loss and grief

Story·Freya Jones, age 13 — A 13-year-old chronicles raising her 4-H pig Ash from spring to fair, knowing she'll have to sell him for slaughter, wrestling with love and loss.

Poetry·Eva Bandy, age 9 — A child stands frozen in autumn leaves, feeling deep sorrow for their death and unable to step on them.

Poetry·Rebecca Beaver, age 13 — A speaker confronts the loss of their heart to the moon, becoming a whisper of their former self in this surreal exploration of identity and emptiness.

Story·Lucy Zanker, age 11 — A girl and her robotic brother accidentally launch themselves into space on their father's NASA rocket, forcing her to disassemble him to return home safely.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — A girl walks a PEI beach at dawn carrying her sister's stolen ashes, confronting grief until a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's secret symbol in the sand.

Story·Sadie Perkins, age 13 — A girl visits her dying grandmother in a nursing home, struggles with grief after her death, then feels her grandmother's presence return to comfort her.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — After her sister Jade dies from a brain tumor, Cate steals some ashes and walks to a PEI beach where a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's safety symbol...

Story·Melina Ahmad, age 11 — Two six-year-old best friends spend a perfect day together at a street fair, unaware that boxes in one girl's apartment signal an impending move to California.

Poetry·Rafi Mohammed, age 10 — A lost red balloon travels the world searching for the child who let go, eventually finding freedom in Antarctica among millions of other balloons.

Story·Raina Sawyer, age 11 — A grieving girl flees a school field trip on horseback, convinced that reaching a distant tree line will restore her dead father and lost life.