Good morning and welcome to a special kid news podcast. I'm Kim and while our team is taking some time off for the holidays

We've pulled some of the best stories from this year. This week we have the first half of 2021

All our stories from January through June and we begin with the youngest inaugural poet in U.S.

History igniting the nation with a fiery performance. On January 20th,

22-year-old Amanda Gorman shared the stage with former presidents and the likes of Lady Gaga and J.Lo

to read her original poem The Hill We Climb. Amanda was raised by a single mother who taught middle school

and, like Joe Biden, has a speech impediment. She called herself a weird child who often

wrote in her journal and on the playground. It paid off. At 16 she was named the first youth

poet laureate of Los Angeles and three years later the country's first national youth poet laureate

wallet Harvard. She's appeared on MTV written a tribute to black athletes for Nike and has a

two-book deal with Viking children's books. As for what comes next, Amanda hopes to be back on that

stage as president herself in 2036. At least one college in the U.S. took its fight against the

coronavirus to the dogs. In order to make sure its campus was safe for students last spring, Florida

International University set four highly trained pooches loose to sniff out COVID. The K-9 team

consisted of one Belgian Malinois, a Dutch Shepherd and two small rescues. Their job was to sweep

classrooms before anyone entered. If the dog sat, it meant further cleaning was needed. The Miami

Heat basketball team also enlisted the help of man's best friend, but its pups were charged with

smelling people instead of surfaces, and only ticket holders who made it pass phyto were allowed

inside. According to Purina, a dog sense of smell can be anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times better

than a human's, depending on the breed. Have you ever wondered how far a hit golf ball would travel

in the low gravity of the moon? The first American in space did and convinced his bosses at NASA to

let him give it a try. Alan Shepard's form was limited by his 1971 space suit, and it took two one

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