original perspective

Poetry·Genevieve Jacobs, age 12 — A bearded dragon observes its reflection in terrarium glass, mistaking it for another lizard until the heat lamp clicks off and the illusion vanishes.

Story·Lily Strauss, age 12 — Two girls repeatedly almost meet through various near-misses, until the narrator reveals their friendship would have diminished them both, making timing's failures a blessing.

Poetry·Izzah Khairi, age 13 — Night transforms a mountain landscape into a cosmic performance where moon, wind, trees, and lake become musicians preparing for the stars' appearance.

Poetry·Bethany Duff, age 11 — A meditation on wordless connection between living beings — running with dogs, dancing, holding babies — and how we lose this silent language as we grow older.

Story·Ellanora Lerner, age 12 — A volunteer meal deliverer meets an elderly man who asks her to write about his deceased son so he'll be remembered, then receives the son's funeral tape after the father...

Story·Corina Castillo, age 12 — A Navajo girl witnesses her grandfather, a medicine man, heal her mother from witchcraft by finding and burning a buried bear paw placed by a malevolent neighbor.

Story·Huong Nguyen, age 11 — A Vietnamese girl recounts her family's escape by boat, surviving storms and death at sea, through refugee camps in Malaysia and Indonesia, to finally reach America.

Poetry·James Lindbloom, age 5 — A boy secretly rides a magical winged sheep that flies to heaven, then falls and transforms grotesquely before dying.

Poetry·James Lindbloom, age 3 — A 3-year-old's transcribed vision of becoming the sun, bringing light to darkness, making the world proud with stories that come from the sun itself.