Page Type: Elementary

No one lives on the Moon, but a Swedish artist plans to put a home there anyway. Artist Mikael Genberg and a team of engineers (building experts) constructed a little red house that’s expected to land on the Moon in a few months.

“In my mind, [it was a] really poetic thought to put a red house with white corners on the surface of the Moon,” Genberg said in a video posted on the Internet. “And now it’s going to happen.”

At 4.7 inches (12 centimeters) long, 3.1 inches (8 cm) wide, and 3.9 inches (10 cm) tall, the Moonhouse is the size of a toy. But unlike a typical dollhouse, it’s made of aluminum and is designed to withstand its journey into space, says Emil Vinterhav, head of the Moonhouse technical team.

“The house structure has undergone…shock and vibration tests to ensure it can…survive intact in its new climate,” Vinterhav said in a statement. “Even just finding a durable red paint for the house is a story in itself.”

This won’t be the first trip to space for the Moonhouse. It has already been high up in trees, under water, atop the Great Wall of China, and aboard the International Space Station, which is 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

For its latest journey, the house was launched into space aboard a Japanese lunar lander in January. It’s expected to take four months to reach the Moon. Once there, the Moonhouse is there to stay.

“[The lander] should release the house, take some pictures, and leave it alone standing there for thousands and thousands and maybe millions of years,” Genberg said.

Could we one day plant trees and build wooden houses on the Moon and Mars? Scientists hope a wooden satellite called LignoSat will help them answer this question. 

Built by Japanese researchers, LignoSat was launched into space in November 2024 and entered orbit around Earth in December. The tiny satellite is scheduled to remain in orbit for a total of six months. 

LignoSat was designed to help scientists find out if wood can stand up to the harsh environment in space. (Most satellites are made of metal.) As it orbits Earth, the satellite will go from darkness to sunlight every 45 minutes and experience temperatures ranging from -148 degrees Fahrenheit (-100 degrees Celsius) to 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). 

Scientists think wood might hold up well in space. On Earth, water and oxygen cause wood to rot over time. There’s no water or oxygen in space.

If wood does prove to be a strong space material, scientists hope to be able to use more of it. Wood will come in handy when scientists build settlements on the Moon and Mars. In both of these worlds, it may be possible to construct wood buildings and even plant trees!

Wood is also better for the environment than metal because it’s easier to get rid of when it’s no longer useful. When old metal satellites fall to Earth, they produce particles that can harm the atmosphere. LignoSat’s wooden frame will burn up and produce less pollution.

“With [wood], a material we can produce by ourselves [in space], we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,” astronaut Takao Doi told Reuters. Doi, an aerospace engineer (someone who designs materials for use in space), helped design LignoSat.

Did you know that March is Women’s History Month in the United States? All through history, many women have fought for the rights of others, even at times when women themselves had fewer rights than men. Daisy Bates was one of those women.

Daisy Bates was born in Huttig, Arkansas, in 1914. She experienced racism as a child, and as she grew up she became determined to work for justice and equality. In 1941, Bates married a journalist named L.C. Bates. (A journalist is a person who writes news stories.) The couple moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and started a newspaper called the Arkansas State Press. The Arkansas State Press was dedicated to highlighting racial injustice in Arkansas.

Bates was heavily involved in the civil rights movement. In 1952, she became the president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that works for equal rights for Black Americans.

At the time, many public places in the South were segregated, meaning Black people were not allowed to be in the same places as white people. This began to change in the 1950s, thanks to the work of civil rights activists. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools had to integrate, meaning they could no longer be segregated. But many schools, including those in Little Rock, made little or no effort to integrate.

If you were to go outdoors with wet hair on a really cold day, your hair might freeze. That’s true of most mammals. But polar bears are different. Their fur doesn’t freeze, even after they’ve been diving in icy waters. In a new study, scientists found out why.

Scientists in Norway studied polar bear fur to see what kept it from freezing. At first, they thought there might be something in the structure, or makeup, of the fur that prevented it from freezing. But there wasn’t anything unusual about the way the fur looked under a microscope. The scientists did notice something else, though—the fur was very greasy. So they washed the grease out of the fur and then wet the fur and tried freezing it. Without the grease, the fur froze. 

Now that they knew the grease was responsible for the fur’s anti-freezing properties, scientists looked at the molecules that make up the grease. They found that the grease has high levels of certain chemical compounds that don’t freeze easily because ice doesn’t stick to them. Ice sticks easily to a compound called squalene, but the grease on polar bear fur does not have this compound.

Mac Barnett is a huge fan of picture books.

