Young Voices

For 90 years, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have recognized the outstanding ways students in grades seven through twelve have expressed their views of the world. When my granddaughter won a gold key this year for her modern fable about the consequences of a wolf's deception, I had an opportunity to look through the book of submissions from last year's winners that she received.

     With World Creativity and Innovation Week coming up April 15-21, this might be a good time for parents and teachers to encourage children and students to think about the world and compare what they draw and say with some of the representations and comments of Scholastic Art and Writing Award winners.

     One student disputed the stereotypes of color: yellow Asians, black Africans, brown Indians, and white Americans. She saw herself in many colors.

     World hunger was a topic that came up in several essays. A girl who wrote about villages where people "are skin and bones, their ribs visible" and their eyes always sad ended by saying that she never stops praying that, like "a blade of grass," these villagers can be "new and fresh." But a young immigrant from Laos who is a waitress in a bowling alley looks at American children in wonder when they "swallow between rounds" of arcade games and "drop food on the floor."

     Boys think about war. One made a sculpture showing a young man being persuaded to enlist in the Army. Another wrote about depth charges attacking a U-boat in World War II. A poet whose entry went from boy to old man included a stanza about being "a soldier with the callused heart mindlessly...following orders and longing for a purpose."

     Religion was a subject covered in art and word. Monks and Hindu statues caught the eyes of young photographers. One student looked at Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam and decided it was possible to start a world religion by deciding whom to exclude and what beliefs were contrary to the status quo.

     There were a number of unsettling dystopian views of the future. Meat and gems could not save a boy from a rare fever, and, when everything was plastic, only an old worn blanket could hold memories.

     For information about how students can share their voices with other young people and adults next year, login to artandwriting.org later this year.