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100% written and illustrated by kids ages 6-13

November/December 2005


By

AE-51

Have you found a landing site yet, Mallory?” roared General Landings, gray hairs bristling. In the close confines of the ship’s cockpit, the sound nearly blew my eardrums out. I gritted my teeth and said, “Not yet sir. I’m scanning as we speak sir.” “Well get on with it!” He turned away and I shook my head. Jeez, that guy was irritating. We had been in space for nearly five years Earth time, but some new, strange technology that gave me a severe headache whenever I thought about it, made it possible to make the trip in little over a year. However long we had been out there, though, the general’s ear-splitting commands were beginning to grate on my nerves. I flipped onto a different screen in my little navigation alcove. A high-res moving picture of the planet’s surface danced around in front of me. The glare was hurting my eyes and I squinted. “Jax,” I called to the pilot. “Yeah.” “Try HG-737,” I said, giving the coordinates for a possible landing site. Sometimes it took multiple tries to get a good site, and I hoped this one would work or the general would have a few choice words to say. As Jax began the descent, General Landings leaned over my shoulder to look at the screens. “Does this junk heap have any life?” he asked. The importance of the moment had made him talk in a civil tone and I was eager to keep it that way. I did some rapid typing and looked at the results, interested. About fifty yards away, half-buried in the dirt of a dry, dead planet, was a space shuttle “This place has been dead since time began. Not a spark of life.” The general sighed and rubbed his eyes. He snapped them open again and glared at the monitor. “Didn’t we send a probe here a couple years ago?” I asked. “We did. And the stupid thing sent transmissions back saying this was a good place for making a colony. Probes,” he growled, and added a few colorful adjectives. “This place will work,” I said, trying to keep the general in a good mood. The ship slowly had started to shake. We were going through the atmosphere of planet AE-51 and I braced myself. This was the part of the flight where I usually evicted some of my stomach contents. The gentle rumbles gave way to a violent throttling that felt as if a couple of giants were playing ping-pong with our ship. My teeth began to vibrate in my mouth and I clamped them shut. I’m not getting paid enough for this, I thought. The shakings got worse and worse and I thought I saw my life flashing before my eyes. Somewhere far away I heard Jax flipping switches and cursing. I was sure I was going to have a few more white hairs after this ordeal. We got rattled harder and harder until we suddenly seemed to hover and then all movement stopped. “We’ve landed,” said Jax with a trace of smugness. I closed my eyes, gave a long relieved sigh, and released my seat belt. “Good! Now let’s get out there!” said the general, so loudly that he nearly knocked me off my feet. I opened the door to the cockpit and walked into the cabin. It consisted of a few chairs and a big red couch, a coffee maker, and an entertainment system. The two other men of our team were sitting there. They were twins, and I couldn’t exactly remember why they had come on the trip. “Bob, Ron, we’ve landed,” I said. They both got up wordlessly. They did everything without expression, without emotion, and I couldn’t remember the last time they talked. I often thought that they didn’t even care if we landed or not. We strapped on helmets from the racks and, for no particular reason, stood in a line. General Landings strode briskly from the cockpit, snapped on a helmet and, with great relish, opened the main hatch. None of us went out at first. We simply stood dumb in the cabin until Jax boldly walked out, her shoulders hunched. Following her lead, we all cautiously left the ship. I stared out the visor of my helmet. The flat ground was a dusty orange color with small pebbles scattered about. A small wind gusted around our legs, pulling up some sand and swirling it in the air. I looked around. On all sides were straight, empty spaces, not a single hill or bump. But it wasn’t the depressing landscape that left me speechless. About fifty yards away, half-buried in the dirt of a dry, dead planet, was a space shuttle. Bob reached it first; I think it was the first time I had seen him run. The rest of us approached it slowly, like it would jump up and attack us at any moment. I ran a gloved hand lightly up and down the rusty side. From the amount of wear I guessed the ship to be at least five hundred years old; but the model was very similar to a new version that had been made in America. Jax was examining the underside and I heard her gasp and swear over the speaker in my helmet. “What is it?” I asked, running over to her. She wordlessly nodded to the metal. I looked. The ID number of the ship was USA 29845. The ship we had come in had the same ID. And two different ships never have the same numbers. I called over the rest of the team and we all silently crouched in front of the large black figures, like an ancient tribe worshiping some idol. Even the general was lost for words, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. Ron fiddled with some wires and the main hatch opened. We all looked at each other. Following Jax’s example, I went into the ship first, with the team


