Not too many nine and 10 year olds get to say they are authors who have been published.
Some budding writers who attend Arrowview Elementary School are among the few.
Nine students have been recognized for their educational achievement and may even win cash prizes for their creative work.
Grade four/five teacher Kathy Williams was thrilled when she received notice last week that several of her students were chosen to have their short stories published by the Young Writers of Canada Creative Writing Contest.
Their stories were among the top selected across the country, and they will go on to a final judging in September for first, second and third prize money.
Even if they don’t win the cash, their work will be published in an anthology of short stories called, The Wishing Well, to be published with the National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Poetry Institute of Canada.
Williams said there were thousands of submission from across the country and it is a real feather in their cap to be selected.
“They are really proud and excited to be published. To be so young … it gives them something to look forward to,” she said.
Williams admitted she had never entered her students’ work into contests before and she is thrilled that it wasn’t just the top students in her class who were selected .
“We were studying the Inuit at the time and some of the students wrote about the Arctic. A lot of the stories chosen were about Arctic tales and were written by kids with different abilities.”