He walks in to holy organ riot
Serpent sway
Unlined mouth
Agitation
That cracks the clay
Where the chieftain lies
"Teach me how to raise the dead," I say
His arms open into a porch

He pulls me back
Cawing
No fleeting mayfly backwards glance
A fetal world
Back, still further back
Into himself
Searing plain and shocked and open
Dark like a dead child's birthday
Rain has yet to be imagined
Inside the earth we reach the pinnacle
Eyeless

Seconds resume

He walks away
Just that
He walks away

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ.

**Update: The first issue of Stand and Voice is here. And it looks fantastic! Chock full of stories, poems, essays, and artwork--all by teens--Stand and Voice is truly an accomplishment. Kudos to Baobao et al.

What does it take for a teen writer to be published? Teens seem notably left out. At least, this is the view of Baobao Zhang, who attends high school in Virginia. In order to mend this modern literary tragedy, she has started an online literary magazine – Stand and Voice. And it is just for teens. When asked how the magazine got started, Baobao, explained: "It got started around April this year when I was talking to a friend. I was getting rejected by — god knows what — every magazine in the country probably. We were talking, and we’re sure there are other teens who have this problem getting published, especially in adult magazines, because people don't want to take teens seriously. So we thought it would be cool to give people an outlet for their voice. Since then I’ve gotten published."

In terms of the technical preparations, "We had to find a web hosting company—we did it with Yahoo— and it's fantastic because you can edit it online and don't need software. We had to write everything about us. One of the challenges we had was to find a staff of volunteer editors, but we found them now." They also were lucky enough to be advertised by another magazine, Teen Ink.

Once the magazine was properly set up, it was time to start getting submissions. I asked Baobao why she thinks it's so important for teens to have their voices heard in today's society. Her response: "There's the adult world, and they don't take teens very seriously. And then there are the kids' magazines that don't take teens very seriously. We lack a voice. Modern media says we're irresponsible and lazy, but I don't think so. I think we have something to say."

Very well said.

On her hopes for the magazine: "I hope teen writers will have the chance to get published and put themselves out there. One of my goals is to spread this magazine to educators across the country. Kids that don't like to read can find something they're interested in."

Baobao and the rest of the editors have a whole process of deciding who to publish. Baobao says, "We have a review process. You send something in, when we're looking at it we're reading it anonymously and we edit it anonymously. We also have a rubric."

Writers can submit poetry, short fiction, personal essays, editorial essays, one-act plays, and even book movie or music reviews. Artists can submit drawings, paintings, prints, multimedia, photography, digital art, cartoons, and sculptures and ceramics.

All writing must be emailed to submission@standandvoice.org in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf), in a double-spaced standard font (such as Times New Roman). Since the writing is judged anonymously, put your name, date of birth, grade level, state, and name of school in the body of the email, but do not put information in the file. You'll also find a complete list of instructions at the site.

The first issue is going to come out in August. Deadline for the issue is July 27.

If you are a teen writer and want to be heard, submit your writing to Stand and Voice. If you are a reader, get ready to read some original writing from teens across the country.

READ thinks that Baobao is poised for success. After all, her poem "In Search of Sleeping Beauty" will appear in the first issue of READ this fall. We hope that Stand and Voice is a raging success, and wish Baobao and the rest of the team good luck!

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ.

Just about everyone knows of the fabled tale of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the Spider. The author of this book, Charlotte's Web, was none other than the American author E. B. White, whose birthday was July 11.

Born in 1899 in Mount Vernon, New York, Elwyn Brooks attended Cornell University. It was a tradition at this school that anyone with the last name White would be nicknamed Andy, because one of the co-founders of the school was named Andrew Dickson White. So Andy it was. However, in all his professional writings, he used the name E. B. White.

Though he started writing in publications such as The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, he soon turned to writing children's literature. His first novel, in 1945, was Stuart Little, a tale of a boy from New York. He described that the boy exhibited a "shy, pleasant manner of a mouse", and since the illustrations portrayed the boy as a mouse, this is the image most associated with this novel’s protagonist. (This book has a short ending – why? Because White was a hypochondriac and thought he was going to die before the book was finished. Turns out he died 40 years after the book was published!)

His next novel was Charlotte's Web, written in 1952. If you aren't familiar with the story, Wilbur, a runt pig who is saved by a girl named Fern, is sent to live in a barn where he does not know anyone or any animals. Charlotte is a spider who reaches out to Wilbur, and the two maintain a strong friendship throughout the novel.

E. B. White's third children's novel is Trumpet of the Swan, which tells the story of a poor swan who has no voice, and therefore learns how to play the trumpet.

Notice a pattern?

Why is it that a lot of children's literature revolves around animals? One explanation is that human adults are tangled and complicated and wrapped up in various social, economical, mental, and emotional webs (no pun intended). Children, on the other hand have not yet succumbed to those adult complications. And animals, unlike humans, live simple, carefree lives of simply doing what it takes to survive. (Not that surviving Thanksgiving and Christmas is slightly worrisome for some farm animals). The relative simplicity of animals is attractive and conducive to children's ways of thinking.

Or, another possibility is that the idea of animals making friends and talking to one another is simply cute and entertaining.

Either way, E. B. White's novels have obviously resounded with children, and are still read and referenced today. So happy birthday, E. B. White, and thanks for giving us eager beavers the bees' knees of children's writing.