“Picture books are a beautiful, sophisticated, and vibrant art form,” Barnett says. “The joy of sharing picture books with kids is why I started writing children’s books in the first place.” 

Now a best-selling author of dozens of children’s books, Barnett has the perfect opportunity to share what he loves. He’s just been named the 2025–2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Barnett is the ninth author to be named ambassador. Like the authors before him, he’ll use this position to help get kids excited about books.

“It’s [an] honor to serve as ambassador. When I got the news, I was speechless, which is unusual for me,” Barnett said, after the announcement was made. “Now I feel energized to proclaim the many glories of children’s literature, with a particular focus on a unique and marvelous way of telling stories: the children’s picture book.”

As ambassador, Barnett plans to highlight the way a picture book uses illustrations to tell a story. The illustrations aren’t just beautiful. They help move the story along, as much as the words do.

It’s awards season for children’s books, and this year’s biggest winners have just been revealed.

On January 27, the American Library Association (ALA) awarded its two highest honors—the Newbery Medal for outstanding children’s literature and the Caldecott Medal for excellence in children’s picture books. The Newbery and Caldecott medals are awarded each year. The 2025 awards went to books that were published in 2024.

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly is the winner of this year’s Newbery Medal. The book, which takes place in 1999, is about 12-year-old Michael Rosario, who worries the world might be thrown into disorder when the year 2000 arrives—a common concern at the time. When Michael meets a time traveler from the future, he becomes desperate to know what will happen in the next 20 years.

The Caldecott Medal went to Chooch Helped, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz and written by Andrea Rogers. Chooch Helped is about Sissy, a kid whose 2-year-old brother, Chooch, messes up everything. Sissy becomes even more frustrated when her parents say that Chooch is only trying to help.

You may have heard tales of people traveling west across the United States in covered wagons in the 1800s. Many of the farms, towns, and cities founded by these settlers still exist today! But did you know that some of the settlers who helped populate the midwestern and western U.S. were Black Americans? Here’s a very short telling of their story.

A Law Opens Up the West

The story begins with a U.S. law called the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act said that any loyal American who was 21 or older or the head of their household could claim 160 acres of government-owned land. These settlers were required to build a house and grow crops on the land they claimed. They also had to live on the land for at least five years. If they did all of this, they could keep the land!

This law wasn’t good news for everyone. The U.S. government had taken this land from American Indians. Native peoples in much of the country were forced to move to small pieces of land called reservations so that mostly white settlers could have the rest of the land.

Black Settlers

For settlers, the law meant a chance to own their own land. This was life-changing, especially for Black Americans. In the southern U.S., most Black people were enslaved until the 1860s. In 1865, the U.S. Constitution was changed to make slavery illegal.

But while Black people were no longer enslaved, life was still very hard. Most enslaved people had no opportunity to go to school or learn many skills. It was often difficult for them to find jobs or earn enough money to get ahead. Many people who had been enslaved continued to work for the same people who had enslaved them. They had few other choices.

It’s not unusual to see animal prints in mud or snow, but ancient prints are much rarer. Some recently discovered animal tracks were created 166 million years ago, by dinosaurs.

Scientists uncovered nearly 200 dinosaur tracks in a quarry—a place where limestone is mined—in southern England. The tracks follow five different paths, suggesting that five dinosaurs were walking to five different places at around the same time. The longest path is 492 feet (150 meters) long. At one point, the paths cross. This makes scientists wonder if the dinosaurs interacted in some way.

Four of the paths were most likely created by a type of dinosaur called Cetiosaurus, an herbivore (plant eater) that was about 59 feet (18 meters) long. The Cetiosaurus tracks measure 35 inches (90 centimeters), or almost three feet, in length. The fifth path was created by a type of dinosaur called Megalosaurus, a carnivore (meat eater) that was about 30 feet (9 meters) long. The Megalosaurus tracks were only a bit smaller than those left by Cetiosaurus.

People who celebrate Christmas may face a problem when the holidays are over—what to do with the Christmas tree. Happily, a pine tree is a tasty treat for a goat!

“I was very surprised to find out that goats would want to eat a Christmas tree,” Chicago resident Jay Thomas told the Associated Press. Thomas had just donated his old tree to a farm called Urban Growers Collective. “A Christmas tree is all piney and spiney and sounds painful to me to eat! But they’re happy with it.”

Each January, many zoos and farms ask people to donate their Christmas trees. The trees help feed goats during a time of year when the grass that goats like to eat isn’t growing. For the goats, pine trees aren’t just delicious—they also help control worms that can live in the animals’ intestines and cause health problems.