Prompting Fictional Scenes in Response to a Novel by Jordan Sonnenblick

      Using NOTES FROM THE MIDNIGHT DRIVER, by Jordan Sonnenblick, for a writing lesson on how to convey a distinctive narrative voice, I challenged two middle school boys to write their own fictional scenes in response to the novel. We had read aloud and discussed the opening pages of Sonnenblick's novel, just past the point when the self-deprecating narrator, who is hospitalized after an embarrassing drunk-driving accident, discovers that he now bears a scar on his forehead as a reminder of his recklessness. I asked the students, Oliver and Ryan (8th and 7th graders, respectively), to write a future scene about the protagonist, Alex, having to explain his scar to someone he has a crush on, without revealing the mortifying truth about his uncharacteristically irrational behavior. The aim of the lesson was to maintain the humorous voice of the narrator while flexing their own creative muscles. Here are the outstanding results. I hope that Jordan Sonnenblick will read and enjoy these scenes! 

1) By Oliver T.: 

     I wipe my tears with my sleeve, realizing the severity of my scar. My finger rubs against the bumpy patchwork on my forehead. What will Alyssa think? I can’t get the thought out of my mind. I start thinking about cover-up stories: "My dad was driving when a drunk driver hit us head-on;” or “I was jogging and a car ran a red light and hit me." Probably not the last one, since I would likely be dead if that happened. I’m not sure what excuse to use; all I know is that I can’t tell her the truth. 
     Surprisingly, I kind of want to go back to the hospital. That way, no one will know what I did. Yet for some reason, one small part of me believes that the truth will reveal itself. 
I almost forget that Dad is driving me home. He is lecturing me about responsibility for the third time this week. I drowsily listen, trying not to fall asleep, or, at least make it look like I’m not asleep. 
    "You need to be more careful, always ask yourself before you do something if it is beneficial. Use that brain of yours. If you really are my child you should have at least some part of my intelligent brain," my dad lectures.
     He drops me off at Mom’s place, where my mother takes me up in a loving embrace. "I am so glad my boy is home," Mom says, squeezing me in a hug. "I hope you are alright."
     I know exactly what will happen next. Oh no, here it comes. I brace myself for my mother to change her tone and slap me on the cheek. She always does that when I mess up, but instead, Mother releases me from the hug and takes a good look at me. She looks at my tired, disappointed self and hugs me. "Go to sleep now. You still have school tomorrow," Mom says as she lets go of me.
     "Alright, Mom, Goodnight," I say, trying to have a cheery tone. I limp over to my room and collapse on my bed, exhausted from the hospital, but dreading tomorrow.
     In the morning, I walk to school, my head feeling much better than yesterday, and my confidence is better as well. After all, I spent the majority of yesterday thinking about what to say. Today, I finally decide to listen to the angel inside of me … sort of. Bending the truth ain’t so bad right? My plan is to tell Alyssa … 
     Thud! My shoulder rams straight into a pillar. I fall on my butt, wincing in pain.
     “You alright?” says a familiar voice. 
     I look up to see none other than Alyssa Stone. My palms start to sweat and my legs are trembling. I awkwardly get up and wipe my hands on my shirt.
    “Where’ve you been? You were missing for the past week.”
    “I was in the hospital,” I reply. “I was in an accident.”
    “What kind of accident?”
    “I was in a car crash,” I answer. Concern fills Alyssa’s expression. “But definitely not like too severe, but … well, like really bad but … I didn’t get injured too much cuz I was lucky but, like … Yeah.”
    I wince, cringing at my weirdness. My heart starts thumping.
    Alyssa raises her light eyebrows. “Uhh … well, alright, see you later. I gotta get to class.” Alyssa walks away, biting her lip.
    “Umm, see ya later … Alligator.”
    Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I quickly walk away and take a detour to my first-period class. That was really bad; I don’t know what happened. 
     A class period passes and the accident is still on my mind. I’m pretty sure Alyssa’s not looking for a guy that wrecks cars and murders garden gnomes. All I had to do was make a normal story and avoid the truth. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?
    Three periods pass, and before I know it, it is my lunch period. Time flies when you can’t get something out of your mind. I make my way through the lunch courtyards. My friends motion me to sit with them, but I ignore their invitation. I look through the crowded courtyard and meet eyes with Alyssa. I briskly walk through the sea of students toward her lunch line.
    “Hey,” I start, “sorry about earlier.”
    “Hello,” Alyssa replies, adding lettuce to her sandwich. “What happened when you ‘got injured really bad, but not too severe, but definitely not, yeah,’” Alyssa teases.
    I laugh nervously and start to blush. “It was a car accident.”
    “Oh my gosh, what did you do? Drive drunk or something?” Allysa jokes.
    “Yeah,” I respond.
    “What?!” Allysa jumps.
    “Only joking,” I quickly correct myself, with an awkward chuckle. “I was driving … erm, my dad was driving me home when a drunk driver ran a red light and went 50 miles per hour into our car.”
     “So that’s what happened to your forehead.” Alyssa points to my forehead. “It’s a miracle that you are alright. Is your dad alright?”  I quickly smooth my hair down.
     “Yeah, I just had a concussion and some alcohol pois—I mean food poisoning … and an upset stomach. My dad is fine.” 
     “What does food poisoning have to do with this?” Alyssa implores.
     “We were at a party, and … umm, their microwaved taquitos weren’t very good for my stomach.” I gulp.
     “So, you were coming home from a party and your dad was not drunk?” Alyssa replies with shock.
     “Umm, yeah, he doesn’t drink at all.”
     “Oh, sorry to assume. But I am just used to my old man getting really drunk at parties, and still wanting to drive home.” 
     I look to the side.  My mind is overflowing with questions and shock. That was pretty personal. She trusts me enough to say that? Does she like me, too? Should I say something personal back? What do I say back? If I just respectfully leave, it won’t be awkward anymore, right? I slowly back away.
     “Well, my friends are waiting for me right now. I’ll see you in English,” I awkwardly break the silence. 
     “Me, too,” Alyssa blushes. 


