 The view from the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Credit: Courtesy Library of Congress On August 28, 1963, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and looked out at a sea of faces reaching as far as the eye could see. More than 200,000 people had gathered there to take part in one of the largest protest rallies in United States history: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Standing there that day, Dr. King delivered a stirring speech: his “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s a speech that has been voted the best political speech given in the United States during the 20th century, according to a group of 137 experts on speechmaking who were asked to pick the century’s 100 top speeches. In this speech, Dr. King called for an end to segregation and discrimination, which had led to so many people being treated unfairly just because of the color of their skin. He spoke of his dream that one day the nation would live up to the idea set forth in its Declaration of Independence—that “all men are created equal.” He spoke also of his dream that one day black children and white children would treat each other as sisters and brothers. Today, visitors to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can stand on the very spot where Dr. King stood more than fifty years ago to deliver his famous speech. The location is marked by these words that have been chiseled into a stone landing about eighteen steps down from the top: I HAVE A DREAM MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM AUGUST 28, 1963 Carving these words into the stone step came about because of a tourist from Kentucky who visited the Lincoln Memorial in 1997 and wondered why there wasn’t a sign to let people know where Dr. King had stood. This visitor wrote to his representative in Congress, who agreed that marking the spot was a good idea and had Congress passed a law to allow that to happen. To figure out exactly where Dr. King stood, officials at the National Park Service, which manages the Lincoln Memorial, carefully studied photos and video that had been taken during the speech. Then, in 2003, they arranged for a local stone cutter to carve the words into the step where they decided Dr. King had stood. You have to look closely to find those words in the stone. They’re not highlighted in a bright color. But when you find them, you can stand up on that step and look out as Dr. King did, and try to imagine how he must have felt as he shared his hopes and dreams for his country with that huge crowd.. Click here to read Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” Click here for article Sources.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and others marching toward the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Credit: Courtesy Library of Congress  These words carved into a step at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., mark the spot where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Credit: Courtesy National Park Service  Amy Nathan is the author of Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round into the Civil Rights Movement, which tells of another civil rights milestone that took place on August 28, 1963—the day Dr. King gave his famous speech. That same day, about forty miles away from the Lincoln Memorial, a once-segregated amusement park at last dropped segregation, and a very young girl took a very special ride on a merry-go-round. MLA 8 Citation Nathan, Amy. "Standing with Doctor King." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 12 01 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ Standing-With-Doctor-King. 
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Imagine Earth as a button. I don’t mean you’re going to sew it onto your shirt. But imagine the planet Earth shrunk to the size of a button. (Of course Earth is not flat like a button but we’re giving our shrunken Earth the same diameter as a shirt button.) Go ahead and draw a circle around a shirt button. Call it “Earth.” Suppose you wanted to draw Jupiter, the largest planet, at the same scale as this micro-Earth. That means you’re going to shrink it to the same fraction of its original size as our button-Earth. What size would little Jupiter be? One way to find out would be to calculate how many times bigger the real Jupiter is than the real Earth. Earth’s diameter is about 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers). Jupiter’s is about 88,000 miles (143,000 km). Divide the size of Jupiter by the size of Earth to see that Jupiter is about 11 times bigger. So, since Jupiter’s diameter is 11 times that of Earth’s, put 11 buttons in a line to show the diameter of Jupiter. Then draw the circle that represents Jupiter. If you don’t have 11 buttons, just look at the picture. Did you think the Earth was a big place? Look at it compared with Jupiter! But what about the sun? The sun’s diameter is about 865,000 miles (1,400,000 km). That means it’s almost 10 times bigger than Jupiter. Can you find a way to draw a circle 10 times the size of our Jupiter? We’ve drawn part of it for you, on the same scale as our button-sized Earth. On the picture, it’s labeled “our arc.” (An arc is part of a circle.) Looking at the arc, you can imagine the rest of the circle and compare the sun to Jupiter and Earth. A minute ago, you thought Jupiter was big. Now it looks shrimpy compared to the sun! But is the sun really gigantic? Do some research to find out the size of a red giant star like the strangely named Betelguese (pronounced “beetle-juice.”) Figure out what it looks like compared to our sun, which is a medium-sized star. You may be amazed at the difference. And you thought the sun was big! Is anything truly big? Is anything truly small? Or does that depend on what it’s being compared to?  If the Earth were the size of a button, Jupiter’s diameter would equal eleven buttons because the diameter of Jupiter is eleven times that of Earth. Both images are by Marissa Moss, the illustrator of David M Schwartz's book, G is for Googol.  Extend “our arc” to complete the circle and you’ll see what the sun would look like if the Earth were the size of a button. (An arc is part of a circle.)  G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book is a wonder-filled romp through the world of mathematics. For more information, click here. David Schwartz is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. MLA Citation Schwartz, David M. "If the Earth Were a Button." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 16 Jan. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ If-the-Earth-Were-a-Button. 
