Two Kids Place First in State Writing Contest

Two Westminster-area students were first place winners in the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council (SMIRAC) young author's contest.

Riley Legler, a fourth-grade student at , won first place in the poetry category for her entry "I am a poem."

Max Ruby, a third-grade student at Sandymount Elementary School, won first place for his story, "Journey of the Monarch."

"I am a Poem" by Riley Legler

I am a poem,
Sweet or sad

Any line any stanza
I'll never be bad

I am a poem
My words make you ponder

As you read me, 
Your own thoughts may begin to wander

I am a poem
A comfort at night,

My words glow like a candlelight

I am a poem
Funny as can be

Tickling your funny bone
Just wait and see

I am a poem
To find, read and share

Poems can take you
Just about anywhere

I am a poem

---

"The Journey of the Monarch" by Max Ruby

Imagine you are a golden sparkling monarch egg, smaller than a grain of sand.  Fluttering from plant to plant your mother gently placed you on the underside of a warm poisonous milkweed leaf.  The field is filled with hundreds of eggs that will hatch into your brothers and sisters.

Three days have passed and your golden egg is now a dark sparkling silver.  Inside your egg you are getting so tremendously big yet you are so tremendously small.  You munch your way out.  You start eating everything around you, including your eggshell!  Your skin gets too tight so you shed it!  Two weeks have passed…

Now you climb up to the very top of the milkweed leaf.  You hang up side down in a J shape.  This is the last time you shed your old skin.  Your new skin is not the same.  It is now a golden light green.  You are in your new chrysalis.  Inside you are going through dramatic changes.  In the ten days you are changing you grow clearer.  You are ready…

After ten days of waiting and changing a fracture appears in the chrysalsis.  You gently crawl out.  You rest for a couple of hours and you take off!  You are now officially an adult monarch butterfly!  You soar in the air as you fly.

You flutter all around the milkweed field.  Up in a tall tree a bird sees you.  At first it does not notice your bright orange color.  The bird swoops down, about to eat you when you spread your wings.  Now he sees your bright colors.  Your bright colors means that you are poisonous.  The bird flies away thinking, "you taste awful!"

On your way back home you lay eggs as you go.  After about 700 tiny eggs your body drops.  Your heart stops.  You die.  But in those milkweed fields, the life cycle starts all over again.  The end.

The winning authors were honored at a reception this weekend at the Hunt Valley Marriott. Their works will also be compiled in an anthology.