By

Changes

Tick-tick. Tick-tick. The turn signal silenced as Dad rounded the last curb. After a long car ride, Orchard Drive was finally in view. My soon-to-be new house loomed in the distance. It was a sort of gloomy gray color with a ruby-red door that stood out against the drab surroundings. I had decided to like it. After all, what choice did I have? Mom and Dad had made up their minds. Come morning, the house was ours. Besides, everything at home, at school felt so . . . disconnected. It was all flat, the same old life I’d had since age five. I might even need a change. But life wasn’t bad exactly, I reminded myself. It was fine, and safe, I knew that. Who knew what was waiting here? Our old red Buick pulled up the unfamiliar driveway Dad unlocked the doors with a click and we climbed out. As we walked to the front door, Dad promised, “It won’t be long today, hon. I just have to make a few touch-ups on the paint job.” I nodded. The house was truly ugly on the inside, and since Mom loved to watch “Trading Spaces,” “House to Home,” and other interior decorating shows, she had taken on redecorating the house as her personal mission. Dad and I had reached the front door. He punched in a number in the lockbox the real estate company had attached to its handle. As he turned the knob, I couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the password?” Dad grinned, “Secret.” All these trees, with no houses behind ours! It was something I’d always asked, and the answer was always the same. Now we were in the house, and I was distracted by the awful smell! I coughed. The horrid scent made the air seem thick; I could barely breathe. Probably the paint, I told myself. Every wall had been painted, courtesy of Dad, and we had hired a company to put in wood flooring. Then I remembered— they had put a protective coating on the floor. That was probably not the most pleasant fragrance, and mixed in with the paint scent, the result made you want to hold your nose! But Dad admired what he could see of the house. “Looks nice,” he said, a bit of pride in his voice. “It’ll smell for a while, though, partly because of the paint, but mostly because of the floors. They put on a special coat of . . . ” I smiled, hoping I looked interested while being informed of something I’d just figured out for myself, but I was putting all my efforts into trying not to gag on the scent. How could I survive even fifteen minutes in here? “Look, Dad,” I said, interrupting him. “Maybe I can go outside today I mean, it’s the warmest weather we’ve had this spring, and we’ve got that whole woods in our backyard . .. ” He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t let me go. “I think—oh, go ahead. Have fun.” *          *          * I’d always loved walking in the woods, but the opportunity hardly presented itself. We lived in a city, and our backyard had been a few yards of grass, but this—this was heaven! All these trees, with no houses behind ours! I set out, but to my disappointment, the trees were purposely planted in rows. Not a woods to have adventures in, not a natural forest. These trees were planted by man. As I walked through orderly rows of maple and pine, I thought about life. Well, I thought about moving, in particular. The same old thoughts I’d been thinking ran through my head. A change. That sounded inviting. I envisioned myself with new friends, great friends, an awesome school . . . but who was I kidding? I wasn’t the most outgoing person in the universe, and I certainly wouldn’t be surrounded by friends at the end of September. The best date I could expect friends by was December. Change, I told myself. Change is nice. But moving? Isn’t that a little extreme? Moving is much too permanent, too final. It takes away everything—specially friends. I’d still see them once in a while, but . . . There was nothing wrong with life as it was. It just needed a little spice, like a new hobby, or new friends, or both. I wondered if I could convince my parents to back out of it. The contract, Mom had told me, wasn’t signed yet, but tomorrow they had a meeting with the current owner and then the papers would be signed. The owner had let us do whatever we pleased with the house (such as paint it) for right now. I forced myself to let my thoughts wander, and became aware that I was now walking through an assortment of different trees, not the rows I’d been walking on before. I wondered if I was still on the property Who owned the land behind this, anyway? I imagined running into an escaped convict, and from there, my thoughts ran wild. I spotted a beer bottle, and then a broken piece of pottery. Could someone really be living back here?! Frantically, I walked straight ahead, thinking maybe I’d run into a house soon, until my path was blocked by a thick row of bushes that stretched on and on. I trudged through it, only getting three scratches, but I tripped on a fallen branch and fell flat on my face. Something had cushioned my fall. I glanced down. Grass, piles of it. The lush green grass you only see on TV commercials. I didn’t feel any pain, so I looked around. Oh, the sunlight! I hadn’t realized how dark it had been among the trees. There was that bright, lush, green grass, with a large bush here and there. Little yellow wildflowers and purple crocuses sprinkled the ground, and I spotted a lone robin making a nest inside one of the


By

A Boy No More

A Boy No More, by Harry Mazer; Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing: New York, zoo4; $15.95 Harry Mazer’s book, A Boy No More, is set during World War II. On December 7, 1941, Adam Pelko, a fourteen-year-old boy, and his friends Davi and Martin were in a rowboat when the bombs fell on the USS Arizona on which Adam’s father served. This was the legendary Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon afterwards, Adam was evacuated from Hawaii with his family and moved to San Diego to start a new life. The author adopted the perspective of Adam to tell this page-turning adventure. I find this point of view makes World War II seem a lot clearer, especially because it is so remote in time to me. In the vivid descriptions, I felt Adam’s struggle to survive life without his father, his need to be responsible and work to help his family, his bonding friendship with Davi, and his frustration at others who were either lazy or counterproductive. In the second chapter Adam recalls, “I saw my father’s ship, that great battleship the USS Arizona, explode and sink.” This scene reminds me of when my family went to Hawaii for a vacation two years ago. We visited USS Arizona Memorial Center at Pearl Harbor. When I was standing on the memorial that straddled the sunken battleship’s hull, I could still see the roof of the cabins and the smokestack. There were trickles of oil seeping to the surface of the water around the ship, making the water murky, dark, and shiny. I was saddened by the death of the sailors in Pearl Harbor. Even though I am so far in history from World War II, I have witnessed a similar horrifying catastrophe in my day: the collapsing of the Twin Towers on September II, 2001. I remember clearly when I saw the planes hit the Twin Towers on the television. I recall the loud sirens, the burning flames and the people running on the streets, and finally, the whole building slowly collapsing into black smoke. A Boy No More is a captivating story about history that we should remember. Harry Mazer wrote another book about Adam and Davi, which I will read, called A Boy at War. Some other stories around this time frame are Don’t You Know There’s a War On? by Avi, and Bat 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff. I strongly suggest that anyone who is interested in learning about the history of World War II read this book. Dylan Sun, 10Califon, New Jersey