2) By Ryan H.

A Truth Too Hard To Reveal
I pick up some hot, crusty bread, placing it in a little bag that has the words ‘‘Bake ‘n’ Flake’’ across the center.  I smile at a customer as I quickly pull out the receipt, handing both items to him.
Pit-a-Pat, Pit-a-Pat, footsteps of employees and customers echo into the pleasant morning air as the aroma of sweet bread drifts under my nose.
Finger-combing the long strands of hair that cover my forehead, I glance around.  My eyes stop like an eagle spotting something interesting.  Amelia, I look at her, feeling a mixture of enthusiasm and eagerness as I steadily walk towards the table where she’s sitting at.
“Ahem, hi… Ummm... everything’s alright here?” I ask.
She always arrives in the campus bakery in the morning for coffee and mini-croissants, and I’m satisfied I have the morning shift.  I really can’t keep my eyes off her.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
I gesture towards her shirt that says “Class of “2020,” saying, “Hey, I think you’re in one of my classes.”
I stupidly grin and push my hair back.  Suddenly, her eyes change, they looked a little wide, maybe even concerned.  I swallow, pulling down a few strands of hair.
       “Where did you…” She paused.  “...get that huge scar over your forehead?”
       I gaze down, feeling her eyes dig into my forehead. “Ummmm… when I was young… I actually fell off a tree… and got a couple of scratches here and there.”
       “Oh, I’m sorry….my brother loved to climb trees as well.  He always fell off, too, but didn’t get too many gashes.”
       I quickly look away, realizing I have been staring at her light blue eyes so intently.     “Yeah, cool!” I blurt. “I mean...” Amelia looks at me, confused. “You know… I mean…uhhhh…It was nice talking to you, Amelia…”
       “You too—” she glances at my nametag—“Alex.” She quickly sits up and walks out as if in a hurry.
       Soon, my shift ends, and I see the bright yellow sun glistening in the warm afternoon through the windows of the bakery.  I scratch my head, as I head toward my sedan, looking back toward the table where Amelia had sat.  Where l had lied to her.  I rub my hand along the long, jagged, scar.  I let out a sigh as I step into my little car, taking my apron off and placing it on my bulging backpack.
       Screeeeeech!! I slam the brake as my car jolts to a sudden stop.  The student who was crossing the street backs away, shouting, “Man, are you drunk!? You could have killed me!”  He raises his hand, sticking up a nasty finger, baring his teeth, and cursing all the profanity I’ve ever heard in my life.
       I mumble under my breath, “No, I only kill garden gnomes.” I realize I’m not breathing.  I take a deep breath, feeling a throb on my forehead.
       The memory ripples over me like a vast wave, the time I had driven drunk and crashed, leaving behind a pile of crumbled gnomes and the zig-zag on my forehead.  I look down at  my white knuckles, as I grip onto the leather wheel.  How in the world would I have gotten a scar from falling off a tree?  And if I did, it wouldn’t be on my forehead, since that would mean I would fall on my head, and I’d probably be dead....

