Image via Wikipedia
Before I got sick, I used to play soccer. I liked it because you run a lot, and the exercise feels good. I would play with one of my friends. My favorite position was goalie.
I grew up hearing about soccer. My older brothers play, and I used to go to tournaments.
I like the team Chivas from Guadalajara, Mexico. I’ve seen them play on TV. One day I’d like to meet a player from that team.
Someday I hope I’ll play soccer again. Someday.
By Orlando, 19
Image by InfoMofo via Flickr
Once there were dinosaurs grabbing hot rod cars with their teeth. Their teeth were yellow and sharp.
There was a storm and some wind. Everyone fell in the water. They all drowned except for one who swam to the land. It was a dinosaur robot.
Inside the robot there was a guy. The robot was swinging its tail. The dinosaur robot broke into little pieces, and the guy fell out. He was sad. He fell in the water, and a shark swallowed him.
The End.
By Chris, age 5
Have you heard about Gulf Coast Reads: On the Same Page, a “one book, one city” program that will take place through September 30th, 2011? Everyone in the the city of Houston is invited to read and discuss the book One Amazing Thing by author Chitra Divakaruni, an internationally acclaimed writer who is featured in one of our WITS public service announcements and a big advocate for the work we do in the community.
This educational and fun citywide reading initiative is being presented in partnership by the Houston Public Library, Fort Bend County Libraries, Harris County Public Library, and Montgomery County Memorial Library.
The goal of Gulf Coast Reads: On the Same Page is to cultivate a culture of reading in Houston by encouraging people to come together in libraries, bookstores, community centers, homes, places of worship, schools and parks to discuss the book. This program will take place Saturday, August 27 through Friday, September 30, 2011.
For more details visit www.gulfcoastreads.org. More information will become available on events, book discussions, and author visits.
Please submit your personal story of “one amazing thing” that you’ve experienced to Gulf Coast Reads! Share your story with the rest of Houston. This is a wonderful opportunity for the arts to unite our city!
Image by epSos.de via Flickr
The Extremely Gross Monster
(inspired by a writing exercise in Karen Benke’s Rip the Page)
In the forest there once lived a leechish, fly-infested, oozing monster with crud-like scales. He was a serious bloodsucker. The color of his skin was yellowish-greenish like mucus. He had a deadly gnaw. The inhabitants of nearby villages called him pond scum because he was extremely gooey like sludge. He was also hairy and full of lumps. This monster smelled so sewer-like that he could make you vomit. When he emerged from the forest, people would act squirmish because he was so garbage-like, flea-like, booger-like, and blob-like! Anybody who saw him would definitely die.
By Quint, age 9
Image by althene via Flickr
From the website of Spilling Ink:
SPILLING INK SHORT STORY CONTEST FOR AGES 8 -12!
Short Story Challenge: We dare you to… write a short story about anything you like.
Word limit: 1,000 words or less
For ages 8 -12
Prizes:
First Prize: A $25 Bookstore Gift Certificate & a signed copy of Spilling Ink.
Second Prize: A signed copy of Spilling Ink
Third prize: A signed copy of Spilling Ink
In addition, all three winning stories will be posted on the Spilling Ink Creativity Blog.
Deadline: Monday, July 11, 2011
U.S. and Canadian residents only
WE DARE YOU TO ENTER!
Type or cut-and-paste your story into the Spilling Ink Contact Form. Remember to include your name, age, and correct email address.
Image via Wikipedia
Want to have some fun? Choose 2 items that are the same color and write a story or poem using both of them. If you need a jump start, read Joe’s story inspired by yellow.
Cheez-It and Goldfish
Once there was a Cheez-It that met a goldfish. He winked and said, “Hi, good looking.” She said, “Hi, how’s it going, Handsome?”
Cheez-It was floating like a square yellow flower on top of the tank. He wanted to marry Goldfish but he had to sink down to get to her. He decided to catch a ride in a water bottle submarine.
When Goldfish saw Cheez-It inside the bottle, she was amazed at how strange he looked. Cheese-It was inside the bottle waving at her.
Then suddenly the water bottle cap exploded off, and he got sucked out into the tank. Cheez-It got very mushy and soaked through with water. He started to dissolve into little bits of cheese. Goldfish cried out, “Oh, no!!!! My love is gone forever.” And then she jumped out of the tank and dried to death.
By Joe, 4th grade
by Marcia Chamberlain, Writers in the Schools
Dan Budnik photograph, The Menil Collection
WITS invites you to The Watchful Eye Reading, at 7PM tonight at the Menil Collection, 1515 Sul Ross. Writers in the Schools (WITS) has developed a unique program (initiated with the support of The Menil Collection in 1989) in which students visiting the museum write poetry and prose inspired by the work on view. WITS is one of many community nonprofits commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the Freedom Rides through the Freedom Now Project, Houston’s effort to retrace the Civil Rights Movement through educational programs and initiatives. At this event, The Watchful Eye, students will read their work inspired by the photographs in the Civil Rights exhibit The Whole World Was Watching. Award-winning journalist and author Mignette Patrick Dorsey will deliver the keynote speech. Following is a poem written by Brittany who tells us what courage is in her own words.
