Plagiarism is no laughing matter. If you are found guilty of doing it, you can fail a class or be expelled from school. In the real world, the penalties are much stiffer. In 2003, a 27-year old New York Times reporter Jayson Blair lost his job after he admitted to copying other journalists' writing and faking reports. Another high-profile example is reporter Stephen Glass, once a rising star at The New Republic. Glass lost his job and became the black sheep of journalism. He was also the subject of the 2003 movie Shattered Glass.

This week, the person in the spotlight was Kaavya Viswanathan.

Last year, the sophomore at Harvard was given a $500,000 advance by the publishing giant Little, Brown to write a novel about an overachieving high school senior's attempts to get popular and gain admission to Harvard University. The book: How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

In February, I read an advance copy of the book with much interest. It's not everyday that a new "young literary genius" is discovered and publicized by a major publishing company. Kaavya was 17 when she got her book deal; she was the youngest author signed by Little, Brown in decades.

My friend and colleague Pooja read How Opal Mehta ... too. The following week, we got together for lunch and talked about it, dissecting it bit by bit. Literary tastes aside (there were a few things about the book that bothered us), we decided that any 19-year-old who could write a 250+ page novel deserved to be credited for her accomplishments. After reaching this conclusion, we sat back and waited for the book to come out--we were curious to know what others would think, whether our concerns would be mirrored by critics and readers, and whether the book would be as big a hit as the publisher had hoped for.

On April 1,  Kaavya Viswanathan's much-anticipated book came to life in bookstores. A flurry of reviews followed in all major newspapers and literary outfits. Then, things took an unexpected turn. The downward spiral began.

Finish reading the article by clicking here.

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I'm reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It just came out last month and it is extraordinary. It's about a little German girl named Liesel during World War II. When her younger brother dies, Liesel steals a book (The Gravedigger's Instruction Manual) near his gravesite as a memento of how she felt that day. Her mother realizes she cannot take care of Liesel with the world crumbling all around them, so Liesel goes off to live with the Hubermanns'.

Throughout the book, Liesel is touched by the written word and the constant threat of war and death. The Nazi party is more and more prevalent every day, but Liesel learns their wickedness through the actions of her Papa, Hans Hubermann, a good man who plays the accordion beautifully and takes in Max, a Jew, and hides him in his basement. Liesel quickly becomes great friends with Max and she tries not to think what will happen to him (to all of them) if he is found.

I won't say anymore except that this book was published first in Australia as Adult Fiction. Here in the U.S., it is being published as Young Adult. What does that mean exactly? Well, you could look at it two ways:

1) The publisher believes there is a better chance this book will sell to younger readers.
2) This is just one of those groundbreaking books that matures the minds of young readers--a book that will help you grow up by showing you all shades of good and evil the world has to offer.

Oh yes, and did I mention that The Book Thief is narrated by Death himself? Check it out. You won't be sorry.

It's been a stressful couple of weeks.  Final exams are looming large and near, and my schoolmates and I have been fretting over term papers and tests.  However, this weekend my school hosted a "Relay For Life" event to benefit the American Cancer Society.  Students form teams (ranging from a handful to hundred people) and take turns walking around the track to show support for cancer victims and the search for a cure.  The event lasts 24 hours, and the goal is for each team to have at least one member walking around the track at all times, even in the wee hours of the morning.  I signed up to take part back in February, when I had no idea it would be such a busy weekend for me.  Now, the day of the event, part of me wished I didn't have to go, and yet I thought of my day-care sitter Jeanie and our dear family friend Karen who both passed away from cancer, and I knew I had to do something to honor their memories.  So I tore myself away from my desk and headed across campus to the track.    

Well, before I knew it, an hour commitment turned into three hours, then four ... walking around the track, I met new people, made new friends, and listened to cancer survivors -- some of them my age! -- tell their stories.  Indeed, being involved in the Relay for Life really put everything in perspective.  In the big picture, worries like term papers, tests -- and writer's block! -- seem trivial and insignificant.  What really matters is spending time with those dear to you, and striving to make the world a bit better place, one step at a time.

Writing-wise, getting involved opens your eyes to new experiences and ideas, if only in that it is a way for you to  meet interesting and inspiring people to write about.  As I was finally tearing myself away from the Relay for Life to go back to my room and get back to studying, volunteers were lighting candles to symbolize cancer victims, survivors, and a hope for the future.  Everyone who had been somehow touched by cancer lit a candle and carried it around the track.  I saw this ceremony through a writer's eyes, mirroring the way experiences illuminate your writing hopes and dreams -- and also how as a writer, you can touch people with your words and give them hope for a brighter future.