Emulation Exercise To Prove to a Student that He IS a Poet

          Before he started private lessons with me, Ethan, a fourth-grade student, hadn't written or studied poetry. So I introduced him to Sharon Creech's brilliant, middle-grade novel-in-verse Love That Dog.  In that book, the narrator, like my student, is a boy who initially looks at poetry as merely a language arts class unit that is somehow related to his literary education. Through emulating the poems presented by his teacher, the fictional boy, Jack, soon finds his own style and voice, and discovers some important personal truths that he can now express poetically. Ethan enjoyed Creech's book a lot, and when I assigned him a prompt from my book Writing Success Through Poetry, he emulated Jack by emulating me. Adapting my poem's structure and style to express his own feelings about the intangible value of a personal treasure, he created "My Soccer Ball." His poem appears just below the prompt, my poem "Nana's Ring."

                        

The very fact that Ethan willingly typed this poem and proudly offered it to me to post here--not to mention that he clearly understands the difference between tangible and intangible value--is proof enough of the benefit of encouraging emulation by young writers. Please feel free to leave comments for Ethan below.

What a Fourth Grader Learned About Superfluous Words

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     Today's featured student writing sample illustrates the benefit of teaching editorial skills simultaneously with writing skills: to enhance and encourage concise, vivid writing and a heightened awareness of word power. The writing sample also shows that students can learn even more from a writing or editing exercise when asked to recount it in a short essay, thus solidifying the understanding of what they have learned and why they needed to learn it. Such a self-directed, reflective component in a lesson enriches learning more than any teacher-led review.

     After teaching my fourth-grade student, Ethan, about the power of concise, vivid word choices, and about how to identify superfluous words to delete, I gave him some editing exercises. His eyes lit up when he realized how many unnecessary words he could scratch out of a bloated sentence without changing the meaning. Kids often love to cut out words, I've found, even more than they enjoy writing them; editing gives us power over words, even as it gives more power to the words themselves. Ethan's reflective essay paragraph (see the picture below), which he wrote after the editorial lesson, showed me that he truly understood the concept of "less is more" in writing. It also showed me that this young writer is rapidly learning to write memorable, moving words!

More Creative, Allegorical, Student Authors' Sequels to "The Animal School"

The parable "The Animal School," by George M. Reavis, consistently evokes creative responses from my writing students. Their enthusiasm for Reavis's story, which covertly criticizes the conformist, yet competitive curricula comprising many educational programs, does not surprise me; after all, my students epitomize the often underestimated, astute learners who aim to find passion and personal fulfillment in their studies. Grace and Joshua, two insightful middle-school students, responded to the parable with very different sequels, published below. Grace's sequel introduces a college scout who visits the school to assess scholarship candidates. The Eagle, who in the original story, performed the climbing curriculum his own way, defying the school rules, catches the eye of the scout not as a rebel, but as an innovative nonconformist. Joshua's sequel takes a darker approach to the topic: how schools foment unhealthy competition and dishonest, politically motivated schemes to fund their own system, at the expense of students' success and mental health. Please read these excellent stories and leave a comment for the promising authors below! 

