Sometimes, the best way to experience a work is by hearing it read aloud by the author. Hear young author Luke reading from our fall session using our Stamps & Letters curriculum at The Booksmith: BOOKSMITH TMWFI reading by Luke age 8
Viewing entries in
TMWFI & Booksmith
This winter at the Booksmith, the kids have been exploring the magic of flight. In addition to producing imaginative free writes and participating in group writing games, students have written numerous works based on our central theme. These pieces include letters from Amelia Earhart, flights of fancy and stories written from the point of view of Icarus and Daedalus. Simultaneously, students have strengthened their prose by experimenting with craft elements such as personification and metaphor. Check out their favorite excerpts from the selection below!
From: Flights of Fancy exercise in which students let their imagination soar.
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My name is Sona Fly. I live in Criphea. My people are called Crisows, but people also call us fairies or flowers because our powers come from flowers. But for the past few months, the lands of Criphea, Somolian, Tolia and Gronzy have been in great danger. The Vortorians hate nature, peace and goodwill but the rest of us don’t. Now they have developed a powerful weapon called Foral which can turn smog into nature and nature into smog.
-Lainey
From: Flights of Fancy exercise in which students let their imagination soar.
The Fairy Who Touched The Moon
Many moons ago slept an Elephant Fairy, Rose. She loved elephants. One moon she decided to touch the moon. But how would she do that? The other fairies said, “Ha! We all have proper wings but you have elephant ears for wings! You are so ugly!” “Go away,” said Rose. She thought, I will fly to the moon and prove to the others that I am a proper fairy.
-Ava
From: My Name Is Poem
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My name is Phoebe. My name is made from gold and sparkling silver. I found my name in the Phoebe bird. My name can lift up boulders and cliffs. If I lost my name, the whole world would catch fire.
-Phoebe
From: The flight of a bumblebee
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I am a bee. I eat bears for breakfast. One day my hive explodes and all the bees fly away. I fly to another hive but an aardvark eats me. Then the aardvark eats the rest of the bees and we all live happily ever after.
-Christopher
From: One morning a bumblebee oversleeps and wakes up to find the hive empty!
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I woke up one morning and had my breakfast of honey. No one else was here, but it didn’t bother me because everyone always wakes up before me. I flew around looking for my best friend. There was not a single bee in the hive. I found a sign at the entrance: HIVE FOR SALE – please bring all the honey from this hive to our new hive in Flowerville. I was much too lazy to fly all the way to Flowerville, so I decided to stay and eat honey and not have to fly around flowers ever again for lunch. I took down the sign and put up a new sign: SOLD, it said. I went to the honey storage area. There was a lifetime supply there for 20 bees! For 5 days I lived the life of luxury. Then, on the 6th day, 12 wasps came to the hive.
-John Francis
From: One morning a bumblebee oversleeps and wakes up to find the hive empty!
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He stumbled over to his mother’s bedroom, still half-asleep. He installed himself in Bee’s bed and got robots to bring him junk food while he watched TV. So the days passed. A month later, Sleepybee heard a faint knocking at the entrance. He looked through it. Nobody. While he tried to figure out what happened, a wasp climbed into the window. Other wasps, who had thrown rocks at the walls, hid behind leaves, waiting for the signal to invade. When the signal came, the wasps’ leader, Stinger, herded the large group through the entrance. “Yaaah!” screamed a wasp warrior, brandishing an axe. The raiding party stuffed honey into wax containers. Sleepybee was soon found, hiding behind the door.
-Isabella
From: Personification of an object in flight
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I hang onto my tree as I’m painted in crimson and gold. The wind blows in fall and I twirl. My grasp loosens. Again the wind rushes past me and I twirl faster and faster. Slowly I lose the branch and gracefully I fall to the ground with my other friends. I blow southward, twirling more and more. After weeks I am slowly broken down. I lay down peacefully, painted mostly brown, too tired to get up.
-Amanda
From: Sensory description of an object in flight (superhero)
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Different problems different places Wind breeze in the air Rushing, whipping through my hair Like a fan in a home Saving people left and right Saving by day, sleeping by night
-Yudi
Upstairs at Booksmith this past weekend we started our new creative writing series for kids to a capacity crowd!
Led by our intrepid instructor, Zach Wyner, fifteen young writers are off and writing. They'll be trying their hand at metaphor and similes, learning about where writers find their inspiration and learning to jump off the free-write diving board!
Updates soon!