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Story·Daniel Shaw, age 11 — A boy reflects on the tree outside his old bedroom window—his silent companion through childhood frustrations—and its loss in a hurricane, while settling into a new room with a new...

Poetry·Rhône Galchen, age 11 — A solitary figure contemplates a metaphorical mountain that blocks their path, yearning for waves of change while trapped between states of black and white.

Poetry·Layla Linnard, age 11 — A child reflects on life before a new baby arrived, using a mirror structure to express the loss of sleep, space, and being a family of three.

Poetry·Grace Jiang, age 11 — A seed becomes a rose that grows tall as a dog, then withers each winter and returns, cycling through seasons year after year.

Poetry·Patrick Lusa, age 11 — A counting poem tracks a day's progression from winter owls at 2 a.m. through summer heat, using numbers to structure observations of daily life.

Poetry·Vidhat Kartik, age 9 — A young poet cycles through the seasons with rhyming couplets, capturing each season's distinctive markers from falling leaves to fireworks to hibernating bears.

Poetry·Irene Surprenant, age 8 — A wave narrates its experiences through changing weather, from gentle shore-lapping to tsunamis, lamenting pollution while celebrating the cycle of marine life.

Story·Natalie McGee, age 13 — An emperor seeking to build a palace in a birch forest must solve a riddle from the mysterious Dea, leading to his transformation from tyrant to protector of the animals.

Story·Arabella McClendon, age 13 — Alien scouts investigate Earth, finding a planet too corrupt to rehabilitate but too good to destroy, so they quarantine it until humanity can heal itself.

Story·Alejandro Lugo Saavedra, age 13 — A boy named Gabriel dreams of his Arizona childhood, navigates Pennsylvania middle school, then learns his family must move to Florida.