CREATIVE AS WELL AS TALENTED:

A Sequel to "The Animal School," by George M. Reavis

by Grace L., age 12

One day, a college scout showed up at the Animal School, looking to recruit one student to receive a full scholarship.  All the students lined up, eager to prove themselves worthy. Nervous glances were exchanged when the administration announced the first event. 

“Climbing!” the administration broadcasted, as the elimination process began. Hours and hours of multiple subject tests went by before the scout declared he had enough. 

Silence filled the auditorium and the squeaks of the floorboard mapped out the steps to their fate. The microphone feedback whined, and the students shifted to the front of their seats. The scout, unbothered, flipped through his papers to declare his final decision.

“After extensively observing this school, I have reached a decision,” he states. “This year I will be giving the full scholarship to Eagle.” Confused looks filled the audience as they wondered if this was a mistake. 

Still unbothered, the scout continued to state, “Eagle has shown a significant amount of talent throughout the climbing test. He was able to be impressively faster than all the other students in completing the task at hand. Meanwhile, he was able to be creative and unique in the way that he climbed the tree. To me, this shows a lot of integrity, and excellence. Eagle was able to take his gifts and use them to improve. I found his character to be unlike others, for he is unmoved by the fact that he is different. Everyone else had worked hard to be so-called ‘average’ at every subject. The college I have come here to represent would love to have Eagle, an individual, who has the ability to be creative as well as talented. To all the other students, keep working hard and soon you will achieve the level of greatness that Eagle has shown here today.” 

To this comment, mouths and beaks hung open as teachers’ eyes bulged. The student that everyone had been guilty of treating like an outcast had outshined them all. Slow claps began as Eagle made his way up to the stage, his face plastered with an expression that said, “I knew it all along.” 

Soon after this event, teachers questioned their purpose, and students questioned their goals. When the administration finally recovered from their shock,  they began to organize students into classes based on their talents and passions. Furthermore, the track and swim teams were created. In the end, Duck’s feet healed. 

               🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾

Dark Days at The Animal School

(A Sequel to "The Animal School," by George M. Reavis)

by Joshua T., age 12

One day one at the Animal school, the head counselors decided to expand their acceptance. They had started accepting a variety of different organisms. The first to join was Clostridium perfringens, a form of bacteria. Even with these new organisms, the school decided to keep its current curriculum. The Clostridium perfringens was accepted early into this school due to their amazing performance in the SOT (Skilled Organism Test) and their stunning resumes. 

Clostridium perfringens, like other bacteria, were also able to travel through the air. Since the bacteria were enrolled in the wind-assisted flying program, this made them incredibly good at flying. They were also able to keep up with the fastest climbers by clinging onto the fastest climbers, ensuring their top scores. This was the strategy for most of the other events as well. The instructors were oblivious to this as they were always at the finish, awaiting the competitors. The competition was also oblivious as the bacteria were small and light. The Clostridium perfringens would jump off the animal they used, right before they crossed the finish line.

Since the Clostridium perfringens always tied against the top animal in each competition, this pushed the top animal to train even harder to try to beat their time, staying after school or at lunch to practice. This was no use as the Clostridium perfringens always tied with them no matter what. Due to the animals training harder and harder, they pushed the limits of each subject. This forced the head counselors to push the standard even higher. 

Eventually, even the top animals had a limit and just decided to give up on trying harder. This was the same for all the other animals. If they couldn’t even beat the top animal, they would never be able to beat the Clostridium perfringens. This led to an increase in depression, drug use, and alcohol use. The school desperately tried to hide this, and they were successful. The Animal School was nominated the top school for 5 years straight after Clostridium perfringens joined. This led to more funding to make the school nicer and more recruiting of organisms even better than Clostridium perfringens. All this to hide all of the student depression and drug and alcohol use. The more the Animal School hid, the more funding and money they got. The school eventually opted out of government funding and became a private institution. Although the school had so much money, they never supplied mental health treatment for the students, fearing that their rating would drop.