For more information on the Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society, please visit www.cancer.org.

Two weeks ago,  Gregory K. Pincus, a writer in Los Angeles posted an invitation on his blog GottaBook. He invited readers to write "Fibs" - six-line poems that use a math formula called the Fibonaci sequence.

The pattern is like this - each line must have a certain number of syllables which equals the sum of the syllables in the line above. Before you think it's too complicated, here is the basic six-line pattern:

1
1
2
3
5
8

Within a week, news of this invitation had spread like wildfire across the Internet - and more than 100 blogs were linking to GottaBook--and piles and piles of Fibs were pouring in. The New York Times even wrote an article about this! 

Here's our Fib:  

This
Blog
Calls for
A round of
Applause from all you
Dedicated fans out there.

Want to post a Fib on WORD? Post a comment.

Hello, Word-sters! I'm Meredith, a health reporter and writer who works here at Weekly Reader with Bryon and Sandhya. This contest offer showed up in my e-mail inbox this morning and I wanted to share it with you all:

What's the REAL DEAL on Growing Up in the Age of AIDS?

Who can enter? Anyone 13-18 years old living in the United States
What should you write? A story or script dealing with HIV/AIDS (up to 10 pages)
When is the deadline? June 13, 2006
Where can I get more information? www.ScenariosUSA.org/contest/
Why? It's been 25 years since HIV and AIDS first emerged. This means you're the first generation to grow up in this era--for you, AIDS has always been around. How do you feel about it? This contest gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts with the world.

Scenarios USA is an organization that helps teens make films, BET is the cable network Black Entertainment Television, and the Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit health care organization. They've all teamed up to give teens a chance to talk about the impact HIV/AIDS has on their communities, relationships, and lives. Submit a story or a script of up to 10 pages on the theme, "What's the REAL DEAL on Growing Up in the Age of AIDS?" and you could win the chance to have your entry filmed by a Hollywood director and shown nationwide on BET in 2007.

Put on your thinking cap and get busy! You can submit an entry by yourself, with friends, or even as a class. There's an application and more resources for you and your teacher at www.ScenariosUSA.org/contest/, including a "Mini Creative Writing Workshop" to help you get started. Good luck!

Meredith is the editor of Current Health 2. You can check out her magazine online by clicking here.

A narrative story is a retelling of a personal experience that has had a significant impact on your life. I recently assigned the wririting of a narrative story to my 9th grade class. “But nothing important has happened to me yet,” my students moaned and groaned. I explained to them that determining whether or not something is “important” is all relative.

“25 years from now,” I told them, “moving to a new school district in the middle of the year may seem insignificant, but right now, at 15, it can be the biggest event of one’s life.” Once they looked at the assignment from that angle, their pens started moving. The topics students chose to write about varied a great deal and included everything from the birth of siblings to the loss of family members, from stories of their best friends to playing on sports teams.

Once the assignment was written, the students read them aloud to the class. Many were nervous, as some of their narratives were very personal, but ultimately, this turned out to be a wonderful experience for the whole class. Some students became emotional telling their stories. They were all very supportive of each other, though.

Before my students completed this assignment, I read them an example of a personal narrative of my own. It is about the 5 people I lived with in college. Although it was an experience my students had yet to have, I chose a tone and language that was appropriate for them. I believe that the story did reach them and even inspire them a bit. I even had a few students urge me to send my story to the friends I had written about, which I did. And now, I am sharing my personal narrative with you. My hope is that, by the time you are done reading, you will have a better understanding of the personal narrative and maybe even try to write one of your own! Enjoy!

