emotional depth

Poetry·Celeste Escobar, age 9 — A child celebrates physical connection with the earth through barefoot play, describing the planet as a mother whose sandy skin invites daily touch and joy.

Story·Samantha Abrishani, age 12 — A girl discovers mysterious footprints leading into the ocean, searches for her missing brother, and befriends the reclusive neighbor who reveals she once cared for a dolphin-boy.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — A girl walks a PEI beach at dawn carrying her sister's stolen ashes, confronting grief until a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's secret symbol in the sand.

Story·Sadie Perkins, age 13 — A girl visits her dying grandmother in a nursing home, struggles with grief after her death, then feels her grandmother's presence return to comfort her.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — After her sister Jade dies from a brain tumor, Cate steals some ashes and walks to a PEI beach where a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's safety symbol...

Story·Melina Ahmad, age 11 — Two six-year-old best friends spend a perfect day together at a street fair, unaware that boxes in one girl's apartment signal an impending move to California.

Story·Jerry Xia — A boy confronts his fear of spiders during a nighttime trip to the garage refrigerator, learning to see them as fellow creatures just trying to survive.

Story·Raina Sawyer, age 11 — A grieving girl flees a school field trip on horseback, convinced that reaching a distant tree line will restore her dead father and lost life.

Story·Julia Lockwood, age 12 — A girl who visits graves meets the ghost of Ada Lee Clemmons, an eleven-year-old who died in 1907, and realizes she's been keeping the forgotten child company.

Poetry·Stewart Hoelscher — A child's meditation on the moon's solitude and steadfast companionship with Earth, emphasizing its loneliness through repetition.