“Really? You will teach me how to play?” he asked, not believing Since the last game of the 2018 finals, lots of teams have made roster moves and drafted players. The NBA draft came and went. Players signed deals with new teams. Now, the start of the season is approaching. This offseason, enough changes were made that nobody knows which team will end up on top in 2019. The biggest move in the offseason was the Lakers signing LeBron James and other promising players. They will be a totally new team. The Warriors got DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins. Dwight Howard went to the Wizards. DeMar DeRozan went to the Spurs and Kawhi Leonard went to the Raptors. These moves will make the 2019 season a little bit more exciting. I think that the Warriors and the Celtics will play in the finals, and the Warriors will come out on top. I believe that the the Rockets will also have a strong team.. The 2019 NBA season is going to be an epic season. (above image and caption from 2014 story “You Did It Friend,” written by Connor Gorton and illustrated by Nahome Yohannes)
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
The Westing Game, Reviewed by Ananda Bhaduri, 13
Another classic reviewed on the blog today: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, reviewed by Ananda Bhaduri, 13.
A young author talks about getting published: Tara Prakash, 11
After we featured her self-published book, The Hunting Season, in our Saturday Newsletter, we asked its young author Tara Prakash to write something for us about the process she went though. From here, it’s over to Tara. The Hunting Season by Tara Prakash, age 11 I got inspired to write The Hunting Season when I went to Wyoming and explored Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. We saw a lot of bears on that trip and I kept wondering what they were thinking about and what was in their heads.That was when The Hunting Season was born. So when I got home, I wrote on Microsoft Word a story about what I thought the bears would be thinking about, what their fears were and what events exploded excitement into them. I wrote whenever I could. Between my soccer practices and basketball games, every open time I got, I would sit at the computer and write. The plot never got boring or the long amount of time it took to write in never got to be too much. I sometimes got frustrated though, when parts of the plot didn’t match up, like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. My parents’ friend, who is a self published author, told us about Create Space, the self publishing company. Then, my nanny and I uploaded the Word document into Create Space, and Create Space helped us format the book; we scanned my cover artwork so it would show, we wrote a summary of the book on the back, choosing the color, font, size, etc. Then, from Create Space, my dad uploaded the book to Amazon and we chose the price to set it at and I wrote my ‘About The Author’ there. After it was out to the public, my dad emailed my school teachers, my friends, my sports team coaches, and family, and family friends. Once my teacher bought it and left a five star review then lots of my friends bought it, leaving reviews and giving me compliments at school. I started the story at age nine and finished the story right as I turned ten. I turned was almost eleven when we got it onto Amazon. If there’s one thing I learned during this whole process, it’s this: Keep on writing. All writing starts with one great idea. You can find a copy of The Hunting Season on Amazon.