      We couldn’t have known that this place would affect us so profoundly—the six of us. We couldn’t have known that this place would teach us anything about who we were, what we wanted in life, what we feared, how to love. The house was nothing special, just a faded blue ranch with a finished basement that always smelled like a swamp. It was small. It was ugly. It was ours, for one year. On a sweltering June day in one of the last years of the millennium, we moved into 88 Sunset Avenue, a little blue shack planted awkwardly in a cul-de-sac on a street a block away from abandoned train tracks. Our neighbors were made up of grouchy retirees, fellow college students, and a few folks who redefined for us the word “redneck.” We were walking distance from our college campus, but we never did seem to get up in time to actually walk there. Weekday mornings were often spent frantically running around looking for keys, books, and shoes in our disastrous living room. Weekend mornings were usually spent sleeping well into the day, then emerging from our rooms like vampires from their coffins, eyes averted from the sun, arms outstretched for sustenance. Sometimes others were there too, strewn about in blankets and sleeping bags, victims from the previous night’s escapades, but usually it was just us. We liked it that way, after all. We weren’t just six people living in a house, we were Sunset. A clan. A tribe. We spoke our own language and had our own rituals. Sure we had plenty of parties and visitors, but at the end of it all, in the wee hours of the night, the six of us shared a secret world.

      Have you ever lived with people who you are not blood-related to? It’s strange how seeing each other in your pajamas and sharing the same bathroom instantly creates a kinship between people. There’s a magic that happens between anyone sharing the same roof. You hear each other snoring at night. You drink out of the same milk carton. Your laundry finds its way into the same wash, underwear and socks all happily mingling together in a sudsy pool. There is something so intimate, so personal about a simple thing like laundry sharing the same basket.

      Make no mistake; we were all friends before we lived together—me, Kerry, Bryon, Dave, Dave, and Dave. Yes, three Daves in one house. Sharing that house, though, it changed everything. The word friends became too small for what we were, yet the word family implied that we were somehow forced to love one another, the way you are forced to love your mother’s great, great, Aunt Marie whom you’ve never even met. We had chosen to live together in that hideous excuse for a house, and once we moved in together, everything was somehow new. I never had a sister, so living with a girl who was not my mom was strange for me….and wonderful. On Wednesday nights at eleven o’clock Kerry and I discovered this little known television program in its very first season. It would go on to redefine lifestyles for single women in cities all over the world, but we just knew that it was our Wednesday night-bonding time. No boys allowed. Cocktails and facemasks and girl talk. I had never spent so much time with a girl who wasn’t my mom. Kerry was the older sister I never had, there to give me advice and build my confidence when I had none.

So I saw the SpongeBob SquarePants movie last night. Why? I dunno. Because I sometimes have the mentality of a 6 year old, I guess. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, you know. Do you remember what it was like being 6? I have a vague recollection of laughing all the time and being totally worry-free.

Anyway, it was a very funny film. I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times. SpongeBob is quite a character. And that's an understatement. I mean look at him. Just look at him! He makes you dizzy with glee. Most of the movie was about SpongeBob and his best friend Patrick doing ridiculous things. But there was also a message: it's OK to be a kid.

Of course, I couldn't just watch and enjoy the movie without thinking about how I could blog about it later. So this is what I came up with:

Try writing a story for little kids. You can use SpongeBob as your inspiration or any other silly character you may know of. What is it about these zany characters that draws younger audiences to them? Is it their innocence? Their lack of responsibility? Or just the way they smile?

Who knows, maybe you'll come up with the next great Kindergarten phenomenon? And if not, you've at least had some practice in writing a characteristic. You can use that in your future writings. Score!

Oh yeah, and take SpongeBob's words to heart: "You don't need a license to drive a sandwich." Always remember that. It may just save your life one day.

OK, Eragon and Eldest fans. We need your help!

Writing will be interviewing fantasy author Christopher Paolini next month. The 22-year-old writer whose Inheritance Trilogy books have been major bestsellers has agreed to answer questions from you.

Here's what you need to do: Send us your questions by Sunday May 7th. You can e-mail them to us or just click on post a comment below.

If your question is picked, we'll print it (along with your name) in the November/December issue of Writing, just in time for the release of the movie Eragon which opens on December 15th, 2006.

We are no longer taking questions for Christopher Paolini. Thank you for your interest. Be sure to check out the interview in Writing Magazine in November, 2006.

By Larry Perth

Is Writing magazine thinking of expanding its target audience to the elderly? Rumors are flying all over the publishing world. Is it possible that Weekly Reader sees a need for writing instruction among America's greatest generation? I'm here to set the record straight.

When I first heard the curious buzz, I was sitting quietly in a park in Stamford. I was tearing through the pages of Gregory Maguire's masterpiece Wicked. (When I say "tearing through", I mean of course that I was reading hungrily, voraciously, as if my eyes couldn't take the words in fast enough... not that I was weeping or, God forbid, actually ripping up the pages.) Two old ladies were approaching me at a snail's pace. I noticed them reluctantly, as I was deeply immersed in the evil doings of the Wicked Witch of the West, and was more than a tad bit vexed. But how could one not call attention to bright fluorescent orange matching suede pants?