Two years after the school had become a private institution, the school had 20 suicides, 75 incidents due to drug overdose, 121 incidents of fights breaking out due to alcohol use, and a 60% dropout rate.

🐌🐍🐎🐏🐐🐑🐒🐓🐕🐆🐄🐃🐣🐥🐛🐝🐙🐘🐗🐠

Choosing Specific Words To Establish Tone and Set a Mood

     After my 10-year-old student Lisa learned about how she could affect a reader's experience by choosing words to connote a particular tone, she took it upon herself to send me these contrasting depictions of "The Waking World"--showing both a positive and a negative connotation. As you will see, Lisa clearly understands the power of words upon the mood of the reader, as well as the mood of the fictional characters. Lessons on "connotation" and "tone" are usually reserved for high school English classes, but I have seen, again and again, with students like Lisa, that avid readers of any age can comprehend word power in a metacognitive way. 

The Waking World (Negative)

Cold dawn light filtered through the gray, cloudy sky. People slumped their way into coffee shops. The gaunt peoples’ spirits were as transparent as a ghost. Rusty cars sat on the dark road, and their headlights, almost like eyes, looked menacingly at the passing pedestrians dragging their bodies across the sidewalk. Empty cans thunked against the ground and echoed the hollow feelings of the town. Children walked their bikes across the dead grass and didn’t stop to say a word to fellow classmates. Dogs barked at approaching cats as they hissed scornfully. Fungi grew on almost every tree and the trees seemed to say, “I am not a happy tree, I am an ugly, sad tree.” Flowers drooped and mosquitos bit into the unappetizing, but only food--the grumpy humans.

The Waking World (Positive)

Warm dawn light seeped into the air of the town. People emerged from their houses and breathed in the air as if God were standing right there and they were trying to breathe in the sweet scent. Coffee sellers came out to greet people with their coffee and maybe a pleasant “Hello!” Children skipped in the front yards, getting their bikes and pedaling off to school, and women pushed strollers across the streets, with babies echoing the cheers of laughter and happiness. The flowers stood proudly, fanning out their vivid colors and leaves. The trees stood tall as if they ruled the world. Cats purred and dogs wagged their tails. As the sun rose over the green mountain peaks, everyone set off happily to enjoy the rest of the day.

LEARNING TO WRITE FROM EMOTIONAL, EVEN IF NOT PERSONAL, EXPERIENCE

            Personal ads, written by lonely people seeking connections or reconnections with others, offer an emotional treasure chest of possible stories—both fictional and factual—to a creative, introspective mind. We need not have experienced the same kinds of losses, joys, fears, or regrets that the ad writers express to be able to awaken similar emotions and weave them into original fiction, memoirs, or poems. For example, a couple of wistful lines from the "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist prompted me to spin a story of romantic obsession between fictional characters who have nothing in common with me except these emotions: artistic passion, self-doubt, and a yearning for meaningful connections with colorful people. Emotional authenticity turns stick figure characters into fully fleshed out human beings. These are the lines that evoked my story:

                        “I shouldn’t remember you. Maybe you will fade now.”

            From those pained words, I wrote “Awaiting Fading,” a short story about a young artist who can’t erase the memory of a shopping experience at an art supply store, where she found herself enchanted by an employee with whom she shared glimpses of their respective artworks on Instagram before insecurity transformed admiration into intimidation, making the customer feel so unworthy of the new friend that she ran away from the store, as well as from her own feelings of inadequacy. The story begins with the lines from Craigslist, as the narrator stares wistfully at the now empty store, permanently closed, and realizes that she has no way to reconnect with the artist employee.