Power
I am very brave
Who or what can
Stand in my way?
I am fighting for my rights.
I know right from wrong.
I am a black man
With a lot of power and
Might in my hands and
Yes, I have many worries.
I might not be understood
But I know my place in this
World. My eyes hold a lot of
Things. My future is in my
Dreams, and I’m happy to
Know where I stand.
By Brittany, 12th grade
WITS Writer Ryan Dilbert will launch the tour for his book, Time Crumbling Like a Wet Cracker (No Record Press), on Thursday, May 19, 2011, 7:30 PM at Kaboom Books, located in the Heights at 3116 Houston Ave.
In a review of Ryan’s book, Jillian Lauren, author of N.Y. Times bestselling memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, writes:
Audrey, a failed tattoo artist with a worthless history degree, just fled an abusive marriage and lost the footrace to the joint bank account. Wallowing in self-pity, and hard up for cash, she hasn’t noticed that things are a little out of sync lately.
Was Benjamin Franklin really hit by a car outside a Taco Bell? Did Segway-riding Huns overrun the East Coast? How did Chevy Chase escape human sacrifice at the hands of the Aztecs, and why are archeologists unearthing Green Bay Packers helmets alongside the bones of neanderthal hunters?
Deep in Wisconsin woods, a deranged scientist is slipping back through time, in a quest to purge recorded history of evil. But this experiment has gone terribly wrong, and somehow it’s now up to Audrey to put things right before the world descends into chaos.
In Time Crumbling like a Wet Cracker, Ryan Dilbert deftly negotiates the surreal twists and turns of a unique time travel adventure. Dilbert is as witty as he is poignant. He exposes the complexities often embedded in our seemingly simple good intentions and allows us to look at the world with a radically titled and thought provoking perspective.
Join Ryan for an evening of fun at Kaboom Books!
by Marcia Chamberlain, WITS writer
What: Come hear students from the WITS program read their nature-inspired poems, essays, and stories in celebration of Earth Day. View clips from last year’s reading on YouTube .
When: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 7:00 PM
Where: Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, 4501 Woodway Drive (map)
Cost: Free and open to the public
Sponsors: Shell Oil Company, Texas Commission on the Arts, City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Kroger, The Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation, Copy.com, and the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center.
To learn more about upcoming events in the Houston Young Writers Reading series, click here.
WITS congratulates the following students who were chosen to participate in this year’s celebration:
Alyssa Alcala
Jocelyn Andrade
Alexander Berlew Arriaga
Justin Baxstrom
Richard Boone
Celeste Chamberlin
Thomas Chang
Marcela Chavez
Christina Chen
Deisy Cisneros
Alvara Covarrubias
Nataly Dominguez
Henry Donjuan
Ethan Dulin
Ibtissam El-Miaari
Cassandra Faz
Heather Hayes
Mac Holmes
Traneece Jones
Yosselin Leon
Yasmine Mejia
Jennifer Molina
Anthony Moreno
Logan Ramirez
Desiray Rios
Ramiro Rosas
Harshindra Sanamvenkata
Luke Stodghill
Robert Wadsworth
Amy Williamson
As I walked towards the front entrance of E.O. Smith Education Center to observe WITS Writer Deborah Wiggins, I sensed love in the air. On this Valentine’s Day, Wiggins’ writers were preparing to work when I slipped through the classroom door. An international performance poet with a commanding stature, Wiggins is a take charge teacher with a big smile and a warm heart. She wasted no time arresting the boy’s and girl’s attention, using a count-to-ten approach. By the time she reaches number 10, every bottom should be in its seat and all eyes should be on her. (She later told me her students usually are glued to their chairs by number 9.)
Deborah Wiggins inspires her 4th graders to create heart-shaped love poems. Photo by Jennifer Watson.
Getting the children to focus is one of the many challenges Wiggins learned since she took on the class last fall. WITS writers are tasked with developing innovative teaching methods that encourage children to think of language in unconventional ways in addition to showing them that writing about their everyday experiences can be fun. Although each WITS writer is given a sample curriculum as a guideline, customizing the lesson plan to each classroom is no easy feat, not even for a seasoned teacher like Wiggins.
“The biggest trick to working with the kids at Smith is [finding] engaging and active ways for them to interact with writing that transcends the page,” she said. “There are no interesting pieces without imagination. As long as their imaginations are alive, so are their emotions and stories.”
WITS student Guadalupe Hernandez and Mayor Parker. Photo by Gayatri Parikh.
In the spirit of the holiday, Wiggins shared a heart-themed prompt to inspire love poems. Everyone was given construction paper, scissors, and pencils to create a heart and decorate it and asked to write a poem beginning with a simile. The children read their work aloud, and the results were beyond charming. What impressed me most was the individual attention Wiggins gave to every student and her ability to draw on their emotions in a way that got them excited about describing their hearts’ desires.