They were just out among the rest of us, enjoying the prettiness of the day and taking their sweet, old time doing nothing, simply happy to be alive. In my mind, I forgave them for their unintentional intrusion and smiled behind my book at the peculiar way they shuffled.

Finally they reached me and I was attentive to their talk. They were speaking of writing to their grandchildren. It was sweet.

"My son says I write like an angel. When he reads my letters to Billy at night, the lad is swept away."

"I write my grandkids fairy tales. Ever since I subscribed to Writing magazine... oh my stars! It seems like I've become a regular Antoine de Saint-Exupéry!"

I couldn't believe my ears! I knew the magazine well and I was shocked to hear that anyone over the age of 17 had even heard of it, let alone subscribed to it! Even though it was not in my nature, I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by.

"Excuse me," I mentioned softly, standing up and facing them. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you just say that you subscribe to Writing magazine?"

"Yes, that's right handsome."

"Judy!" She hit her friend playfully with her purse and I did my best to stifle a laugh at their adorable camaraderie.

"What? He's handsome! What do you want from me?"

"Show some decorum, for Pete's sake!"

"Oh decorum de-shmor-um! You don't mind me calling you handsome, do you handsome?"

"No ma'am. And might I add that you're quite the dashing lady yourself." Suddenly, I had somehow turned into a geriatric Bogie. I even went so far as to lean in and kiss her hand! She blushed like a schoolgirl and I left them feeling wonderful.

A week or so went by and I just couldn't get the thought out of my head. I drove over to the Weekly Reader Headquarters and did a bit of investigative reporting. I had no affiliations so it took a bit of prying to get past the security guard at the front desk. He called up to the Writing editor and, to my ecstatic surprise, she was happy to see me!

She told me that she "didn't usually do this sort of thing" but that my story was "a fascinating one." I got straight to the point.

The following poem was received as part of Writing's Take Five Contest. Although it did not win, we enjoyed it very much and wanted to share it with you. Check back throughout the rest of April and May to read more excellent poems and stories from Take Five.

Untitled
Poem by Alina Ott, Grade 11

Chicken noodle soup on a cloudy April day
Wayward leaves are recklessly twisted by gusts
   Shoving umbrellas and newspapers inside out.

Suddenly on the wind raindrops appear
Moodily defying upward glances and muttered prayers
   Spreading shadows and pinning helpless litter.

Dark figures hurry by, heads down, collars up
Grumpy, caught wet and unaware
   Buffeted by puddles from the street

Wheels creak as a small unlucky man
Rides precariously by on a red bicycle
   Weaving through raindrops.

The rain slowls to a constant patter
An orchestra of drumming rooftops
   Dripping pipes and spattering lakes.

Only I cross the slick pavement
Eyelashes working like windshield wipers
   Braving the wind and rain.

The way sparkles with shattering droplets
Though the beauty is lost in the battle
   Fighting a lock with curses and keys.

Poem by Mitchell Krasney, Grade 8

Between twilight and dawn my two dogs rest in their kennel dreaming of adventures to come.
With the sounds of the morning, they eagerly awake to start their daily routine.
By my side in the bathroom they wag their tails against my legs and lick my toes until they're numb.

After a while, they bark at the back door to announce their need to be part of the exterior scene.
Outside the house, they escape from the porch to explore our expansive grounds.
Without a care, they chase a butterfly with speed too great that they run into a window screen.

Through the newly planted garden they trudge over the petunias and marigolds while my mom frowns.
Beyond the white picket fence they see a deer frolicking in front of an old rock wall.
Despite their stumpy paws, they race with all their might to catch their prey like typical hunting hounds.

Near the woods, they stop beneath a weeping willow finding more interest in a slimy tennis ball.
Above their heads a bright red cardinal swiftly flies by and gracefully lands on a wooden bird feeder.
Up the steep hill in an attempt to slip behind the unaware bird the two mutts crawl.

Past a thorny rose bush and a patch of daylillies, they finally freeze underneath a northern white cedar.
Toward the feeder they dart without delay, but soon the bird simply soars away into the afternoon sky.
Before sunset with their tails tucked under their bodies they return home neither one wanting to be the leader.