TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, a new playlist is available: TED for kids.

Not at all TED Talks are appropriate for elementary and middle schooers. But these 9 talks — filled with information presented in fun ways — is perfect for curious kids. David Gallo takes you into the world under water, Arthur Benjamin performs mathematical mental feats, LXD dancers bend in truly weird ways.

Watch the “TED for kids” playlist »

In today’s talk, given at TEDxHampshireCollege, Krosoczka shares the story of how he became a children’s book author and illustrator. It isn’t a story full of rainbows and kittens — instead it stars a mom battling heroine addiction and the grandparents who raised him. But there is a guest star — children’s book author Jack Gantos, of Rotten Ralph fame, who visited Krosoczka’s classroom in the third grade. While there, Gantos strolled by Krosoczka’s desk and noticed the child drawing his classic character. “Nice cat,” he said.

“They were two words that made a colossal difference in my life,” says Krosoczka.

Krosoczka wrote his first children’s book, The Owl Who Thought He Was The Best Flyer, that same year — and it was followed by many more. The characters Krosoczka created became his friends.

Today, Krosoczka has published 10 assorted picture books, eight Lunch Lady graphic novels and the upcoming chapter book, Platypus Police Squad. And in today’s charming talk, Krosoczka shares the moments that encouraged him along the way, as well the many teachers who inspired him. To hear more, watch this talk. And below, we asked Krosoczka to tell us 10 new children’s books that he thinks are bound to become classics. It’s a task Krosoczka took on with gusto while, of course, snapping a series of images of his two daughters to go with it.

Writes Krosoczka…

When my wife Gina and I were setting up the nursery for our first child, we realized that it would be as important to stock the room with books as it would be to stock it with diapers. We have two daughters now, and we began reading to both of them when they were just days old. Gina and I keep books in every room of our house, and at the kids’ level so they can grab them at their leisure. We also have a tradition wherein our kids select different books to sleep with every night.

At the very beginning, although our then babies had no idea what was transpiring in each book, they were, more importantly, being introduced to the concept of reading. As their minds grew, so did their ability to grasp more complex story lines, and we were introduced to some wonderful characters. Some were, of course, characters Gina and I knew from our own childhoods—Strega Nona, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Cat in the Hat, Nicholas the bunny. But many were new fictional friends from books that have recently been published.

As an author/illustrator of children’s books myself, I feel so fortunate to be working in such a rich era of creativity. My peers are publishing books that will no doubt entertain children for generations to come. Through the lens of the Krosoczka family, here is our list of books that star the top 10 contemporary characters (in no particular order) that we believe will become classic characters.

Hip And Hop, Don’t Stop!
By Jef Czekaj

Hip is a turtle who raps slooooowly. Hop is a rabbit who raps quickly.  It’s an incredibly playful read, especially since Hip’s raps are printed in red and Hop’s are printed in green, so you can try your hand at rapping at the correct tempo. Czekaj’s book is like 8-Mile meets The Tortoise and the Hare. Fans of both old skool and current hip-hop will love this book.

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!
By Grace Lin

In this early reader, Lin’s stories are broken down into tiny chapters. This book has been especially helpful, as it’s hooked our oldest daughter on dumplings, which the twin girls make in the book. We’ve literally read it at the dinner table. Our dog-eared copy is currently being held together by tape, it’s been read so often.

Otis
By Loren Long

In 2009, Otis the tractor putt-puff-puttedy chuffed his way into our hearts. Long’s Otis books feel like they’ve been around for decades, yet the stories are not at all antiquated, much like the lovable tractor himself! These books will charm the heck out of you without leaving any trace of a saccharine taste in your mouth.

You Will Be My Friend!
By Peter Brown

Lucy the bear will make your kids laugh out loud in her failed attempts to make new friends. The exclamation point in the title says it all—she’s very aggressive. You Will Be My Friend! is a follow-up to Brown’s Children Make Terrible Pets, which rates equally high on the laugh-out-loud Richter scale.

The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone
By Timothy Basil Ering

If there is hope for Cementland, Frog Belly Rat Bone is it. When a boy discovers a treasure, he’s dismayed that it’s nothing but a grey speck.  He is instructed to put it into the ground and wait. He does so, and then creates Frog Belly, complete with oversized tighty-whities, to protect his treasure. SPOILER ALERT: A magnificent garden grows. Ering’s paintings are as suitable for museum walls as they are for the pages of a picture book.

