US Common Core ELA

Poetry·Leila Yaghmaei, age 12 — A first-person retelling of the Icarus myth captures the exhilaration of flight and terror of falling through breathless, punctuation-sparse prose that mirrors the experience.

Story·Emily Grant, age 12 — A golden stallion who killed a girl's father returns months later, saves her from a barn fire, and earns the family's forgiveness.

Story·Chappell Sargent — While packing to move, a teenager discovers stories she wrote at age nine, including one that eerily predicts her current situation of leaving her childhood room.

Poetry·John Rager, age 12 — A student on a creek field trip catalogs sky and water discoveries, from mud puppies to scraped knees, reluctant to leave when time runs out.

Story·Dani Bergman Chudnow, age 11 — On her eleventh birthday, a girl reluctantly plays baseball with a younger neighbor, accidentally hits him with a line drive, and learns about forgiveness when he immediately wants to keep...

Story·Megan Petty, age 11 — A dog befriends a pregnant wolf cast out from her pack, ultimately choosing to protect her from a hunter and join the wild to prove dogs and wolves can live...

Story·Rachel Keirstead, age 13 — After her grandmother's death, Addie receives a mysterious locket and coded letter that reveal her grandmother's love story and a message about happiness.

Fog

Poetry·Robin Sandell, age 11 — Evening fog cascades over mountains like a waterfall, settles in the valley through sunset, then retreats at dawn back to the sea.

Story·Ethan Levin, age 13 — Two astronauts on a routine mission are redirected to stop a massive meteorite heading for Earth, but fail, crash-landing on the devastated planet to become humanity's new beginning.

Story·Ani Wilcenski, age 11 — A boy watches snow transform the landscape and records the lives of forest creatures, while his father sees only an eyesore to remove.