"Adventure is just outside your door waiting for you to seize it!" according to Ralph S. Mouse. This is what happened for these lucky youth winners. They grabbed the handles of opportunity to write fun stories and embellish coloring pages. Each did one of Beverly's favorite lessons in writing called Try!"
A cool fact about Beverly Cleary is she won a story contest when she was young.
It was a contest for writing the best essay about an animal. When she collected her $2 prize money, she was told nobody else had entered. She responded, "This incident was one of the most valuable lessons in writing I ever learned. Try!"
It is hard to explain how rewarding it is to have a child come to your doorsteps to bring a fresh story they are so excited to write. It makes all the volunteer work worth it. Having a conversation with kids who come to our local event and receive their t-shirts for writing a good story is fabulous. Kids stories matter and this has been such a rewarding annual event.
This year, we extended the writing time a week for all the child writers who came to the event and wanted time to write their story. Also, I hadn't planned on my youngest son competing at the Oregon State Track Meet for three days and I needed to enjoy his lovely life story too. For this year's contest, I knew many of the writers, so I used another judge for the story contest. My oldest son, Wesley, is getting a college degree in English aspires to some day be a librarian; he made up many stories when growing up and read many more books than I could keep up with, so he met all the qualifications.
Here are Wesley's choices for the best Beverly Cleary 2024 Contest stories about something small making a big difference while including a remote control vehicle.
Yamhill County Writer Winners
The French Fry Loving Blue Jay- by Madeline 5th grade
Squeakers - by Ella Hammond 3rd grade
Squirrel and the Trees - by Levi 4th grade
Outside of Yamhill County Writer Winners
Trash Chinchilla- by Julian 5th grade
The Bunny and the Barbie Car - by Joy 3/4 grade
The Little Button that was Broken - by Penrose 1st grade
Honorable Mentions
A Mouse Named Mouse- by Avy
Awesome Ellie and the RC Car- by Riley
Mulan Legos- by Nova
*(Stories will be shared on the next post.)
For our color page contest, the winners are judged by our Yamhill local artist, Kimberly Howell, who designs our color page each year. Please check out her website for more color page fun and her amazing card designs.
Color Contest Winners!
Laiklee age 6
Henry age 5
Eloise age 6
Thanks to everyone for participating this year! Hopefully, you'll be back next year in May 2025 for a new story and color page contest. We love to pass out Beverly Cleary t-shirts and all things Yamhill. (AKA "a small town near you")
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