Jack London lived a life of adventure, traveling the world and writing about his exciting experiences. Students in grades 4 through 12 had the chance to write like Jack London and discover their own Call of the Wild in an original short story about an animal, an adventure or a quest.
Each written entry was judged on originality of thought and creative use of language by a panel of teachers and literary scholars. Winners in each age category received a cash prize. Here we share the first portion of three winning stories. Read the rest of each story, and the other top entries, at http://jacklondonpark.com/writing-student-contest.html
“Bennet”
By Will Schuler, grade 5, The Presentation School, Sonoma
Bennet, is a beautiful Bernese Mountain dog. Bennet is my dog and he saved my life. My name is Nathan Sanders and this is a story about an amazing dog who did an amazing thing. Let’s go back a few weeks and we will start there. We were going through some rough times, we weren’t very financially stable because my parents split up, and we had to move to a different, smaller house.
My mom and I were sitting in the waiting room of the vet, it was just a standard check up for Bennet. The vet came out of the check up room holding Bennet. She had a concerned but sad face. I knew what was coming, Bennet was an old dog, 14 actually, and the vet said he had cancer. My heart dropped, I started to cringe in sadness.
Bennet was my friend, my companion through all of my hard times. All of that, was going to be gone in a month. My mom tried to comfort me but nothing could relinquish my sadness. We have had Bennet since as long as I could remember. We had a connection that nothing could break.
School that day was horrible, it was slow and grey. That was going to continue after school because of the pound of homework I had. When I got home I went straight to my room and started to cry. My mom came in, she tried to calm me down and bribe me with my favorite dinner. I wasn’t hungry, just sad. Suddenly Bennet walked in and jumped on my bed. Him being there made me happier.
I couldn’t sleep that night, I was going to my Dad’s house the next day. Luckily I could bring Bennet, something to cheer me up. It was rainy that day. I packed and got in the car with Bennet. The drive was about 45 minutes but it felt like 2 hours. I hate my dad’s house. When I got there my dad didn’t greet or hug me. He just took my bags to my room and came back down stairs. The house was dirty and I mean dirty. There were beer cans and take out boxes everywhere. My dad is an overweight slob who doesn’t care about me. I decided to go to my room and read a book. At the time I was reading the fourth Harry Potter book, “The Goblet of Fire.” I read and read until I realized it was already 7:30. I walked downstairs, there was Chinese takeout on the counter so I thought I’d help myself. I saw my dad lying on the couch asleep with cheese puff powder all over his face and fingers. The cheese puff bowl and all of the cheese puffs were spilled on the ground. I thought about cleaning it up, but I didn’t want to wake my up dad. I walked upstairs and went to bed.
Read the conclusion at http://jacklondonpark.com/writing-student-contest.html
“The Meadow of Hope”
by Kayla Del Rosario, Grade 7, Slater Middle School, Santa Rosa
“ATTENTION! You will be escorted to the showers today!” A smartly-dressed Nazi thrust open the barrack doors, the brilliant sunlight from behind reducing him to a silhouette. The many half-starved women of the barracks lifted their heads, the same thoughts going through their heads at once. We’re ravenous, and bathing has been denied because it wasted a “scandalous amount of water”. If the rules regarding bathing have become more lenient, what’s to prevent meals from growing to a respectable amount? These women were so desperate, they were willing to cling to any amount of hope, however far-fetched it may be. The whites of Maggie’s eyes were revealed as she realized what the adults did not: the truth. They were going to be gassed!
Just shy of a year before this (although it seemed like a different eon) Maggie’s biggest worry was that she soon would be forced to endure scalding, tasteless tea, and the drone of a stuffy aunt, paired with the constant yells of her siblings. Something wasn’t right; she could figure out that much. Father and Mother rarely seemed to raise their voices above a whisper now, or talk about anything else than IT (as Maggie had come to call the event that was putting this much stress on her parents). A new escapade of eavesdropping didn’t reveal much; Mama and Papa seemed to have honed that parental sixth-sense to perfection. Last night, they had only uttered a few words before sensing Maggie’s presence and ordering her upstairs. “Young ladies ought to at least be ashamed when caught listening in on a private conversation!” These shrill words had absolutely no effect on Marge compared to her father’s disapproving gaze.
