 Thursday, September 28, 2006
The following story is an interpretation of the 1,000 Words image in the September, 2006 issue of Writing Magazine.
Sammy
- Story by Alex Lindstrom, Grade 7
"Ouch, my head hurts now," said Redeye, as the drop of water slammed into his tiny head. It was torture for Redeye and his brother and his sister (Hopper and Sticky), as they tried to make their way in the pouring rain to the massive leaf hanging from the tree. The slithering boa constrictor, Sammy, was close behind. His goal was to finish what he had started ...
Once, there were twenty-eight little tadpoles swimming happily in a crystal clear pond, fed by a bubbling waterfall in the middle of the Amazon Rain Forest. The pond was full of water, piranhas, and lots of redeye tadpoles. The parents of the redeye tadpoles lived in the beautiful pond too, making sure all the babies were well fed and out of danger. Every one of the tadpoles had a perfect, carefree life.
 Every day the young tadpoles swam and played wonderful games of chase and hide-and-go-seek in the warm water. They were then fed by their mother, who caught buzzing insects with her long, sticky, pink tongue as they flew by. After they were fed and had swam and played, they would take a nap in a secluded area of the pond behind a giant rock under the lily pad. They loved every aspect of their simple life.
One day, while the babies were out chasing each other around, playing under the rushing waterfall, and hiding behind rocks, they heard a piercing cry from their mother, begging and pleading for them to swim under the rock as fast as they could. All of the babies, both startled and afraid, slowly went over to their mother by the rock ... all except three. Then they saw it, the image forever imprinted in their minds, a boa constrictor, with three of their siblings, Lucy, Leaf, and Mudpie in its coils. It opened up its massive mouth, and swallowed them whole. 
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006
In honor of Banned Books Week, we give you a poem about book burning. For more information about the freedom to read, you can check out the current issue of READ Magazine.
FIRE
Poem by Lydia Warters, Grade 8
I am the fire
Crackling heat burning strongly
As I take in paper
I am the heat
Warming
The house of Mystery
For I am the fire
I feel sorry
As I eat up books
Burning the amazing world of a story
I will take away its magic words
Page by page
A book never read again
I am sorry for I am the fire
I see the words
In the pages of a book
Melting away
A path of black smoke
Trails silently behind me
Two girls stand deep in thought
They speak no words
I burn on
For I am the fire
I hear the crackling pop
Of myself
As I burn on
The silent noise
Of a page turning
In the last book remaining
I hear for I am the fire
I wish the best
For the house
In which
I once so strongly burned
I will soon be gone
So
I hope for the best
For everyone
I wish this for I was the fire
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Monday, September 25, 2006
In the September issue of Writing Magazine, we told you about Book-A-Minute, a website devoted to bringing you the briefest summary of books imaginable! (Read the article here.)
Here is another Book-A-Minute from 8th grader, Anastasia Straley.
- by Jack London
A lazy husky gets kidnapped.
(Lots of fighting and dying in Alaska told from dog's view point.)
The husky lives in the wild.
THE END
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
 Posthumous publication? What's that, you say? Well, posthumous means something that happens after someone's death ... so a posthumous publication is a work printed after a person's death.
Now that we have this straight, you'll be happy to know that a posthumous book by J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), author of The Lord of the Rings, is going to be published in the Spring of 2007. The Children of Hurin is an epic tale about the elves and dwarves featured in many of Tolkien's stories.
Tolkien began the saga in 1918, but never finished it. For the past 30 years, his son Christopher Tolkien, has been working on finishing the tale, using his father's manuscript and notes.
"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of The Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers," Christopher Tolkien said in a statement. (Bits and pieces have been published in the past.)
We're sharing this good news with you on what turns out to be the anniversary of the day in 1937 when Tolkien published his first novel, The Hobbit.
The back story of his novel is pretty interesting--while working as a professor at Oxford, Tolkien used to work an extra job grading exams during the summer. One day, he was so bored that he wrote the following line on a blank page of a student's exam: "In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit."
From The Writer's Almanac:
"Tolkien later said that he had no idea where the word "hobbit" came from. It had just popped into his head, out of nowhere. He was intrigued by it and decided to write a story to find out what a hobbit might be. In the story that resulted, he wrote a description of hobbits that said, in part, "[Hobbits] are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. ... They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow naturally leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it)."
Tolkien had been thinking for years about an imaginary place he called Middle-Earth full of dwarves, elves, and wizards. He decided that his story would concern a hobbit in this world named Bilbo Baggins who goes on an adventure to help steal a treasure from a dragon named Smaug, and along the way discovers a magical ring that turns him invisible. Tolkien wrote the book by hand, sitting on a tiny bed in his attic, finishing it sometime around the mid-1930s.
He showed it to a few friends, but he had no intention of publishing it until a former student of his got a job at a publishing house and began pestering him to give her the manuscript. He finally relented, and it came out on this day in 1937."
I told you it was a neat back story!
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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
According to a well-worn proverb, a picture is worth a thousand words. In the September 2006 issue of Writing, we published a photograph of a red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) which was taken on a rainy day by photographer Michael Durham. We asked you to write a story about this frog -- to give it a name, describe its surroundings, and imagine the events that brought it to this moment. Your story could be 50 words, 100 words, the proverbial 1,000 words--or more. Here is one of our favorite submissions.
Croaky The Frog
- Story by Andrea Nielsen-George, Grade 7
It was a great day in the Amazon until Croaky the rain forest frog came into the trees and told everyone the bad news. "Everyone, everyone! The weather has just been announced!"
"Well, Croaky what is the news?" asked all the animals of the forest.
Trying to catch his breath, Croaky answered, "King Lion said that there is to be some rain today!"
Everyone looked at him as their faces dropped.
Sally Spider said sarcastically, "Croaky, if you haven't noticed, this is a rainforest.”
Mary Moth said, "Yeah, it rains here everyday."
All the animals turned around and left Croaky by himself. Croaky thought that everyone would thank him, but instead they were aggravated with him.
Croaky went to go find a leaf big enough to cover him. "Ah-ha," he said to himself. "This is a huge leaf. It will do for the storm."
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