SOME KIDS STORIES GIVE US A WHOLE NEW VOICE WITH THEIR WRITING; TRY THIS ONE ON FOR SIZE

Dear Readers: In this exercise, students were given stickers to write about and in Keli Mezin’s case, she picked a butterfly sticker. It’s interesting what unfolds when kids are allowed the shot at creativity. Diana

MY BUTTERFLY

By Keli Mezin,

My butterfly is orange, black and white. It is a girl. She loves to fly everywhere, everyday. She lives in a big pine tree on a cliff. She smells the ocean and some days, she flies down to the ocean to meet other butterflies.

Her name is Leila. She is a very graceful butterfly, indeed. And so is her name. Every male butterfly she sees wants her. But she never takes. She is happy how she is living in a tree on a cliff where she happily practices her daily flying routines.

Even though Leila was sweetly beautiful, she had a nastier side.

She was snippy and if someone started a fight, Leila liked to make it worse.

But one day, she met a lonely deer picking at the tree that Leila lived in. “I’m trying to get some sleep,” Leila snapped. “Sorry," the deer grunted, but he didn’t stop.

“Why do you keep hitting and picking at my trees?,” Leila moaned.

“Why don’t you come out here and live?” asked the deer “and see what it’s like to be without a home.”

“I bet I could stay out there for a whole week!” Leila said.

“OK, you start NOW!” the Deer exclaimed.

“OK, I’ll get my furniture,” Leila said with a grating voice.

“NO furniture!”the Deer yelped.

“Oh, fine,” Leila yelled. Leila stayed out in the wild for a night, and soon she was hitting on trees. She hit on the trees a lot because she missed her tree.

One day the Deer walked out of a tree he now was living in. Leila was hitting it. “What are you doing?” he asked grumpily.

Leila said with an attitude, “You hit on a tree when you were frustrated, not having a home.”

“Now you know how I felt,” the Deer said. “It was a good lesson for you, Leila.”

“I guess,” she said, and fluttered away.