Young Writers Award and Publication

When we returned from our holiday Ethan had a letter waiting for him. This isn’t something unusual in our house as the children do tend to get more letters than us. Normally they are appointments or reports that need to be kept in a safe place. Ethan has more paperwork that I dare to count. This letter was different though it contained a certificate. A certificate for a talent for writing. Ethan had written an original piece of creative writing and it was selected for publication in a young writers anthology.

Now I must admit my first response to this was that is was sent to the wrong Ethan. There was a copy of the poem in the letter and there was no way my Ethan had written these nine sentences to form a poem. I don’t mean this to sound so negative about my own son but I know that if we are lucky Ethan can say a basic sentence to us. Having seen his writing at school I have only seen him copying one sentence at a time.

I was so taken aback by this development that I asked his teacher if this award was for our Ethan. It turns out it was. Ethan has written a poem and it had been selected to be in the Young Writers book. So that the children in his class could take part the teachers created a template for the poem. The poem had blank sections in it and the children could select what word they wanted to fill this gap. They did this using visuals. So in essence our Ethan HAD written a poem.

I won’t share the poem with you now as I want to wait until it is published in the book. We should receive his copy in the new year. It did make me smile. I’m so glad that Ethan’s school were able to make this writing competition inclusive for its pupils. I never in my wildest dreams thought Ethan would win an award for his writing at this stage in his development. A true achievement from my little superstar.