Babymouse graphic novel series
By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

The Holm siblings created a spirited, cupcake-loving, put-upon everymouse, and in doing so spearheaded a contemporary movement for kids’ comics. A typical evening will find me telling my oldest daughter that we are only going to read the first few pages of a Babymouse book — but then we get into it and I can’t resist reading all 96 pages.

Bake Sale
By Sara Varon

We have read this graphic novel no less than 40 times. That is no exaggeration. And it’s no small feat—this book clocks in at 160 pages. It’s become like a security blanket for our oldest daughter. Cupcake has a successful bakery and he’s in a band with his friends, but he’s in a baking rut. And his best friend is Eggplant. This book is simply awesome.

Skippyjon Jones
By Judy Schachner

A Siamese cat thinks he’s a Chihuahua. It is a muy fantastico adventure with dashes of Español. The language is energetic and it is absurdity perfected. Skippito makes our hearts skip a beat-o.

Hooray for Fish!
By Lucy Cousins

Little Fish’s adventure swimming through the sea is a short and simple tale leading to the one he loves the best—Mommy Fish. The language is playful and the colors are bold. It’s a perfect board book for babies and we’ve read it countless times.

Cat the Cat, Who Is That?
By Mo Willems

Mo Willems’s Pigeon and Knuffle Bunny books have been around for just under a decade, but they’ve already reached “classic” status. However, in our home, it’s his Cat the Cat series that stands as iconic. The books are short and have predictable text that is perfect for emerging readers. But this is a Mo Willems book, so predictability is eventually turned on its head with hilarious results. The Cat the Cat books are also perfect for the “one-more-book syndrome” of stalling bedtime. You can satisfy that need with a super-quick read that won’t leave your kid feeling swindled.

I could go on and on, but I was asked to list just ten. And yes, we do read my books from time to time as well. My oldest daughter, though—a teenager trapped in a preschooler’s body—often rebels against them. “What is this book called?” I asked my then three-year-old as I held up one of my books. “Nothing Never Happens,” she replied, without missing a beat. Her defiant streak aside, she has gone so far as to hand sell “daddy’s books” to strangers at bookstores. I’m told that people have most enjoyed Baghead, Punk Farm, and the Lunch Lady books. As I now truly know as a parent, it is a remarkable honor to be welcomed into the imaginations of young people.

Oh, and our pug — Ralph Macchio — is very supportive of my work.

Want more TED Talks linked to children’s books? PlayingByTheBook.net has created this awesome playlist for you.

Pause for a moment and imagine the grand, confusing and ultimately exhilarating drama that is the sweep of your life. Think you can summarize it into a half-dozen carefully crafted words? Larry Smith thinks you can, and created the popular ‘Six-Word Memoir‘ project, that challenges contributors to make us pause, reflect and even laugh. He has just published his latest edition as a TED Book, and added a special twist: artwork.

Smith put out the call for students — ranging from grade school to graduate school — to contribute illustrated Six-Word Memoirs. The result is the evocative and often moving Things Don’t Have To Be Complicated: Illustrated Six-Word Memoirs By Students Making Sense of the World. Today, the Washington Post features a slideshow of just a few of the mini-memoirs and images from the book. So below, we asked Larry Smith all about how Six-Word Memoirs came to be.

How did the idea for Six-Word emoirs come about?

There’s a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. He wrote: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I was inspired by that. Others had played with the idea of the six-word story form before, but I and my storytelling community, SMITH Magazine, re-imagined it. So in November 2006, we partnered with a little-known company called Twitter for what was then supposed to be a one-month contest to win an iPod. The idea is as simple as it sounds: tell the story of your life in exactly six words. Those six words can be an attempt to sum up your whole life. Think of it as the title of your autobiography or epitaph on your tombstone. Chef Mario Batali certainly did when he wrote, “Brought it to a boil often.” Others try to capture one aspect of their life such as, “According to Facebook we broke up” or “Mom’s Alzheimer’s: she forgets, I remember.” At its core, Six-Word Memoir projects takes a basic human need—self-expression—and makes it accessible, easy and often quite addictive.

This is the first illustrated memoir you’ve done. Why add the art?

