seeing beauty in the ordinary

Poetry·Isabel Sutter, age 12 — A girl hangs laundry on a summer day, watching a monarch butterfly and mourning dove while sunlight transforms ordinary towels into an artist's palette.

Story·Elise Watt, age 13 — During community service punishment, Bailey watches ducks struggle free from thorns and finds hope for her parents battling her father's cancer.

Story·Eliza Putnam, age 12 — Three friends spend a summer day cloud-watching, playing word games, climbing rocks, and spinning down hills until they're dizzy and mud-covered.

Story·Emmy J. X. Wong, age 12 — A Maine family transforms their seafood restaurant into a tropical paradise when a nor'easter threatens to cancel the parents' long-awaited twentieth anniversary honeymoon to the Bahamas.

Poetry·Anna Elizabeth Blech, age 12 — A gondola ride on a New York lake at dusk becomes a meditation on the city's transformation as day turns to night, ending with the gondolier's Italian song.

Poetry·Wujun Ke — A poem traces the transition from pre-dawn silence through the first bird's call to full morning chorus as day breaks.

Poetry·Mina Alexandra Oates, age 7 — A winter morning at a lake where steam rises, ducks linger, and observers choose traffic over stillness, missing the quiet moment.

Poetry·Eden Amital, age 13 — Gulls fly between mountain peaks while the immobile rocks' shadows dance below, exploring the contrast between movement and stillness in a landscape.

Story·Lizzy Teerlink, age 13 — A young boy in 1950s Chicago waits for Christmas morning when a reindeer mysteriously enters his bedroom, leaving him with a magical encounter he'll never forget.

Poetry·Dylan Sherman, age 10 — White becomes a meditation on beauty and renewal through images of doves, snow, sails, and roses emerging from ashes.