animals

Story·Karen Susanto, age 13 — A fox drinking at a forest pond narrowly escapes a stone thrown by humans, whose intrusion shatters the peaceful sanctuary.

Elk

Poetry·Cecilia Appel, age 13 — An elk wades through winter snow and calls to the sky, promising that spring will return to transform the frozen landscape.

Story·Sienna Rapaport, age 10 — A girl with a vast imagination discovers her father is the legendary Bird of Steel and must steal his power to save Riverhaven from eternal conflict between humans and magical...

Personal Narrative·Elena Baltz, age 10 — A 10-year-old recounts the day she had to put down Cody, her elderly pet rat, six months after losing his brother Spencer.

Story·Ever Sun, age 10 — A city girl discovers a magical forest where animals talk and time moves differently, spending what she thinks is a year but is actually ten years researching nature.

Poetry·Amber Zhao, age 10 — A young visitor transforms an aquarium trip into a meditation on humanity's relationship with nature, moving from wonder to environmental critique and back to artistic creation.

Poetry·Gabe Horowitz, age 10 — A swan gliding across a lake becomes a meditation on how serenity can expand from a single creature to transform an entire landscape.

Story·Rose Amer, age 10 — A girl who hates her ugliness wishes on a star to bring her stone gargoyle to life, then learns through painful transformations that she was already beautiful.

Story·Dana Yehia, age 8 — An alien from planet Watercolors dreams of being an explorer, builds his own spaceship to visit Earth, and ends up copying everything humans say because he doesn't speak English.

Story·Analise Braddock, age 8 — Four short fables explore consequences: a classroom prank gone wrong, a misdirected letter, celestial bodies in conflict, and a girl's persistent belief she can fly.