Renoir

Flash contest #15: Write a story or poem inspired by a Renoir painting. The week commencing July 6 (Daily Creativity Prompt #76) was our fifteenth week of flash contests, with a prompt that took us back to the scene of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. Our entrants wrote a story or poem inspired by Renoir’s painting this week. We received more entires than we expected, and, as always, enjoyed reading all of the writings that were submitted. It was fun to see how differently many of you approached imagining going into the scene in the painting: the judges read everything from mystery stories to poems written from the perspective of the lamps in the trees (a couple of our Highly Commended choices)! One of our winning writers this week also sent an updated version of the painting, apparently made for her by Renoir himself, to go with her story (thanks, Ruby!). Well done to all of our entrants, and particular congratulations to all of our Winners and Honorable Mentions! See below for all of their names, and keep reading to experience the writing created by our winners. Winners “The Brendon Disappointment” by Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH “Paris in a Painting” by Fern Hadley, 11, Cary, NC “Let There Be Cake!” by James Hou, 10, Short Hills, NJ “Summer Day” by Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME “A Taste of Bal du Moulin de la Galette” & its illustration “Travelling back to Moulin de la Galette,” by Ruby Xu, 10, Annandale, VA Honorable Mentions “Lost Lisette in a Crowd” by Joyce Hong, 10, Oakville, ON “Allia T. and the Case of the Disappearing Violinist” by Naomi Kap, 11 “An Atypical Guest at the Moulin de la Galette” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9, San Jose, CA “Mama’s Mask” by Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA “The Journal Entry of a Pessimistic Person” by Charlotte Zhang, 11, Portland, OR Lucy Berberich, 11Oxford, OH The Brendon Disappointment Lucy Berberich, 11 The music is loud and joyous, and the smell of popcorn and drinks in the air made the occasion all the more bright. The young Wendy Brendon, dressed in a dark magenta gown, is sitting at a table, swinging her legs back and forth to the music, eyes dancing with glee. She was only thirteen, but she’d already attended several festivals like this one. They never failed to brighten her mood, though. Wendy was a cheerful young girl and almost never had a frown on her face. This day was no exception. She was grinning eagerly, taking in everything around her like it was all a new sight. Her parents were dancing off to the side, giving her a sideways glance every now and then, wondering if she was going to do something other than sit and stare. She hadn’t planned on it. She just enjoyed watching. All the happy people, dancing, laughing. It was nice just to see them, even if she didn’t join in herself. As the wind picked up a bit, Wendy felt her hair blowing around her head, the little hat that sat atop it tilting and threatening to fly away. She knew if she let her outfit get mussed up her mother would be livid. Mama Brendon was quite strict and cared an awful lot about her daughter’s appearance. Wendy wasn’t a beauty queen, no boy ever looked twice at her, and Mama Brendon was always trying to find out why, what the reason was for this. Papa Brendon couldn’t care less, and was always taking Wendy out to the market or to work with him to let her get away from her mother’s hovering. Perhaps part of the reason Wendy loved these events was because her mother was distracted and didn’t have time to fuss over her. Her parents were quite the big-shots in the town business. Her father owned a huge company that ran quite a lot of the town, and her mother was a member of almost every club, board, and organization in the vicinity. They were well-known, and were always getting invited to things. Her parents didn’t enjoy them like she did; they just didn’t want to decline and seem impolite. Her parents were obsessed with being polite. So the fact that Wendy never even got up, or danced, or took part in the events at all was quite a disappointment to her parents. She was so carefree and all around un-ladylike that she was ridiculed and looked down upon by most of the residents of the town. Not that it mattered to Wendy. She wanted people to like her, sure. But she wanted them to like her for her, not because she acted like her mother, or, god forbid, her elder sister, who was the perfect child. They didn’t get along, and Wendy didn’t want to be anything like her. Maria was shallow. She had no personality, no ambition, no goals, nothing that she strived for. Wendy didn’t want to be like that, a doormat for people who treated her like garbage because she was “the weaker sex”. That wasn’t who she was, or who she would ever be. She wanted to enjoy life to the fullest, experiencing all the things that men could experience. So for the time being, she’d act the way she wanted to act. Grin from ear to ear, eat whatever she wanted, talk the way she wanted to talk. She was going to be who she wanted to be. People, her parents, her sister, and everyone, would just have to learn to deal with her. Simple as that. Fern Hadley, 11 Cary, NC Paris in a Painting Fern Hadley, 11 I gaze at the painting blankly. Is this meant to be a powerful piece of artwork? I ask myself. Because I’m not feeling its power. Confused, I wonder if I can call myself an art lover if I don’t understand art at all. Making an effort to understand the painting, I study the image before me. My eyes,