Young Writers Project

Each week, Young Writers Project receives several hundred submissions from students in Vermont and New Hampshire in response to writing prompts, and the best are selected for publication here and in 21 other newspapers and on vpr.net. Read more writing at youngwritersproject.org.

This week, we publish writing in response to prompts: Photo 5 (Great cedar tree, Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, 1897) © William McFarlane Notman); and Elements: What is the strongest and/or most beautiful force in nature?

Prompt: Photo 5

The Woman in the Yellow Dress

By Meghan Hilferty

Grade 8, Crossett Brook Middle School

I am playing hide and seek with my friends. I’m hiding behind a tree where no one can see me, my back against the tree and my hands on the trunk. I look to my right and my left to see if anyone is near. I hear screaming and laughing but they are far away. The breeze is soft and the sounds grow faint…

No one comes and I wonder if they forgot about me. But then I hear a branch snap and wonder if it’s one of my friends. I look to my right and turn my body, facing the tree in a crouching position. I find a road and a black carriage and a white horse behind the tree. The road wasn’t there when I got here. I find a person too, but it isn’t my friend, it is a woman in an old dress from the 1870s or so. She wears a long yellow dress and has a yellow umbrella. She taps the tree with her umbrella and a door opens. A cave or something is there. She goes inside; I decide to follow her. Into the cave I go. It is dark and I can’t see. I fall in and that it is the last thing that happens to me.

Imagine

By Jessica Lamb

Grade 7, Crossett Brook Middle School

The strongest and most beautiful element is earth. Close your eyes and imagine running through the woods, bare feet feeling the ground move underneath you. You look around and see birds flying gracefully, water streaming, and plants poking out of the ground…

You hear a faint noise off in the distance; a fisher cat den is near. You hear them pouncing and playing. Paw prints are on the muddy earth.

The trees branches are bound together with leaves. There are stairs made out of a log going down the bank. You climb down the stairs to the stream, see the trickling of a waterfall. You look in the pool of water and only see your face, just like a mirror. The birds and bees fly around. Some pitter-patter flakes of snow fall on the ground. You look behind you and a burnt tree is there from where fire struck... Trees move around with the wind as they please. Everything is beautiful but also strong from fighting the snow, wind, and rain, from the animals that scamper and climb all day long. The earth holds many treasures that have not been discovered. We think we have seen it all; we have only seen the beginning. The earth holds together like a big family. Go in the woods right now, look around to see the sites, smell the smells, hear the noises, and touch the world…

To read the complete story, go to youngwritersproject.org/node/88895