“Mama, I just wanted to be treated as an adult; it seems you and Papa can’t share anything with me nowadays!”
“Margaret Anne Cohen, you have no idea what your father and I are going through. We’ll treat you like an adult when you start acting like one!”
For once, those cumbersome skirts were a pleasure as Marge flounced them sassily, turned on her toes, and stomped upstairs.A gasp from her usually emotionless mother startled Maggie out of her anger. “The Nazis! They’re here!” Maggie dragged her slumbering siblings out of bed, quieting their sounds of protest. Following their parents’ whispered instructions, Maggie, Betsy, Howard, and Ruth clambered into the cellar. The trapdoor shut in the nick of time. A millisecond later, the front door was thrust open.
Sturdy boots shook the floorboards, and the cellar’s trapdoor was yanked almost off its hinges. Six pairs of eyes, wide with fear, looked up into pairs hardened by war. In a split second, guns were out, and hands reached for the sky. Seemingly degraded to animals, the (generally) peace-loving family was hustled out of the only home they had ever known.
Read the conclusion at http://jacklondonpark.com/writing-student-contest.html
“They Sparkled, Red and Gold”
Athena Sullins, Grade 10, Analy High School, Sebastopol
Nine years old, and I first truly felt the stars glint delicately around me. Back then, they were beacons of hope, little pinpricks of pride in the night sky. And I knew what they meant. What I didn’t know, was how much I would grow to cower away from their unforgiving gaze; despise them for what they did to me.
2077, NASA had just launched project Inigo, an effort to reach an extrasolar planet and place a Terran upon it. Humanity’s horizons had stretched far outside of our own solar system and now equipped with the technology to reach these distances, they eagerly leaped at the chance. Mission Requirements: obtain terrain samples, evaluate possibility of life sustainability, collect images and data units. Retrospectively, these numbers and input mean nothing to me. They weren’t worth what it took to acquire them.
In difficulty of connecting with others in my age group, and my inherent social outcast stature, I developed a treasured and long-standing friendship with my adoptive older brother, Nyle, and his space nerd friend. Nyle was taken in by my parents through a foster program a year before I was born. He’d been a wanderer, forever between households, but my parents, kindhearted, couldn’t let a bright and genuinely amiable boy such as him pass through another home devoid of a place to call his own. Nyle was fourteen years old when I was born, thus I was often entrusted into his care as a child. Responsibility was a serious virtue of his, so his trustability was high and his best friend, Nate, was no different. Your ordinary geeks, they were invariably toiling over wires and electronics, perusing the internet for thermodynamic theorems, and immersing themselves in anything involving astronomy. Very young, I paid no mind to their antics. It wasn’t until I could consciously process their thoughts that I developed the same, overpowering passion for the cosmos as Nyle had had his whole life. I began to take part in his and Nate’s research palooza and developed an unmatched knowledge of the stars among them. We developed theories, entered rocket building contests, saved up for a telescope. They were my best friends. They were my best memories.
A long, impressive tale made short, both out of top colleges, Nate and Nyle were offered jobs from NASA and in time were part of the Astronaut Candidate Program. A blur of Inigo applications and appointments later, and I still remember Nyle’s face when he received the acceptance letter. I couldn’t understand the shock. To me, it seemed he’d always gotten what he put his heart and soul into. Nate bursted through our door, a toothy grin fixated on his face. Started rattling off at unknown speeds about his offer to a pilot’s position on Inigo. I had no doubt that wherever Nyle went, Nate would be there too.
Read the conclusion at http://jacklondonpark.com/writing-student-contest.html
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