            I presented those same story-evoking lines to some of my teenage students. I assured them that by borrowing a pair of lines, and then taking off with it, like a torch passed from runner to runner in a cross-country marathon, they would not be plagiarizing, but rather, connecting and reconnecting with readers in the same way that the author of that borrowed line wishes to have connected with the one whose memory won’t fade. I gave them about 30 minutes to whip up a first draft of a short fiction worked based on emotional, but not actual reality. The teenagers were pleased and surprised by their own creations. 

          The on-demand short fictional works included: one story about a border security agent who can’t get a tiny Mexican boy out of his mind after the agent intentionally broke the law and allowed the boy and his family safe, but illegal passage into the US; another story about a person who once witnessed a woman jumping from a high-rise to her death, and now yearns for that death to stop haunting her; one poem about a witnessed act of charity in India, between a rich woman in a car and a child begging at her window; and another story about a soldier at war, forced to kill a fellow soldier who defied regulations. Each story's personal emotional reality gave texture to the purely imaginary characters and settings. 

(painting by my son, Ian Lipson, just because I find it inspiring...)

          Two sample short stories follow, one by Daniel and another by Liam, ages 15 and 16, respectively.

BITTERSWEET CANDY

By Daniel

            I don't know why I remember you. You, of all the people who passed through these gates. What made you so different from that mass of huddled souls?

            I can see you still. Your unbuttoned collar. Your untied shoes. Your toy bear, hugged tight against your chest.  I sometimes wonder what made you come here.  I remember stamping your passport for tourism. Your family said that you’d stay for just a few weeks. To see your relatives, then leave. I’ve gone and checked your records. You never did leave. 

            I sometimes wonder where you are now. I know that I should have reported you as soon as your visa was up, but I didn’t. I wonder why. What made you, of all people, so different from all the other I flagged and sent back?             

            Perhaps you’re not here anymore. Perhaps you were only passing through on your journey to who knows where fleeing from who knows what. You certainly don’t know, or didn’t at the time. Your father didn’t look at me. Your mother left so fast that she left a pair of pants behind. They’d fallen out of her luggage. I called her back, but only you turned to look at me.

              I still remember what was in those pants. They were blue jeans. Made in Malaysia. In the pockets were a crumpled up receipt and a candy wrapper. Caramelo agridulce. I asked my coworker what it meant. Why anyone would enjoy bittersweet candy is beyond me.

              Sometimes I think that I remember you for a reason. After all, God does not play dice. Why should your memory persist? I’ve seen countless deportations, telling myself that it was for the good of our community. I somehow always find myself looking out for your face. You must be grown up by now. It’s been ten years since you passed through our checkpoint. I wonder what your life is like. Do you go to school? Do manual labor like your father did? (The callouses never lie.) Perhaps I should have stopped you. Pulled you and your family over. I knew what was happening. I don’t know why I didn’t.

* * *

I Shouldn’t Remember You

by Liam

          I shouldn’t remember you. Maybe you will fade now…as so many of the others have done. 

           You never really did fit in with us, having nothing to boast, no stories to share, never understanding the jokes we told. I remember the nights you sat alone at the fires, staring off into the distance, as if grasping for a lost memory, while the rest of us huddled close in the winter nights, discussing battle plans and sharing tales of our women and children, thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Every so often, one of us would call out to you, “Come join us, laddie, tell us of your deeds. We’ve got a lot more wine to spill.” Yet, you never did join us. Instead, your sole response would always be some clever excuse to get away from our reeking breaths.

“Damn rebs,” you would say, in your best impression of a grown man’s voice, “Someone had better keep watch.” And so the nights would go on.

We kept our steady march, until the day we finally reached Bunker Hill. Then came battle day, our valiant countrymen, charging up the slopes, straight into the Americans’ grapeshot and musket balls. Our comrades, who endured so much alongside us were ripped apart, blown to shreds by the merciless rebels above the hill. Then came our turn, our regiment’s attempt to secure the fort. As we charged out into the open field, only you stayed behind, clutching the seams of your bloodstained jacket, crying for mother, crying to be taken back home.

