Caroline Brustowicz. Storm. Grade 12, Age 18. 2011 Silver Key, Painting.

Excerpted from Scholastic’s On Our Minds blog. Click here for the full post by Lia Zneimer.

It’s been six months since Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses, and schools, and leaving a devastating path of destruction in its wake. The damage was severe, but from the tragedy also came inspiring stories of courage and resilience. We all respond to tragedies like Sandy in different ways: some volunteer to deliver supplies to those in need; others pledge their time to disaster-relief organizations or donate money to organizations like the Red Cross. And some respond with art or writing that beautifully encapsulates the experience itself.

This year, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, received dozens of submissions that dealt with Sandy and its aftermath. One such piece was by 12-year-old Leigh Brooks from Brooklin, ME, who received a Gold Key for Poetry. As National Poetry Month draws to a close, we thought it’d be a perfect time to share Leigh’s poem:

Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy
A behemoth of a storm
Travels her slow path across the Gulf of Mexico
Intent on the juicy prize: the New England coast

Cities lie far away in the distance,
She tires of water,
She hungers for the feast of buildings
The crunchy cold concrete, the white-washed walls Read More

Alexandra Huey. Woodland Creature (a detail). Grade 8, Age 13. 2012 Gold Medal, Digital Art. Listen to Alexandra discuss her winning work here.

Happy Earth Day! April’s Writing of the Month comes from Elijah Santner, Age 15, of New Paltz, NY, who won a Gold Key this year for his poem that celebrates the very ground we walk on, “I Believe in Dirt”. You can watch Elijah read his winning poem aloud on YouTube. Enjoy!

I was thirteen years old,
when my science teacher told me that dirt was a bad thing.
She claimed that if it were a good thing, we would call it “soil”
I was always upset about that.

What gave her the right
to label one kind of Earthly matter better than another?
I would walk into class,
My shoes heavy with mud
That felt warm and bright under my
Discount rack sneakers
and she would say
“Elijah, you can’t come in here with all that dirt.”
And I wanted to say
If only you knew
What it meant to run with
Bare feet through soft fields in the early morning,
With the earth still damp
From the dew of the dawn. Read More

Breanne Pereira. Under the Sea Driveway. Grade 12, Age 17. 2011 Silver Medal, Photography.

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, and we’re celebrating it with Scholastic Award-winning poems from this year! Check them out, add them to your pockets, and share them with others throughout the day. To learn more about Poem in Your Pocket and how you can get involved, visit http://www.nyc.gov/poem.

Destination
The car stops, and you leap out
without waiting for me,
too eager to begin our lifelong tradition
of running down the driveway,
tree branches snatching at our faces,
soft moss on bare feet. Read More

Urim Apocalypse. Lincoln. Grade 8, Age 12. 2011 Gold Key, Drawing.

It’s often difficult to fully grasp the substantial impact of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Every year, as thousands upon thousands of middle and high school students enter the competition, amazing stories of personal journeys, creativity, and recognition emerge. This is one of those stories.

Urim Apocalypse is an unusually talented student with an unusual name. He came to the United States in 2010 after fleeing Africa as a refugee. He was born and grew up in Congo, and moved to Ethiopia for four years before coming to America. It was in Ethiopia that he began to learn English. But when he moved to Aurora, Colorado in the fall of 2010, the then 12-year-old was still learning the language. Read More

Elizabeth Brown. The Pond. Grade 12, Age 18. 2012 Gold Medal, Drawing. Listen to Elizabeth discuss her work here.

January’s Writing of the Month comes from Ben Caldwell, Age 17, of Vancouver, Washington. His poem “Around the Campfire” is featured on the home page of our website this week along with Elizabeth Brown’s Gold Medal-winning drawing “The Pond” (above). Each week we will be showcasing 2 national winning works (1 art and 1 writing) from the past year on our home page slider bar. We hope you’ll take some time to enjoy each piece and learn more about the young artists and writers behind them! Below is a few poems from Ben Caldwell‘s 2012 Gold Medal- winning poetry collection.
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Around the Campfire

There is a place
between marrow and bone,
between midnight and morrow,
where we are flies floundering in honey.
A place where heartbeats quicken
and minds slow, slow, slow down.
Where even the light is listless
and the texture of denim is dimmed.
There I find solace
in counting your freckles,
in that place with a small pile of bundled socks
between atoms,
between the earth and the sky.
Read More

Drew Shields. Dinner. Grade 12, Age 17. 2012 Gold Medal, Art Portfolio. Materials: polymer clay, found object, led light, cloth, wire.
Listen to Drew discuss this work here.

In this installment of our Eyes on the Prize series, we are proud to present our final pair of 2012 Portfolio Gold winners: Drew Shields and Diane Ward.

Drew grew up in Milwaukee, graduated from Pius XI High School, and now attends the Maryland College Institute of Art in Baltimore. His work, in which sculpted creatures inhabit fanciful diorama worlds, enchants Drew more in the making of it than in the finished product. He explains:

“I allow the physical forms I find and create to dictate the story. Characters will develop relationships, objects develop uses and settings develop history. I may begin with a creature, and then build another. I internalize their emotions, their problems and past experience. I empathize with them. I allow them to reveal their histories and characteristics to me. Where are they? What are they doing? How do they feel about themselves, their situations and their actions? I find the act of organically creating and discovering characters and their stories much more interesting than static dictation and the final piece.” Read More