Page Type: Elementary

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!

Blue whales are huge. These giants of the sea are known to reach lengths of 98 feet (about 30 meters). One blue whale can weigh about as much as 30 elephants! But are blue whales the largest animals ever? Maybe not. Scientists say that an ichthyosaur that lived about 200 million years ago might have been even bigger.

Ichthyosaurs were a group of reptiles that lived in the sea between 250 million years ago and about 65 million years ago. They were meat-eaters, so they would have hunted other animals in the sea. Although ichthyosaurs are extinct (no longer around), they’re related to today’s lizards and snakes. Scientists have found a lot of fossils of ichthyosaurs. Many of these fossils show that the animals had fins, long jawbones, and many sharp teeth. 

There were different types of ichthyosaurs. Scientists have long known that some of them were large—but they didn’t know how large they could be. Recently, scientists studied a fossil that they think was once part of an ichthyosaur. Based on the size of the fossil, they think this ichthyosaur may have been up to 115 feet (35 meters) long. That’s as long as three school buses lined up front to back! 

And it’s a lot longer than the blue whale!

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day will be observed in the United States on January 16, 2023. You may already know that Martin Luther King, Jr., was an important leader in the civil rights movement. Today, King’s daughter is continuing his work.

Bernice King is the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. The Kings taught their children what was important to them. They taught them that everyone should be treated equally and that laws should be fair. Martin Luther King, Jr., led marches and gave many speeches. He worked to change racist laws and wanted to help end poverty. The Kings believed that people could work for change in a peaceful way. 

In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. Shortly after, Coretta Scott King started the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She wanted the King Center to be a place that continued her husband’s work and promoted his beliefs. 

Today, Bernice King is the head of the King Center. The center gives people the skills they need to change unfair laws and actions. Under Bernice King’s leadership, the center is working to make the world a fairer, more equal place. 

Like her father, Bernice King wants to spread her message as far as possible. She gives many speeches. In 2022, she co-wrote a children’s book called It Starts With Me. The book is about how everyone should love and care about others.

“Now more than ever, I believe that my father would encourage [all people] to join together in love,” Bernice King wrote in The Atlantic in 2021. 

He may not be as old as Yoda from Star Wars, but Jonathan the giant tortoise has been around for a long time. In December 2022, Jonathan celebrated his 190th birthday! He’s the oldest-known land animal in the world.

Experts can’t be sure of Jonathan’s exact age. They’re guessing he was born around 1832, but his birth year may be even earlier. That’s because he was fully grown when people found him in the wild in 1882—and giant tortoises don’t stop growing until they are 40 or 50 years old!

Can you guess how many ants there are in the world? The number is almost too big to imagine! Researchers believe that there are 20 quadrillion ants. That’s 20,000,000,000,000,000.

It’s not possible to count every single ant, so researchers had to make an estimate. To come up with that giant number, they looked at information gathered from researchers who studied ants all over the world. From there, they were able to come to another amazing conclusion. If you could gather all the ants in the world onto a huge scale, they would weigh 12 million tons (11 million metric tons)!

Scientists say it’s important to study ants because the insects help to keep the planet healthy. Ants are found on every continent except Antarctica. Ants eat other insects and their eggs, keeping insect populations under control. They also eat dead insects, so they play a big part in keeping the planet clean. Ants are even important for plant growth because they turn the soil as they move through it. This allows plant roots to grow through the soil and get the nutrients they need.

So, what does it mean that there are so many ants? Scientists say it means ants are super valuable. Researchers want to keep an eye on all the world’s ants. If the ants’ numbers go down, this will be a sign that the environment has become less healthy for living things.

On December 2, 2022, Prince William of the United Kingdom awarded five people with an important prize. The Earthshot Prize isn’t for music, movies, or sports. It’s for working to save Planet Earth.  

The Earthshot Prize is given to people who are working on solutions to climate change and other environmental problems. Awards are given in five categories. Winners are chosen based on how effective or wide reaching their ideas are. This year’s winners each received 1 million pounds (about $1,200,000 in U.S. money). 

The 2022 award ceremony took place in Boston, Massachusetts. The five winners were honored for working to protect the planet in different ways, from creating less pollution to protecting crops from severe weather. There were some big stars on hand to entertain them, including musicians Billie Eilish, Chloe and Halle Bailey, and Annie Lennox. 

Prince William started the Earthshot Prize in 2020. He has often spoken about the importance of the environment. In a speech he gave in 2021, he spoke directly to young people. 

“We are going to find solutions to repair our planet,” said Prince William. “Please keep learning, keep demanding change, and don’t give up hope. We will rise to these challenges.”

November 15, 2022, was a big day for the entire planet. On that day, the world population reached eight billion!

How big is eight billion? If you write it out, it looks like this: 8,000,000,000. That’s a lot of people! Experts say the world population has grown by one billion in just the past 12 years. 

What’s causing the population to grow? Experts say people are living longer than ever before. That’s because more people have clean drinking water and other resources to help them stay healthy. Plus, many diseases have become easier to treat. Overall, the world population is healthier than ever. 

Another thing that can cause the population to grow is the birth of many babies. But experts say families have fewer children than they used to. So the birth rate (the number of babies born each year) is slower than it once was. The United Nations (UN) believes that the population will continue to grow until about the year 2080, when there will be a little more than 10 billion people in the world. 

The UN says it’s important for everyone around the world to help make sure that the planet is healthy, safe, and peaceful. That way, all eight billion people can live happy, healthy lives.

Alejandro Buxton is pretty busy. Like any 12-year-old, he goes to school every day. Alejandro is also an entrepreneur (a person who starts a business). Before and after school, he runs his company, Smell of Love Candles. 

Alejandro began making candles to help his mom. She likes to light candles, but the scents were giving her headaches. Alejandro learned which ingredients might be causing those headaches, and he made candles with different ingredients. His mom felt so much better that Alejandro decided to start a candle business. Today, Smell of Love Candles makes candles with 26 different scents. They’re available online and at a kiosk (a stand) located in a mall near Alejandro’s home in Virginia. Alejandro’s mom helps him with the business side of things, and his younger sister, Valentina, assists with packing up candle orders.