ACARA Years 7-10

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — A girl walks a PEI beach at dawn carrying her sister's stolen ashes, confronting grief until a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's secret symbol in the sand.

Story·Sadie Perkins, age 13 — A girl visits her dying grandmother in a nursing home, struggles with grief after her death, then feels her grandmother's presence return to comfort her.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — After her sister Jade dies from a brain tumor, Cate steals some ashes and walks to a PEI beach where a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's safety symbol...

Story·Jerry Xia — A boy confronts his fear of spiders during a nighttime trip to the garage refrigerator, learning to see them as fellow creatures just trying to survive.

Story·Lia Clark, age 13 — In 1953, an eight-year-old Black girl secretly befriends a white girl through a hole in the fence dividing their neighborhoods, until Brown v. Board changes everything.

Story·Raina Sawyer, age 11 — A grieving girl flees a school field trip on horseback, convinced that reaching a distant tree line will restore her dead father and lost life.

Poetry·Dusty Gibbon, age 12 — A young poet captures New York City at night through vivid sensory images—scraggly trees, moonlight on curtains, flickering streetlamps—ending with the city caught in 'the tangled thicket of past importance.'

Poetry·Sophie Nerine, age 12 — A car journey through a mountain valley becomes a meditation on the overwhelming beauty of landscape and the intrusion of human presence.

Story·Ellen Salovaara, age 13 — A young woman preparing for her wedding remembers her father's death when she was eight and realizes she must let go without forgetting as she asks her mother to walk...

Story·Jem Burch, age 13 — A reluctant teenager dragged to a Ghanaian village for Christmas discovers friendship and joy through a local tradition of chasing chickens.