As with most of what happens in a passionate community, I took the lead of the people in it. Soon after the Six-Word Memoir project took off I began hearing from teachers who were adapting Six-Word Memoirs in their classroom, from grade schools in the Bronx to Yale Law School. It was used in English and art classes alike. One grade-school teacher in New Jersey had her students create six-word “memory boxes.” At Parsons School of Design, illustrated Six-Word Memoirs are a regular assignment. Whether a Six-Word Memoir takes the form of just words, or words and images, video, or 3-D collage, the constraint fuels rather than inhibits creativity. So when TED approached me and asked, ‘What’s the Six-Word Memoir book you’re most jazzed to do?,’ it was an easy answer: a book that’s a celebration of the artful works of students and, I hope, an even more effective catalyst for educators everywhere. So we put out a call for submissions.

How many submissions did you get? 

We had around 2,000 submissions, often from entire classrooms.

How many did you choose for the book?

Between the 60 individual memoirs you see in the book, and the classroom slideshows (in which we feature all the work the teachers sent in) we have fewer than 200 in the book. There’s one part I don’t like about my job: telling people—of any age—that they haven’t been chosen for the book. The end result isn’t necessary “the best” but a selection that I hope offers a wide range of ages, themes, ideas and forms of self-expression. We’ll be featuring many more memoirs not found in the book at smithmag.net/school, where teachers can also download our free teachers’ guides.

What surprised you about the responses of the students?

I was surprised by the depth of feeling and the angst and the life lessons that they may not have even realized they were sharing. I mean, does the little girl who wrote the memoir that said “Tried surfing on a calm day” even know she’s a Zen master? Now I absolutely expect brilliance and have seen it first hand at school across the country and every day on the site. I was a little surprised by how good some of the artwork was, but I probably shouldn’t have been. And I also didn’t expect to get so many impassioned notes from teachers lobbying for their students’ work to make it into the book.

Childhood is a confusing time. What major themes did you see?

One theme that came through clearly is about actively taking life into your own hands—memoirs like “This time Cinderella demanded it back” and “Break the rules now and then.” There are unsurprisingly a number of memoirs on technology, but with more of a melancholy vibe than I had expected: “Life is better with headphones on,” “Feeling small in a mechanical world,” and “Honey, your dinner is getting cold,” where you see a teen girl surrounded by gadgets and looking pretty lost. And while many of the memoirists haven’t been on earth too long, they’re wise beyond their years and ready to dole out life lessons. The beautifully illustrated, “There’s no such things as secrets,” is as true as it gets in 2013.

Any favorites or memoirs that have particularly touched you?

The whole Six-Word Memoir project is oddly intense. Think about it: people have decided to share a little piece of themselves with strangers. If they’re lucky they’ll end up in a book so many strangers can peer into their lives. When the submissions are coming from students—most teens or pre-teen—and they’ve worked hard to create an illustration, it’s impossible not to be moved by so much of what comes in. One that really hit me is, “They said to follow my dreams.” In her illustration you see an empty bed and a trail of those six words leading out a window and into the world. It feels like the beginning of a Maurice Sendak story. Another is called, “Going back to the happy days,” and we see a girl playing hopscotch; the author is a junior in high school and already nostalgic for a simpler time. And then there’s kind of a goofy one that just brings a smile to my face every time I look at it. It’s by a fourth grader whose Six-Word Memoir is, “Bears are my number one fear.” Next to a drawing of this scared kid you see a big bear with the words, “Humans are my number fear.” It reminds me that everything is really a matter of perspective.

How can readers contribute to future Six-Word Memoir projects?

That’s easy. Go to SmithMag.net/sixwords or SmithTeens.com and share as many Six-Word Memoirs are you like. Some people share just one, others thousands. The Six-Word Memoir project is very much an example of the Network Effect: we get better with each new person who gets the six-word bug.

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Things Don’t Have To Be Complicated is part of the TED Books series. It available for the Kindle and through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone.

“The birds and the bees” and “the facts of life.” These are the terms adults have come up with when it comes to talking to kids about sex. At TED2012, writer John Bohannon showed dismay at the fact that adults don’t feel comfortable talking to kids about sex, or drugs for that matter, without resorting to scare tactics. In an acrobatic performance — choreographed by Carl Flink, danced by Black Label Movement and scored by celloists Jelloslave — the talk calls for adults to address about these difficult subjects in the same way they would have wanted to hear about them when they were teens.

On Monday, December 17, Bohannon and Flink sat down for a live Q&A with the TED Conversations community, asking everyone to share what they remember of the sex talk they got as a teen. Read the full discussion — and see some of the most interesting interactions below.