Henry Ford is famous for founding the Ford Motor Company in 1903. He built the Model T and changed America from a horse-and-buggy country to a nation of paved roads and honking cars. Yet most people don’t realize that Henry also transformed American agriculture with his work with soybeans. During the Great Depression of the 1930s many farmers lost their farms or left crops to rot because they cost too much to harvest. Henry thought this was a waste, so he began to look for ways that common crops could be used in industry. He built a laboratory at Greenfield Village, and studied the chemical makeup of every fruit, grain and vegetable. After two years, Henry found the: the soybean! It was the perfect crop to use in his factories because it was packed with oil and protein. The oil made a paint that was glossier, less expensive, and dried to a harder finish than other coatings. By 1934, every new Ford boasted a coat of soybean paint. The soy protein, mixed with a chemical resin, created a sturdy plastic. Soon cars had soybean plastic gearshift knobs, light switches and horn buttons. Ford claimed that every car contained a bushel of soybeans. But Henry wanted a car that was all soybeans. To do this he had to make large plastic panels, which took longer to perfect. The first panels cracked. But eventually Henry had a plastic trunk lid attached to his car so he could show people how sturdy it was. He even hit it with an ax and didn’t make a dent. Henry affixed fourteen plastic panels to a steel frame, and showed off his new car on August 13, 1941. Unfortunately the car was never manufactured. Four months later America entered World War II. The soybean plastic car rolled into storage, its steel frame recycled in the war effort. Henry died shortly after the war, and no one continued his work on the plastic car. But his soybean research did spark a movement to use soy in manufacturing, which made soybeans the second largest crop grown in America. Furniture, flooring, candy, crayons, and all kinds of food contain soy. And even though we don’t drive soybean plastic cars yet, there are still plenty of beans in every Ford. All their seats are stuffed with soybean plastic foam. See Henry’s car here.  Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American captain of industry and a business magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. By Hartsook, photographer via Wikimedia Commons  The world's first car made of what was called agricultral plastic is shown in February 1942. The plastic was a strong material combining soy beans, wheat and corn. Although the car never caught on, it was lighter and therefore more fuel efficient than the standard metal body. Wikimedia Commons  Despite the practical benefits of a car made out of food products (fuel efficiency and the conservation of steel that was scarce during World War II), the idea was the source of a lot of good-natured humor. From the Collections of The Henry Ford  Peggy Thomas is the author of such award-winning titles as Farmer George Plants a Nation, and For the Birds, the life of Roger Tory Peterson. Her newest book is Full of Beans: The Story of How Henry Ford Grew a Car, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Vicki Cobb reviewed it. For more information about Peggy, check out her website: www.peggythomaswrites.com 
 At left in the back is a fresh spinach leaf that has been treated with trehalose, frozen and defrosted.. The droopy one has been frozen and defrosted without trehalose. It's what is giving us hope that we may soon be able to defrost a salad. When it comes to preserving a fresh taste in food to be eaten at some later time, nothing beats freezing it. That was the discovery made by Clarence Birdseye in 1924. He had been working in northern Canada and noticed that fish caught by the native Canadian Inuits froze almost instantly in the frigid winter air. It was just as delicious when cooked and eaten months later as it was on the day it was fresh. Birdseye figured that if food was frozen quickly at very cold temperatures, large ice crystals couldn’t form to damage the food and make it mushy. His flash-freezing process made him very rich. The problem isn’t so much the freezing of food as what happens when it’s defrosted. See for yourself. Stick a stalk of celery in your freezer. The next day defrost it. Want to eat it? Compare it to a fresh unfrozen stalk. The perky structure of fresh celery is destroyed by ice. Water has the very unusual property of expanding and taking up more space when it changes into ice than when in a liquid state. That’s why ice cubes float and frozen unopened soda cans bulge. Expanding ice crystals destroy the cell walls of plants. Quickly freezing fresh food keeps the ice crystals smaller than slower freezing, but they are still large enough to destroy the cell walls of delicate vegetables like spinach or lettuce. But if you defrost frozen spinach from the supermarket it is beyond limp. So a salad you can defrost and serve as if it were fresh has seemed like an impossible dream. Federico Gomez, a Swedish scientist, is working to change this. Like Birdseye he took a close look at nature, specifically at plants that stay alive in very cold climates. He discovered that they contain a sugar called trehalose (tree-HAL-ose) that works like a natural antifreeze. Could he find a way to get trehalose into spinach leaves? If so, would the trehalose protect the structure of the spinach and keep it crisp after defrosting? This picture shows the results. The leaf on the left was treated with trehalose. The one on the right was untreated. He froze and defrosted both. The treated leaf is as crisp as if it had never been frozen! Just because there is success in a lab doesn’t mean a defrosted salad will show up on your dinner plate any time soon. But these results are enough to keep the research going. Move over Clarence Birdseye!
