Jonella 9/11/11 Jonella 9/11/11

Space Stories

My dear friend, Diana, is involved in the Book Fair for her daughter’s elementary school in Burbank. As part of the week long event, they held a writing contest. Students at Walt Disney Elementary (K-5) wrote stories with an outer space theme and Diana asked if I would read and judge the stores picking a winner for each class. I was thrilled to be a part of it!

There were entries obviously turned in because the teacher made this a class project and students fulfilled the assignment by writing six lines. A couple of stories featured broken down space ships, several dramatized invasions and one even had a space-owl whose mother saves the day. Much mention was made of pizza and many protagonists were named Bob. Most classes had a dozen or more submissions and had me tied up in knots to select the “best.”

Some students wrote reports: “There are nine planets in the solar system...” They were well written, but they weren’t stories.

One second grade class had tons of entries and most of them were both well written and interesting. But there were three that astounded me. I had the hardest time trying to pick a winner. They were that good. From second graders! Simply wonderful to read imaginative stories full of details and dialog from such young minds.

The other class that impressed me with their stories and made for a difficult decision were the fifth graders. One story particularly stayed with me. It was 8-10 brief lines written in the voice and from the perspective of Hillbilly Bob talking about stories told by his grandpappy that completely turned on end what the other kids had written. I thought it was a little slice of pre-teen genius. Unfortunately, another story had to win. It didn’t follow the contest guidelines. There was no mention of outer space beyond Hillbilly Bob living next to Mars. Which could simply mean that he lived on Earth. It was so hard to set it aside.

The only bad thing about the fifth grade stories was the spelling. It wasn’t just bad, it was atrocious. It wasn’t just a few words, they were in every sentence. It wasn’t one or two stories, it was all of them. It was like the spelling didn’t matter. But that made several of the stories difficult to read and understand because I couldn’t figure out what a sentence meant because the spelling was so butchered. At least one I disqualified for that reason. I couldn’t figure out what this kid was saying! It wasn’t a case of using texting abbreviations either, though I also would have found that disturbing. This was just plain old fashioned not giving a flying fig about the spelling.

Overall, this was a great experience. I loved reading all of the stories. The creativity of these kids amazes me. Such a joy.

P.S.

I should mention that I know exactly one student at this school. While I did read the submissions from Cate’s class, her printing is indistinguishable (to me) from the other second graders and the names were covered with sticky notes so I couldn’t see them.

Jonella 9/9/11 Jonella 9/9/11