Jordan Reeves stated:

I’m gay, but my parents talked to me about how sex works between a man and a woman. I wonder if any of you parents will talk to your kids about heterosexual AND homosexual relations. I mean, many of these kids already have preferences, but for those that do not, I think it’s important to inform them about sex in the most general terms (between two people that are in love or two people that are attracted to each other — not just between a man and a woman). Does that make sense?

John Bohannon responded:

My sense is that society has a long way to go before any but the most liberated heterosexual parents will talk to their kids about homosexuality. But I hope that will change fast.

And Carl Flink chimed in:

Fantastic question, Jordan. This is something that we have already had multiple conversations about in our household. The various debates around so-called “Marriage Amendments” prompted us to have talks with our daughters about what marriage is and how we as parents think about it. It was so interesting to hear from my 10-year-old before we ever said anything to them about this, “Dad, I don’t understand why I can’t marry anyone that I love and want to be with.” Wow, from the mouths of babes.

Shobit Puri wrote: 

I remember: my father took me to a separate room and asked me some questions before he actually explained me everything literally. I remember few of them. The first question was: did you ever feel something when you woke up in the morning? It was followed by another one: he asked me to try and remember if I saw any beautiful classmates of mine in my dreams?

The conversation was pretty much direct. I really appreciated that. I am proud that it happened and I came to know everything from my father, instead of friends telling different stories.

I think, being a doctor, it was easier for him and he was comfortable talking to me about it. I agree that normally it’s rare.

To which Carl Flink responded:

Thanks for sharing this Shobhit.

I know it’s not on the topic of sex, but I want to also say that John Bohannon is a fearless TED Speaker. How many TED Speakers are there who would be willing to do their entire TALK while being moved upside down, laying on people’s heads, etc. He’s a brave man!

Carl Flink stated:

Something that occurs to me as we have this conversation is that there are many facets to this conversation to consider. There is learning about how we reproduce, there is learning about how our particular reproduction can be pleasurable and there is talking about the enormous spectrum of sexuality that is happening with no goal of reproduction. These are all things to consider talking about with our children and have differing layers of discomfort for us as parents and educators.

To which Lauren Baker responded:

I think that’s one more reason why it shouldn’t be one “talk” but rather be an open topic to talk about as more questions come up.

By Daniel Colón-Ramos

I could not have designed a better experiment if I had tried.

I am a neuroscientist and I am the father of two-year old triplets—two identical and one fraternal. As a professor at Yale University, I spend most of my time designing experiments, researching or teaching about the brain and the nervous system. The rest of my time I spend surrounded by my three daughters. To understand the dynamics in my household, think terrible-two’s, and then cube it.

In the quiet sanctity of my lab, we study how the nervous system forms during development. In all animals, from humans to the tiny worms that we use for our experiments, neurons connect to each other and form circuits that underlie behaviors. Genes (made of DNA) underpin many aspects of development — from how our brain forms to the color of our eyes.

James Watson: How we discovered DNAMy identical twin daughters look identical because they share all of their DNA; they are essentially clones of each other. They teethed exactly the same day, and their funky hairstyle is not the result of a visit to a stylist, but of genetics. Their personalities, however, are not identical. Not even close. The twin’s personalities, which share 100% of their DNA, are curiously more similar to their fraternal sister than to each other.

That certainly came as a surprise to me. After all, argue all you want about nurture, but behaviors do have genetic underpinnings in the animal kingdom. Take reptiles; soon after hatching from its egg, a baby crocodile can hunt dragonflies with the same dexterity that its parents can hunt antelopes. Who taught the baby crocodile to hunt? Genes.

I reflected about this a lot as I held my newborn daughters in the nursery room of the hospital. Human brains, at birth, do not appear nearly as impressive as a reptilian brain. For crying out loud, the tiny nematodes we use in the lab for our experiments can move around better at birth than a human baby! Newborns appear as blank slates. Are we really a “tabula rasa”? What are the roles of nature (genes) and nurture (our environment) in the development of our brains, in making us human?

Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?My epiphany came with the first visit to the pediatrician. She closely monitored our daughters as they met, in unison, one developmental milestone after the other. As a neuroscientist, I knew what this timely emergence of complex behaviors meant: it is a hallmark of pre-programmed brains. But our pre-programmed brains are not for hunting dragonflies. The evolutionary pressures that have shaped our brains are different from those that have shaped the brains of swamp-bound reptiles.