I had to do it. It was my job. One that I had done countless times before. Yet, when I called your name, and stated your crimes for cowardice, I could barely force myself to raise my gun. My hands trembled as I poised the barrel of my flintlock against your temple. “I had to do it,” is what I now tell myself. “It was necessary for the discipline of the men.” But every time I close my eyes, I think to myself, “I am the man who murdered a boy crying for his mother.”

Stone Soup Story Starters: How a Stone Led to a Story

A box of thought-provoking, "found objects" prompts fiction and poetry writing when accompanied by the following kinds of questions:

• Who treasures this object, and why?
• When did s/he receive or find it?
• What were the circumstances of the receiving of this object?
• Did someone give it to him/her, and if so, why?
• Does the object evoke happiness, sadness, anger, nostalgia...?
• Does the object represent a memory, or will you show the character pondering it for the first time?
• Will you allow your character to narrate the story of this object, or will you choose third-person omniscient point-of-view?
• What if the character has found the object after losing it; or what if the character has just lost this object and that is the event in your story?

I advise my students to answer the above kinds of questions in their object-prompted short stories or poems. The only requirements of this exercise are the use of multi sensory imagery and my "D.A.D. Technique for Painting Word Pictures" (the use of Description, Action, and Dialogue). Below is a sample, written by a talented new student of mine, named Allison, about the object in the picture.

Stone Life

by Allison, age 11

I opened up the pencil case, hoping for another eraser to use, but instead, I found something else. I fingered the smooth object. A silent tear escaped from my eye.

“Why’d you leave?” I whispered. Without my wanting to, the memory, from three years ago, flashed in my head.

“Amy dear...” Grandma Jen stopped me at the door. “Before you begin third grade, I want you to have this.” She stroked my wavy brown hair, pulling it into a ponytail, and handed me a rock. But no ordinary rock. A butterfly shaped rock.

I gazed into her blue eyes. How I’d always wanted pretty blue eyes like hers, instead of my drab brown ones!

“What’s it for?”

“Oh, just a good luck charm for when baby Ty comes from the hospital.”

“Ty’s born?!”

“Almost, sweetie! Now run along, you’ll be late for school.”

A day later, terrible news reached me at school.

“Amy,” Mrs. Sunn had beckoned me to her desk.

“What,” I stayed firmly in my seat.

“This is serious, don’t be stubborn.”

         I sighed loudly, walking up to her desk. Was I in trouble?

“Your grandma was in an accident today while walking home from the store," Mrs. Sunn informed me.

Suddenly, everything was blurry. The news of my grandma's death was heartbreaking, because we’d always been very close. Then I broke down and started really bawling. I hoped the kids in my class wouldn’t laugh, for they had never been really nice to me. But, they didn’t. Maybe the good luck charm really was a good luck charm.

“Grandma!” I managed to cough out.

I don’t remember much more about her death, but I know that, for the past three years I’ve never felt the same. I put the rock back into the box, not wanting the memory to come upon me again.

Suddenly Ty barged into my room.

“Amy! Mama’s mad ‘cuz I didn’t eat my lunch!”

“Ty…” I began, “Mom made that lunch specially for you, and she even used Grandma’s recipes; those are very complicated. In fact, Grandma would even say, ‘Don’t waste food that’s been made with care.’"

“But-but the aspawagas is gwoss!” Ty protested.

“Mom has a reason to be mad,” I sighed. “You should always remember, Grandma was very important to Mom and me, so we want you to, at least, cherish Grandma’s ways, you know." I touched Ty’s fine, brown hair.

How I’d always wanted pretty blue eyes like Ty’s.

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  The circularity of Allison's story--with the repeated line "How I'd always wanted pretty blue eyes like..."--touched my heart, showing a nostalgic tone and an acknowledgment that people we love live on in us, even after they have passed away. This story not only uses multisensory description and subtle character development via D.A.D., but also illustrates a depth in both the character and the author herself. Congratulations, Allison!

  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and this story feels very appropriate to post today, as a tale of thankfulness for fond memories.