The six national Letters About Literature winners seated in the front row at the Oct. 8 ceremony at the Library. - Pat Fisher
Six young writers, ages 10 to 17, recently came to Washington, D.C., to accept their first literary awards as national winners of the 2004 "Letters About Literature" contest, sponsored by the Library's Center for the Book and Target Stores.
The awards were presented on Friday, Oct. 8, at a Library of Congress ceremony, and the writers read their winning letters, each addressed to a favorite author. They read them again the next day in the Teens & Children Pavilion at the National Book Festival.
Hannah Catabia from Providence, R.I. reads her letter about how Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" has affected her life. - Pat Fisher
Selected from more than 40,000 entries, the letters were bittersweet and poignant, noting the impact a particular story or character had on their lives.
"I want to be a writer that opens doors for people ... to describe occupations that not everyone can become," wrote T.J. Cienki from East Greenwich, R.I., to Avi, author of "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" (2003 Newbery Medal winner). "I am a ten-year-old boy living in 2003. I have mild cerebral palsy, but for one cool fall afternoon, I became Crispin living in the Middle Ages," Cienki wrote.
Jackson Fisher, an 11-year-old from Lincoln, Neb., also aspires to be a writer, among other things. Referring to "Hoot," (a 2003 Newbery Honor Book by Carl Hiaasen), Fisher wrote, "This book has given me the inspiration to try to do something [like cure a disease or save a species] and know that it is possible."
An author in the Oct. 8 audience said her readers' letters had inspired her. "As an author, it's amazing to know that I inspire young minds, but it's even more amazing how much these young writers inspire me with their letters, each one as creative, imaginative and individual as its writer," said Valerie Tripp, author of numerous books in the popular "American Girl" series of historical fiction.
One of the award-winning letter writers was a young man who had written to Tripp. "As a male high school student, I would never have selected a book from the American Girl Collection," wrote Gregory Tellier from Westminster, Mass., who could not resist the story, "Kit Learns a Lesson," he overheard being read aloud to his 7-year-old sister.
"I was drawn, body and soul, from my desk to the living room sofa: a 20-step journey that took me back in time to the Great American Depression, Tellier wrote.
The story made him understand his grandparents' practice of thrift. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," said Tellier, quoting his grandparents' "household aphorism." He thanked Tripp for writing "a living, breathing American history that a history book cannot truly bring to life."
A work of historical fiction also had a strong impact on Hannah Catabia, a high-schooler wrestling with questions of war and peace. For Catabia, the message of Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" resonates as clearly today as it did when it first appeared in 1930.
"Is there really such a thing as a just war?" wondered Catabia in her letter to Remarque. "Hope always lies somewhere between the regions of peace and war, a type of political purgatory where all the dissenters (such as me) are banished."
Laysha Ward, Target Vice President for Community Relations, congratulates T.J. Cienki. - Pat Fisher
Like the little girl in Hans Christian Andersen's story about "The Little Match Girl," Mary-Caitlin Harding, a middle-schooler from Brookfield, Conn., loved the grandfather who had given her a copy of the book. "Wrapped in shiny red paper," the book became a beloved part of Harding's holiday tradition. "No matter how old I got, I always let Papa read it to me." Upon his death, she tucked a copy of the book under his pillow "so that when we meet again he can read it to me, just like always."
After reading "Petey" by Ben Mikaelsen, Adam Jackson, a 14-year-old from Mooresville, N.C., concluded that he "can make a big difference in someone's life." Himself a victim of bullying by an older boy, Jackson already understood that "the way I treat someone today can affect their life forever."
But the title character in Mikaelsen's book made him realize that "being around someone with a handicap is a lot like being around someone younger than you. They are normal people, but they just can't do things by themselves." Jackson thanked Mikaelsen "for encouraging us all to understand that we are much more alike than we are different."