 Cobb has revised her classic book, Science Experiments You Can Eat. While doing her research, she came across this work of Frederico Gomez. She bought trehalose on line and soaked some slices of parsnip and zucchini in a trehalose solution, hoping that the sugar would be absorbed by the plant cells. But when she froze them and defrosted them, it didn't work. Dr. Gomez got the sugar inside the plant cells by removing some water from between the cells in a vacuum chamber, soaking the leaves in a trehalose solution (which moved the sugar into the spaces outside the cells) and then exposing the leaves with a mild electric shock to get the sugar through the cell walls. Vicki didn't have the equipment to do all this but she tried anyway. The book was published in 2016. Vicki Cobb is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. MLA 8 Citation Cobb, Vicki. "Why You Can't Defrost a Salad...Yet." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 11 01 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ Why-You-Can't-Defrost-a-Salad-Yet. 
History happens everywhere—even your own backyard. Have you ever heard of Carrie Chapman Catt? From 1919-1928 Carrie lived in a house near mine called Juniper Ledge. She was a suffragist, one of many who fought for women’s right to vote. Without her, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the vote, might never have been approved. Born in 1859 and raised in Iowa, Carrie got an early lesson in politics when she asked why her mother wasn’t voting in the 1872 presidential election. Everyone laughed, but not Carrie. She thought it unfair that women couldn’t vote—and wasn’t afraid to say so. In college Carrie joined a literary society. Women were forbidden from speaking during meetings. After Carrie spoke at a debate, the rules were changed to allow women’s participation. A woman of many “firsts,” Carrie worked as a teacher after graduation and became one of the first female school superintendents in the country. After marrying she moved to San Francisco. When her husband died she supported herself by working as that city’s first female newspaper reporter. Back in Iowa, Carrie joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, part of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Susan B. Anthony. Carrie’s rousing speeches brought her national attention. When Susan retired, Carrie became NAWSA’s president, leading suffrage campaigns all over the country and supervising a million volunteers. Carrie’s “Winning Plan” for the vote worked on both state and federal levels. She supported President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts in World War I, even though she was a peace activist. She knew if Wilson backed women’s suffrage, Congress would vote for it. And that’s exactly what happened. Carrie’s activism didn’t stop at the U.S. border. As founder and president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, she advocated for democracy and women’s rights on four continents. She also founded the League of Women Voters to educate women on political issues, worked for world peace, and campaigned against child labor and Hitler’s treatment of Jews. When the Nineteenth Amendment was approved in 1920, Carrie was living at Juniper Ledge. There she nailed plaques to trees in honor of women who fought for the vote. Juniper Ledge still stands, right down the street from the park where today kids play ball. Who knows what other people, places and stories from the past they may find in the neighborhood?
 This U.S. postage stamp was issued July 19, 1948 to commemorate the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention in the United States.  The Carrie Chapman Catt House , also known as Juniper Ledge, is located in the town of New Castle, New York. Built in the early 20th century, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
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The NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Committee is pleased to inform you that 30 People Who Changed the World has been selected for Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2018, a cooperative project of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) & the Children’s Book Council Categories
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