We are born into complex societies and quickly have to learn to negotiate our place within them. My three kids, the ones playing with my iPhone, are the same species as my ancestors, who 40,000 years ago were figuring out how to sharpen a rock and fit it into a spear. The Homo sapiens brain is wired in a very particular way: to allow us to connect to other human brains.

Our home is testament — a cross between the Tower of Babel and a Univisión soap opera. It is filled with sound, from the tonal Chinese my wife has taught the triplets, to the slurred Puerto Rican Spanish they have learned from me. During the past two years I have witnessed how each of my daughters have masterfully decoded the complex rules of language and social interactions, in three very different and overlapping cultural contexts, and simultaneously. They confidently navigate between languages in a way that sometimes neither my wife nor I can follow. Chatty conversation and festive giggles are only one disagreement away from despair and temper tantrums over a train-set, a Crayola or a dinosaur shirt. But most melt-downs end with hugs, sometimes all three at the same time, as they can’t wait to make up.

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies My daughters’ desire to connect is not just cute, it’s a matter of survival. So important is our need to connect to other human brains that extreme cases of child neglect have resulted in developmental problems not unlike those seen for mental retardation. These extreme cases tell us something profound about the brain. It tells us that even in cases in which normal genetics prime the brain to connect to other brains, the absence of human input cripples brain development. Our brains need other brains to develop properly.

These seemingly delirious thoughts of a sleep-deprived scientist are neither new nor original ideas. Today it is broadly accepted that trying to separate nature from nurture is as asinine as trying to debate if a cake is made out of milk or flour. But this is important beyond a mere academic debate. In science, extreme cases are used to understand concepts.  If no human contact during critical developmental periods can cripple brain development, what are the consequences of reduced stimulation due to a defective and underfunded educational system? The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world — what are the consequences of growing up in a prison?  We are social and co-dependent animals — what are the hidden costs to our society when we ignore the “nurture” part of the human development equation?

The human brain has over 100 billion neurons — there are more neurons in a single human brain than stars in the Milky Way. When a parent stares at the lost, unfocused gaze of a newborn child, they are literarily staring at a constellation of possibilities, at a brain primed through evolution to connect to other brains, to devour information, to adapt and to reach its potential. In truth, I’m highly trained, but not that special; we are all born scientists, and our brains are molded by our favorite subjects of study, other humans. And I have the perfect experiment to prove that — my brain, which has been transformed by my daughters.

Daniel Colón-Ramos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and the Program in Cellular Neuroscience at the Yale school of Medicine, and is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. Watch his talk from TEDxSanJuan, “Lost in Translation: The value of basic research in medicine,” below.

Today’s TED Talk is brought to you by 10-, 14-, and 15-year-old brothers known as the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. Not your typical bluegrassers, these guys delivered rollicking good tunes at the New York stop of the TED Talent Search.

Inspired by these young brothers and the recent TEDx blog post called “9 incredible musical performances by kids,” we have compiled a list of some of our favorite kids, teens and young adults on TED.com sharing beautiful melodies from around the world.

Sirena Huang: An 11-year-old’s magical violin
Sirena Huang began playing violin at age 4 and by age 9 she was a professional violinist for the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. At TED2006, she blew us away with her amazing gift.

Kenyan Boys Choir: Chant, sing, play!
TED@Nairobi delivered a vast diversity of talent – but one act in particular stood out: the Kenyan Boys Choir. Watch this group of joyful teenagers dance and sing their hearts out.

Usman Riaz and Preston Reed: A young guitarist meets his hero
At TEDGlobal 2012, 21-year-old guitarist Usman Riaz got a a chance to play with his idol, Preston Reed, who pioneered many of the techniques Riaz has expanded on.

Ray Goren: When it comes to music, it’s all about the feel
At age 8, Ray Goren began playing guitar. At TEDxOrangeCoast four years later, he knows his way around the instrument like he’s a seasoned rock ’n’ roll veteran who knows a thing or two about the blues.

Gustavo Dudamel leads El Sistema’s top youth orchestra
These high school musicians from Venezuela are part of the incredible El Sistema music program. At TED2009, Gustavo Dudamel leads the group through Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, 2nd movement, and Arturo Márquez’ Danzón No. 2.

Karim Wasfi (Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra)
At TEDxBaghdad, this youth orchestra blends music of diverse cultures to create a unique sound. Watch as this group of young men and women come together to dazzle the audience.

