Emma Bowman

Kristen Bell knows that Frozen II has big snowshoes to fill. Its 2013 prequel busted box office records and earned an eye-popping a $1.27 billion globally.

But she calls herself an optimist.

"In my mind, if you make a recipe and the cake comes out great, you make it again the next day with the same ingredients. Why on earth wouldn't it be great?" said Bell in an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition.

This story is part of StoryCorps' Road to Resilience project, which leverages the power of storytelling to help children cope with the death of a parent, sibling or loved one.

Sylvia Grosvold was 5 years old when her mother died by suicide.

Now 16, Sylvia recently sat down with her father, Josh Weiner, 52, at StoryCorps. They talked about the day Sylvia's mother, Kari Grosvold, died and the years that followed.

Updated on Sunday at 11:o5 p.m. E.T.

Nine members of an extended Idaho family died after a plane crashed in Chamberlain, S.D., near the center of the state, on Saturday. Among those killed were two children and the pilot, authorities say.

EastIdahoNews.com said the family of 12 were returning home to Idaho Falls from a weekend hunting trip in South Dakota.

For nearly a decade, Diana Ramirez hadn't been able to take a book home from the San Diego Public Library. Her borrowing privileges were suspended, she was told, because of a mere $10 in late fees, an amount that had grown to $30 over the years.

Ramirez, who is now 23 and stays in Tijuana with her mother, attends an alternative education program in San Diego that helps students earn high school diplomas. To her, the debt she owed to the library system was an onerous sum. Even worse, it removed a critical resource from her life.

Ever since they were kids growing up on Staten Island, N.Y., David Carles and his younger brother Mark Carles have been inseparable.

But in October last year, they were dealt a huge blow: Mark, now 25, was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma.

The brothers, just a year apart in age, still don't know how much time they'll have together; they only know that they want to spend as much of it as they can side by side.

More than 200 years ago, in January of 1811, a group of enslaved people on a plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans rose up, armed themselves and began a long march toward the city. Hundreds would join them along the way. Their goal: to free every slave they found and then seize the Crescent City.

Ever since he was a child, Michael Menta looked up to his uncle Sal Leone for becoming a Marine. Menta would eventually follow in Leone's footsteps to serve his country, enlisting in the Navy during his senior year of high school.

Their shared veteranship brought them closer.

"We spoke the same language," Menta said, when he and Leone visited StoryCorps last month.

Growing up, Arguster and Lebronze Davis and their 14 siblings worked alongside their parents on the family's 40-acre farm in Wetumpka, Ala.

The brothers remember lessons that their father, Ben Davis, passed down to them.

Now 70, Lebronze recalls how at one point, nine kids lived at home, with all eight of the brothers packed into two beds in one room.

"Two slept at the head, two slept at the feet," he says during his recent StoryCorps interview. "And there was one thing about them feet, you washed them feet before you went to bed."

Samantha Hull had less than 30 minutes to pack up her life.

As powerful winds drove the Tick Fire through acres of dry brush hills encircling Hull's family's farm in Canyon Country, a community within the Los Angeles County city of Santa Clarita, Hull was thinking about how she could get her animals to safety.

Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., says she plans to resign in the face of an ethics investigation stemming from allegations that she had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a member of her congressional staff.

"It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress," Hill wrote in a statement released on Sunday. "This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents and our country."

Pacific Gas and Electric has expanded its power blackout zone to 940,000 customers across Northern and Central California as extreme weather forecasts threaten to increase the risk of wildfires.

The projected wind gusts of up to 70 mph, combined with dry vegetation, create prime conditions for wildfire.

Between the election of President Trump and Britain's ongoing debate over Brexit, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros recognizes that populism is on the rise and that his brand of liberal democracy is faltering.

"When I got involved in what I call political philanthropy some 40 years ago, the open society idea was on the ascendant — closed societies were opening up," Soros said in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered. "And now, open societies are on the defensive and dictatorships are on the rise."

Yet he remains optimistic.

A brainless, bright-yellow organism that can solve mazes and heal itself is making its debut at a Paris zoo this weekend.

At least so far, "the blob" is more benevolent than the ravenous star of its 1950s sci-fi film classic namesake.

Updated at 9:53 a.m. ET

President Trump announced that he's dropping his plan to host next year's G-7 meeting of the leaders of the world's biggest economies at his Miami-area golf club.

In a series of late-night tweets on Saturday, Trump blamed the reversal on what he described as "Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility," following bipartisan claims that he's exploiting his presidency for personal profit.

Guy Bryant never intended to be a father figure. But over the past 12 years, he's housed more than 50 foster kids in his Brooklyn apartment.

For decades, Bryant, 61, worked with teens aging out of New York's child welfare system. His job was to find services that would make the transition to living on their own easier. But he felt that what he could accomplish at the New York City Administration for Children's Services office wasn't enough. So in 2007, he decided to become a foster parent.

Undulating bowls, sloping half-pipes, cavernous barrels. A towering cradle that resembles Yosemite's Half Dome.

Devoid of their usual inhabitants, the skate parks dotting the stretches of California are alone works of art in the eyes of photographer Amir Zaki.

Updated at 8:15 p.m. ET on Saturday

In an interview with NPR Friday, Ronan Farrow reiterated the assertion he makes in a new book, Catch and Kill, that NBC News leadership worked to kill the reporting that ultimately broke open Harvey Weinstein's alleged history of sexual assault — and that it is tied to a broader pattern of networkwide harassment and abuse.

This week, Jewish people observed Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement.

Growing up in the 1960s, siblings Michael and Vickie Feldstein marked a different way to repent for their transgressions: Amnesty Day, which their dad, Bernie, had created.

At StoryCorps in 2011, Bernie tells them about that tradition he started in their Brooklyn household around forgiveness. A few times a year, the Feldstein children could say anything on Amnesty Day, without retribution, condemnation or discussion.

Willie Ito, 85, wanted to be an animator from the moment he first saw Snow White in theaters as a young boy.

"I remember the seven little men walking across the screen, singing, 'Heigh-ho, heigh-ho!' and I thought to myself, 'Wow, that's what I want to be.' Not one of the seven dwarves, but an animated cartoonist," Willie told his son, Vince Ito, 60, at StoryCorps last month.

With the fraught negotiations over Brexit continuing to embroil British politics, the nation's former prime minister, David Cameron, says his "greatest regret" is that those who advocated to stay in the EU lost the vote — which ultimately divided the country, paralyzed the government and left Britain increasingly at risk of leaving the European Union without any deal.