IB MYP Language & Literature

Personal Narrative·Asher Jenvey, age 10 — A boy recounts his journey through bullying and unsupportive schools in second grade to finding real friends and better teachers by fifth grade.

Story·Lucy Laird, age 12 — A melodramatic sixth-grader faces her turn at kickball, convinced she'll die of embarrassment, spiraling through existential revelations before being saved by the lunch bell.

Personal Narrative·Norah Grigoresco, age 10 — After returning from Chile, a first-grader struggles with English reading until determination and practice transform her from level B to level Q, the highest in her class.

Story·Ella Yamamura, age 12 — A girl struggles for three years to answer her teacher's question about her future dreams, only finding an answer after the teacher's death.

Poetry·Carolyn Lu, age 13 — A seventh-grader chronicles her weekly emotional cycle through structured verse, from Sunday's YouTube freedom to Thursday's tennis exhaustion.

Personal Narrative·Alina Khilchenko, age 11 — A girl's excitement about becoming a big sister turns to grief when her mother miscarries, teaching her about loss and the fragility of hope.

Poetry·Galen Halasz, age 13 — A young writer confronts human hypocrisy and self-righteousness, building to the admission that we're all guilty of the stupidity we see in others.

Story·Sydney Burr, age 13 — A girl waits in a sweltering car while her mother fights with broken gas pumps, her stream-of-consciousness revealing the death of her brother Joel and her parents' bitter divorce.

Story·Kyler Min, age 8 — On planet Kepler-22b, students compete for honors status while their alien parents work light-years away, until a boy discovers the dark truth behind 'organic' education.

Poetry·Daniel Shorten, age 9 — A child's fragmented memories of a play or film screening blur with overheard dialogue, creating an unsettling meditation on mortality and childhood observation.