” 

In 2011, Ruby Bridges met with U.S. President Barack Obama. Obama was the nation’s first Black president. You can see some of this meeting in the video below.

January is a big month in the world of books! Every year at the end of the month, the American Library Association (ALA) announces the winners of the biggest children’s book prizes in the world: the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott Medal. 

The Newbery Medal is given to the author of the best U.S. children’s book published the year before. It’s not easy to pick the best out of a list of terrific books. So the ALA also awards Newbery Honors. This prize goes to a small number of other books the ALA wants to recognize for excellence.

The ALA recognizes children’s book illustrators with the Caldecott Medal. This prize is given to the artist who created the best illustrations for a U.S. picture book published the year before. Caldecott Honors go to other books the ALA wants to recognize.  

How can you find these award-winning books? You can ask a teacher or librarian to help you. Newbery or Caldecott Medal winners have a round gold seal on their covers. Newbery or Caldecott Honors books have a silver seal. These seals let readers know that these books are some of the best in the world. 

Here are just a few Newbery Medal winners to check out.

Isaiah Kofie was at home in Aurora, Colorado, one day when he heard music coming from the basement. Heading downstairs, he found his 10-year-old son, Jude, playing an old, unused keyboard. 

“I was here watching the news when I heard him play something,” Isaiah Kofie told Denver7 News. “So I grabbed my phone [to take a video], went down there, and was like, ‘Dude, play that again.’”

Isaiah had been a drummer in Ghana, the country where he grew up. Unlike his dad, Jude had never played a musical instrument before. Yet he was picking out a melody perfectly. Jude is what some people call a prodigy. A prodigy is a kid who has an incredible talent.

Jude, who turned 11 in 2022, is now the lead keyboardist at the church his family attends. He also plays at weddings. He even has his own YouTube channel with thousands of followers. Jude can play everything from jazz to classical music. And he has never had a piano lesson. 

Amazingly, Jude can play music by ear. He only has to hear a melody and he can figure out how to play it.

Jude’s talents have attracted a lot of attention. A man named Bill Magnusson heard about Jude when he was watching the news one night. Magnusson tunes pianos for a living. He’s also a music fan who knows talent when he hears it. Magnusson was so amazed when he heard Jude play that he bought him a grand piano, and he’s paying for him to have private lessons. 

Check out this video, which shows Jude at the piano!