Wiggins’ natural gift of connecting with her audience as a spoken word poet is a skill she transfers exceptionally well as a teacher. In a recent public performance she was invited to showcase both talents at the kickoff event for Public Poetry, a reading series established to celebrate poetry in the community. She brought along Guadalupe Hernandez, a 4th grader from E.O. Smith, to read poems in honor of National Poetry Month. Of the featured poets including Wiggins, Mayor Annise Parker, Rich Levy, Martha Serpas, and Eva Skrande, it was Hernandez who stunned the crowd with her two poems “Diamonds” and “Untitled” (below).
By Guadalupe Hernandez
My world feels
Cold and windy
The grass is wet
temperature around 65 degrees
it moves like a sphere
an airplane
the right way the wind is going
My world sounds like
Vibration of the wind
In my ear
Trees blowing
I could hear the freeway
When the wind blows
And the trees blow
And the leaves get in your face
And the bears migrate in the winter
And when it stops
It feels hot
I get mad
And our stuff flies away.
Her courageous performance was a testament of how writing “transcends the page” and manifests itself into an experience memorable enough to make a teacher/writer/poet’s heart incredibly proud.
by Jennifer Watson,
Writers in the Schools
I’m at home. The sun shines brightly in my face. I sit on the back porch by the Sports section of the newspaper which is only saved from blowing away by two scuffed-up, supposed-to-be church shoes. I lean on a box of shoe cleaning materials and wait for my mom to come outside with the shoe polish. I can smell the shoe polish as soon as she comes outside, especially when I open the box.
My grandpa comes out of the house wearing overalls, a crisp checkered shirt, and holding his cane like it is the only thing between the world he knows and his world to come. He sits down on one of the chairs in the patio set and tells me about how he used the shoebox often when he was my age. Every time the wind blows I receive a whiff of Irish Spring soap.
Two days later my grandpa is in the hospital. My family sits down to figure out what to give him just in case he “lets go of the cane.” We finally decide on his favorite dessert—vanilla pound cake. We bake and put our hearts into it. We send it to him in the hospital. The next day we receive a thank you card written by my grandfather’s attending nurse who had to write it for him. He only manages to scrawl a quick signature and an “I U” sign. Five days later my grandpa let go of his cane.
By Jonothon, 7th grade
Photob by anneh632 via Flickr
Un Breve Paseo a Discovery Green
El cielo era azul como un lago. La tierra era negra como una cueva, y el hielo era blanco como una ventana. Sí, había hielo, y yo estaba patinando en Discovery Green. El sol brillaba como fuego. Yo pensé que no podía patinar, entonces me agarré del muro. ¡Shwoosh! ¡Yo sí podía patinar! Miré alrededor, y vi que estaba patinando más rápido que mi mamá y mi hermano. ¡Shwosh! ¡Shwash! ¡Shwush! Yo patinaba más y más rápido. ¡Woohooo! El hielo era un trueno.
¡Chapú! Me caí. Raspé todo el hielo, y mis pantalones estaban muy húmedos. Me pusé de pie, y pensé que aún no estaba todo terminado ahora. ¡Shwoosh! ¡Shwoosh! ¡Shwoosh! Iba yo patinando nuevamente, como un pájaro que vuela y divirtiéndome como en un rollercoaster. Pero todo llega a su fin, y nosotros dejamos de patinar.
Entonces salí a buscar donuts. Caminé hasta que vi un hombre vendiendo donuts. Olía delicioso a pastrie y a azúcar caliente. Mi mamá compró los donuts. Yo tenía tanta hambre que ¡Smack! Smack!, yo comía los donuts como un cerdito mientras gritaba mentalmente, “¡Deliciosos!” Había sido un largo día patinando, tanto que hasta lamí el azúcar de la bolsa de los muchísimos donuts que comimos.
¡Broom! !Broom!, Montamos al carro, que mi mamá encendía, y luego nos alejamos del Discovery Green. Un abrazo de mi hermano cerró un fantástico día, que ahora sí, llegaba a su fin.
Translation
A Brief Trip to Discovery Green
The sky was blue like a lake. The soil was black like a cave, and the ice was as white as a window. Yes, there was ice, and I was skating at Discovery Green. The sun was shining like fire. I thought that I couldn’t skate! So I held on to the wall. Shwoosh! Yes! I could skate! I looked around me, and I saw that I was skating faster than my mom and my brother. Shwosh! Shwash! Shwush! I was skating faster and faster. Woohooo! The ice was thunder.
Chapú! I fell, I scraped the ice, and my pants were very wet. I stood up, and I thought that not everything was finished yet. Shwoosh! Shwoosh! Shwoosh! I was back skating again, like a flying bird, and it was as fun as being in a rollercoaster. But everything comes to an end, and we stopped skating.
Then I went in search for donuts. I walked until I saw a man selling donuts. It smelled delicious, like patisserie and warm sugar. My mom bought the donuts. I was so hungry that Smack! Smack! I ate the donuts like a pig. “Delicious,” I was yelling mentally. It had been a long day, skating, so much that I ended up licking the left over sugar in the bag of the many donuts we had eaten.
Vroom! Vroom! We got in the car. My mom drove away from Discovery Green. A hug from my brother closed out a fantastic day that, at that moment, had come to an end.
By Joshua, 4th grade
Photo by Troy Burwell via Flickr