Emmanuel Jal: The music of a war child
In his music, Emmanuel Jal tells his story of being a child soldier. An adult now, Jal spent five of his young years at war in the Sudan — an experience that greatly informs his lyrics.

Jennifer Lin: Improvising on piano, aged 14
In this moving performance and talk from TED2004, Jennifer Lin shares her process of creativity. Syncing together inspirations to create her own structures, Lin discusses how her love of drawing contributes to her often-improvised musical compositions.

Few scientific papers are written in crayon and begin with the words, “Once upon a time.” But then again, few scientific papers are written by a group of 8 to 10-year-olds.

In this adorable talk from TEDGlobal, neuroscientist, artist and educator Beau Lotto shares why he thinks children have an edge when it comes to scientific inquiry — they are able to celebrate uncertainty and ask wonderful questions. An experiment is actually a form of play, says Lotto, who invited a group of 25 students from a small school in the UK to make a useful contribution to science by asking a question of their choice.

The question the students came up with: can bees think like human beings?

Student Amy O’Toole joined Lotto on stage to explain the experiment, which tested whether bees could solve a puzzle and learn to fly to a specific color of flower in a specific pattern. Indeed, the bees could.

“This project was exciting for me because it brought the process of discovery to life,” says O’Toole in this talk. “It showed me that anyone, and I mean anyone, has the potential to discover something new.”

To hear more about this non-traditional experiment and the two-year struggle to get it published in the journal Biology Letters, watch this wonderful talk. (You can actually read the Blackawtown Bees study here.) Below, see eight talks from other impressive kids on the TED stage.

Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids
Childish thinking is worthy of real attention, says 12-year-old short story scribe and blogger Adora Svitak at TED2010. Instead of looking just to teach kids, Svitak urges grown-ups to try to learn from them too.

Sirena Huang: An 11-year-old’s magical violin
Sirena Huang began violin lessons at age 4, and made her professional debut at age 9. In this talk from TED2006, Huang shows great maturity and charm –  taking the time to praise the design of the violin.

Thomas Suarez: A 12-year-old app developer
Perhaps you have used Thomas Suarez’s most famous iPhone app, the whack-a-mole game “Bustin Jeiber”? While most kids his age were playing online games, Suarez was learning how to make them. At TEDxManhattanBeach, he shares how he is sharing his knowledge and teaching other kids to develop apps too.

Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose and Naomi Shah: Award-winning teen-age science in action
At TEDxWomen 2011, three teenage scientists share the discoveries that helped them sweep the Google Science Fair. 13-year-old Lauren Hodge uncovers the truth about grilled chicken: it may not be as nutritious as you think. Shree Bose exposes the possible resistance of chemotherapy by ovarian cancer. And after realizing the dangerous effects of indoor air pollutants, Naomi Shah shares her startling revelations about how to better approach asthma.

Tavi Gevinson: A teen just trying to figure it out
15-year-old Tavi Gevinson was struggling to find strong female role models, and noticed that many of the women represented in the media were lacking depth. But Gevinson wasn’t disheartened, she says at TEDxTeen. Instead, she created a space where girls like her could find each other and redefine modern feminism.

Richard Turere (age 13): My invention that outsmarted lions
Tourists come to Kenya for the lions. But lions also attack cattle in towns and villages, at great cost to the locals. When he was 11, Richard Turere developed a device — made from five flashlight bulbs, a car battery and a solar panel — to keep lions away. At TED@Nairobi, he shares his invention.

Jennifer Lin: Improvising on piano, aged 14
In this moving performance and talk from TED2004, Jennifer Lin shares her process of creativity. Syncing together inspirations to create her own structures, Lin discusses how her love of drawing contributes to her often-improvised musical compositions.

Jack Andraka: A test for pancreatic cancer
15-year-old Jack Andraka has developed a promising new test for detecting pancreatic cancer early, because too often the disease isn’t diagnosed until it has spread throughout the body. Down the road, Andraka’s test could save many lives. In the meantime, it has netted him a win in the world’s largest high school science competition. (Read our Q&A with Jack.)

Young musicians Yaruu Egshiglen get an A+ for their singing, dancing and costuming during this performance at TEDxUlaanbaatarChange 2012, held in Mongolia in April.

Two more selections below.

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Logan answers the question, “Are gremlins real?”

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And Rhiannon wonders, “Do animals have a secret language?

Check out more talks from this excellent event.