American
Booker T. Washington's First School
A boy born into slavery who wanted to read so badly he taught himself his letters, then walked and worked his way to a schoolhouse no one had saved a place for him in.
This Week · Hard Work
Hard Work: can hard work change where you end up?
For littler ones: If you work really, really hard, can it take you someplace new?
This week we're wondering about hard work — not the easy kind, but the kind that asks something of you day after day. Can it change where you end up? Can the place you start be different from the place you finish? It's a good one to turn over in the car or at the table, because the three people in this week's stories all started with almost nothing.
This week's stories
American
Young Abraham Lincoln and the Books by Firelight
A poor frontier boy who owned almost no books of his own, so he borrowed every one he could and read them by the light of the fire after the day's work was done.
American
Audie Murphy, the Farm Boy Who Went to War
A barefoot Texas sharecropper's son, one of many children with little to eat, who grew up to become a soldier far from the cotton fields he started in.
Talk about it
- Each of these three started with almost nothing and ended up somewhere far away from where they began. What do you think changed it — was it the hard work, or something else too?
- Is there something you've worked really hard at? Did the working change how you felt about it, or where it took you?
- Booker wanted to read, Abraham read by firelight, Audie left the farm. What's something you'd be willing to work that hard for?
A new question every week.
Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.
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