responsibility

Story·King Hey Chan, age 14 — A student questions the effectiveness of detention after witnessing a near-theft, then successfully advocates to the principal for replacing punishment with counseling and reflection.

Story·Juli Hiramatsu, age 11 — A spotless leopard breaks her promise not to eat monkeys, gains spots as punishment, and must apologize to her friend to restore both her fur and friendship.

Story·Miya Lin, age 10 — A girl reads about a catnapped cat in the newspaper, then sneaks out at night to search for and successfully reunite the missing cat with its owner.

Story·Lydia Young, age 11 — Four friends venture through Star Forest to save the Tree of Life from the Eternal Cloud of Doom, discovering Mother Nature needs help protecting the environment.

Personal Narrative·Roy Kim, age 13 — A boy shoots an arrow into the sky during a bow-making activity, gets it stuck in a tree, and learns to think before acting through elaborate attempts to retrieve it.

Story·T. Max Crowe, age 12 — A lonely man in ancient Greece trades his dog to a god to resurrect his dead son, but Hades punishes him for breaking the laws of death.

Personal Narrative·Billie Brown, age 12 — A young aspiring animal rescuer brings home a worm that dies overnight, teaching her that wild creatures belong in their natural habitats, not bedrooms.

Poetry·Sofie Dardzinski, age 9 — A young philosopher contemplates time's mysterious nature — how it stretches through space, moves at different speeds, and ultimately asks what we do with it.

Poetry·Benjamin Ding, age 9 — Thirteen playful poems explore opposites, paradoxes, wordplay, and environmental concerns through a child's inventive lens, ending with a critique of materialism versus nature.

Story·Tristan Hui, age 14 — A girl falls through her apartment floor into another realm where she teams up with a refugee shelter volunteer to steal a car and journey to the mysterious island of...