US Common Core ELA
— A Chinese immigrant child's first day of American school transforms from terror to tentative hope when a classmate extends a gentle hand of friendship.
— A young poet questions why we divide the world into regions when their eyes see only one unified place where all people belong together.
— In a post-COVID dystopia where rich and poor are segregated, a lonely delivery boy discovers an underground society of 'Peacebreakers' who refuse to wear masks or social distance.
— During California's 2020 wildfires, a girl wakes to an apocalyptic orange sky and wonders when the world will return to normal.
— A child imagines friends attending a funeral in Los Angeles, writes herself a letter from them, then greets their actual return with the comfort of her own fiction.
— A child shares an apricot with a bird that grows arms, carries her away, then transforms into a beaked human named Carry in a world where apricots hang above.
— A girl faces her aunt's terminal illness through the metaphor of a falling bomb while a mourning dove sits motionless on their roof, refusing to move.
— A philosophical meditation on the concept of nothing — its paradoxical presence in absence, its role in thought and space, and its unexpected value in our lives.
— A dying man in a retirement home reflects on his life's losses—a friend's death, a failed marriage, and the changing nature of chess—while watching a cherry tree bloom.
— A sonnet celebrating nature's cycles through sensory images of water, wildlife, and seasonal changes, from sunset to sunrise, rain to bloom.