Stories

Story·Sabrina Guo, age 12 — An art student struggles to paint a childhood memory she doesn't have, ultimately creating a canvas that blends her parents' first meeting with imagined moments they never shared.

Story·Freya Jones, age 13 — A 13-year-old chronicles raising her 4-H pig Ash from spring to fair, knowing she'll have to sell him for slaughter, wrestling with love and loss.

Story·Rose Zimmerman, age 7 — A family camping on their way to Oregon encounters bears eating their leftovers under the stars, turning a routine stop into a magical moment.

Story·Seven Guo, age 6 — In a rainforest, a poor girl meets a magic butterfly who grants her wish for wealth, but the family quickly spends all the gold and ends up poor again.

Story·Yanni Yohannes, age 9 — A six-year-old dreams of creating an immortality potion, achieves it as an adult through a meteor fragment, becomes wealthy, then loses everything and returns to normal life.

Story·Natalie McGee, age 13 — An emperor seeking to build a palace in a birch forest must solve a riddle from the mysterious Dea, leading to his transformation from tyrant to protector of the animals.

Story·Marcus R. Bosley, age 10 — Ancient gods create humans and give them leaves for clothing and shelter, but when humans grow greedy and attack the gods' palace, the gods curse them to lose leaves each...

Story·Arabella McClendon, age 13 — Alien scouts investigate Earth, finding a planet too corrupt to rehabilitate but too good to destroy, so they quarantine it until humanity can heal itself.

Story·Linden Grace Koshland, age 11 — A small hut on a hill weathers a fierce storm, then settles into sleep as the sun emerges, its empty interior somehow full of the warmth of home.

Story·Pauline McAndrew, age 9 — A girl arrives at a family gathering in North Carolina, plays with cousins, collects wood for a fire, and finds home in the sensory details of the reunion.