Highlights Magazine Five Under Five, 2013.
The Best Young, Young Minds Today.
Highlights magazine, the popular children’s magazine that now publishes a quarterly tablet for up and coming youngsters (available on iTunes, kindle and Leapfrog), presents its 15th Annual “Five Under Five” list. The list accrues five of the greatest young American minds. This year’s list is more diverse than ever — spanning reading abilities, gender, race, and block-playing forte. In the years that Highlights has published its list, there has been great uproar among Kindergarteners that felt their sharing skills deemed recognition. It is a highly selective process, with varying factors under consideration – social media following, investors and seed funding, favorite shape, and food allergies.
About the process: Each candidate for the Five Under Five is nominated by peers, as well as a board of overseers of the magazine. The earliest entrant ever was Devon Tobel, who at eight months created a social media-driven mobile above his crib. Overeager parents may also enter a candidate for consideration, pending documentation as well as under the condition that the child has to have been born. Please email questions or concern to googoogaga@highlight.com.
Erik Damons, 3.5, Kazoo Zoo; Composer; Musician; Rapper. {Music}
Erik Damons always considered himself somewhat of a music mogul. At two, he had learned concertos and would rent out his karaoke machine to neighboring youngsters for a fee. But this year his work in the music realm — specifically his Kazoo Zoo, a One-for-One Kazoo program, brings him to the top of the Highlight list in both music and philanthropy. Bono has called Damons’ One for One Kazoo Program “lifechanging in the world of kazoo music.” The program delivers Kazoos to under-appreciated and ignored children in both third-world countries and children whose parents leave them alone for dinner parties uptown. Damons recorded a Kazoo-only version of “Firework,” with Katy Perry, the proceeds of downloads on iTunes benefitting the charity.
Rebecca Michaels, 4: Draw.Me {Media}
Tavi Gevinson was 11 when she started her site, Style Rookie. But rumblings of a new Rookie are why Highlight has chosen to honor Rebecca Michaels, 4, who has created the only coloring book iPad magazine to receive backing from Lady Gaga, among other investors. Gaga calls Michaels’ work “transformative,” frequently using the app when stoned. (Which is quite often.) Michaels maintains a mailing list of over 350,000. Investors have called the app highly inventive, as it aggregates the day’s news stories and presents them in color book form. The most popular download to date was an extensive coloring of protests in Libya. WIRED calls Draw.me “one of the best curated news sites around. Nobody reads, but we guess people will color pictures.” There are rumors of courtship from Facebook, though Michaels declined to comment on the subject.
Sam Daniels, 3, Gotta Go Potty. {Tech}
At two and a half, Sam Daniels was using his father’s iPad to code a website that allowed for him to separate his cheerios and raisins via QR code. The second-youngest Thiel fellow (last year, Warren Ogra, then 8 months, decoded and recoded an entire Leapfrog Learning Pad), Daniels created a program alerts parents to a need for diaper changing with heat and wet-sensitive electrodes. Though Daniels has encountered roadblocks – the first version of his program ruined sixteen iPads with urine – and a difficulty in his first seed round — the potential for its use are endless. The pads sense body temperature, tell a parent why a baby is crying, and whether or not your child is smart enough to get into that preschool with the organic garden.
Jake Ellison, 4, Ellison Contemporary Art. {Art}
While many of his contemporaries stuck to finger-painting, Jake Ellison, 4, decided that his best medium was his dog Sady’s wet dog food. Using a technique he calls “smooshy smoosh smoosh,” Ellison is being compared to a young Jackson Pollock in the art world. His first piece was sold to the Gagosian Family personal collection for an estimated 2M. The piece, a smiley face of Alpo that Ellison called “a transcendental retrospective into happiness and its effect on what it means to turn 5 and no longer be considered for this list,” is considered to be one of the greatest works of modern art. Ellison’s first gallery showing was held at Miami’s Art Basel to eager critics and art dealers. The retrospective was held in a Clifford the Big Red Dog-themed gallery, a nod to Ellison’s medium.
Justin Biedermann, 2, Veg Out!, Restaurateur. {Food}
Justin Biedermann was always a child of culinary finesse. When served peas and carrots by his parents, Biedermann found that his sister Clara would have nothing to do with them. Using nothing more than a sippy cup and a plastic spoon, Biedermann upcycled the vegetables into a veggie soufflé, and Clara ate it immediately. Recognizing the potential for his culinary skills with vegetables, as well as the percentages of children that hate to eat them, Justin started Veg Out! a line of organic, gluten and dairy-free vegetable snacks, now available in Whole Foods next to the freeze-dried hummus. Biedermann is working with the Voltaggio brothers on a restaurant concept where everyone has to sit in a high chair and there are no utensils involved. The restaurant, tentatively called Booster, is slated to open in Spring 2014 in Manhattan.
To tweet your congratulations, use the hashtag #fiveunderfive. Most will reply with gratitude after naptime.
Meredith Fineman is the founder of Finepoint Digital PR. You can read more of her writing here and follow her on Twitter @MeredithFineman.
