US Common Core ELA

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...

Poetry·Hannah Parker, age 12 — Day transforms to night and back again as God casts spells, fairies dance under stars, and the sun emerges like a yellow ball of fire.

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.

Poetry·Maya Wolfford, age 13 — Fire-colored butterflies, falling snow, and guiding stars become a meditation on how fate guides rather than controls, ending with the declaration that not all maps must be followed.

Poetry·Maya Wolfford, age 13 — Natural elements—waterfall, brambles, ocean, rose—hide their true natures behind false facades until one rose's kindness earns it the gift of beauty.

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.

Poetry·Gwen Deutsch, age 12 — A girl watches wild horses thunder down a Wyoming mountain, experiencing the landscape through all her senses in a moment of overwhelming beauty.

Poetry·Charlotte Tigchelaar, age 11 — During a river cleanup, a father's joke about 'raking the river' sparks a daughter's recognition of poetry in everyday moments.