I have fond memories of entering the Reflection's Contest as a kid (mostly in the Art or Music categories). The only year I won in Art, my mom was in the PTA and even though she was not a judge she felt that there was a conflict of interest. So she requested that I be downgraded to an "Honorable Mention".
In keeping with tradition, I had the kids enter this year's literature competition that has the theme "The Magic of the Moment". The children dictated the story to me as I typed. After the first draft, we read back through their stories and then the kids added adjectives (I gave them a list to look through).
Thomas and Natalie were both very happy to win their school's competition; their prizes were $5 gift certificates to Walmart and some Skittles. After winning the school contest, Natalie's story also won the contest for the south half of Nebo School District and is now competing to win at the District level. Since Thomas's story was returned, I thought I'd share it with you. It is called "Ninjas versus Black Snakes". Thomas had a required artist statement to explain how his work relates to the theme and he stated "Snakes and ninjas can talk so it's the magic of the moment".
____________________________________________________________________________
One winter’s day an important ninja master named Lloyd was
riding in his red ninja car with Cole-woo and a yellow ninja named Pegos. Lloyd was driving them to New York to find
the black Fire-sword of the black snakes with spikes as red as fireballs all
over them. Suddenly the car engine broke
but they were already in New York and the snakes were peaking out a
manhole. The snakes saw Cole-woo and
Cole-woo saw them. Lloyd flew away in a
pink ninja jet.
A snake
named Sen-Sei Woo had wide eyes and a narrow little mouth. Cole-woo took out his yellow spear and put it
in the ground and bars came out and hit Sen-Sei Woo on the head and Sen-Sei Woo
yelled “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!”. Sen-Sei Woo ran away and he took a sword and a
Chinese star and put them together and put it on a nun chuck with one stick and
started throwing ice balls. And he wasn’t
careful because an iceball bounced off of a trampoline and hit him in the head
and his head froze. And then a snake
named Iceball came and took his nun chuck and started throwing lightening and
it hit the ground where he was standing and he fell into a bottomless pit. And Cole-woo put his spear into the ground
again and it unfroze Sen-Sei Woo. Then
he put his spear into the ground again and a bar came out and hit him in the
face.
Then Cole-woo put his spear into the ground again and one
bar came out and hit a black snake and knocked his spikes off. Cole-woo put his spear into the ground again
and one bar shot out and caught the black Fire-sword that a black snake was holding
and gave it to Pegos the yellow ninja standing right next to him. They threw the Fire-sword at every single
manhole top and the snakes ran out like dogs and ran away and got on their
snake plane and flew away like nothin’. And
Cole-woo and Pegos drove and flew in their ninja airplane and ninja motorcycle
and they went to the ninja car and Lloyd came out and they got into the car and
they lived happily ever after in Joe-Joe City.
The End.
