Indonesia

Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia made up of thousands of islands. It sits between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, south of the Philippines and north of Australia. With more than 270 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. Only China, India, and the United States have more people. The capital city is Jakarta, on the island of Java.

Indonesia is the largest country made entirely of islands. It has more than 17,000 of them. If you lined the islands up end to end, they would stretch farther than the distance across the United States. The five biggest islands are Sumatra, Java, Borneo (shared with Malaysia and Brunei), Sulawesi, and New Guinea (shared with Papua New Guinea). More than half of all Indonesians live on Java, which is smaller than the state of Florida.

The country sits right on the Ring of Fire, a zone where Earth's tectonic plates crash together. Because of this, Indonesia has about 130 active volcanoes, more than any other country. It also has many earthquakes. In 1883, the volcano Krakatoa exploded with such force that people heard the blast 3,000 miles away. That is like a bomb in New York being heard in California.

Indonesia's rainforests are some of the richest on Earth. They are home to animals found nowhere else, including orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and Komodo dragons. Komodo dragons are the largest lizards alive today, growing up to 10 feet long. Scientists still argue about how these giant lizards ended up only on a few small Indonesian islands.

People have lived in Indonesia for tens of thousands of years. Traders from India, China, and the Middle East visited the islands for spices like cloves and nutmeg, which once grew almost nowhere else. In the 1600s, the Dutch took over and ruled for about 300 years. Indonesia declared independence in 1945, after World War II. The date, August 17, is still celebrated every year.

Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country in the world. About 87 percent of Indonesians follow Islam. But the country is also home to Christians, Hindus (especially on the island of Bali), Buddhists, and people who follow traditional local religions. More than 700 languages are spoken across the islands. To help everyone communicate, the government chose a shared national language called Bahasa Indonesia, which kids learn in school.