Westfield kids impress librarians with ‘fantastically unique’ stories

Date: 8/16/2023

WESTFIELD — A short story contest ran by the Westfield Atheneum to encourage youngsters to write during the summer months didn’t draw as many entries as hoped, but judges were still impressed when they reviewed the stories.

Judges were volunteer staff who evaluated the entries based on things such as age-appropriate prose, elements of a story and creativity. Young writers from three levels — elementary, middle and high school — were encouraged to submit a short fiction or nonfiction story of 1,500 words or less.

“This ensures that age groups are being judged fairly against one another,” said Meghan Doyle, interim director of youth activities at the Atheneum.

Doyle said the goal of the contest was to encourage children to continue writing during the summer.

“We wanted to ensure that the contest was something open-ended that writers could have fun with, and really have an opportunity to tell whatever story that they wanted to tell,” she said. “We ran a springboard program early in the summer that was well-attended in which interested participants had the chance to work through some writing exercises together.”

The contest ended Aug. 3 and winners were announced at the Athenaeum’s summer reading celebration on the evening of Aug. 10. Doyle said each age group typically would have a first, second and third place winner.

“Unfortunately, we only received a small handful of entries this year — two entries for the elementary school level and three for the middle school level. One of the elementary level entries was nonfiction, while all others were fiction.”

The entries, all of which were judged as winners, were:

• Andrew Karetka, grade 3: “Andrew’s First Day of Third Grade,” a story that recounts the writer’s first day of third grade. He shares what it was like to learn new math, see old friends and watch football games with his family during the school year.
• Evan Karetka, grade 2: “The Adventures of Jack’s Family, Captain Crow, and Firenze,” the story of a young boy named Jack who goes on an adventure to meet the magical Captain Crow, a character that Jack’s grandpa told stories about. Evan’s imagination is evident in his creation of Captain Crow’s friend Firenze, who resembles a bear with a human head and moose antlers.
• Alex Deland, grade 5: “The Adventures of Fro Yo Frog and Firecat,” a multidimensional adventure in which Fro Yo Frog encounters his evil counterpart, Yo Frog. Fro Yo Frog and Meowster Firecat work together to thwart Yo’s plan of ridding the world of all lactose.
• Keziah Snyder, grade 5: “The Guard Dragon,” a tale of a dragon that angrily attacks a nearby kingdom led by King Beowulf after his treasure is stolen. Beowulf and a young adventurer face off against the dragon, who is eventually tamed. The kingdom is once again at peace knowing that the dragon now will protect them.
• Evelyn Kremer, grade 6: “The Boy Who Escaped the Dragon’s Talons,” the story of Adam, a boy raised in a secluded cave by a dragon and who dreams of escaping. One day that opportunity finally comes, and Adam is able to journey to the local village for the first time, searching for his lost family.

“We would have loved to see more entries, but we were very impressed with the quality of our submissions,” said Doyle. “All stories submitted were fantastically unique from one another, and each child demonstrated a significant amount of creativity — which we love to see.”

Although this contest has been run in the past, it has been a few years since it was last offered, which Doyle said could be a contributing factor to the low participation. Because there were only a few entries, all five participants received a small prize: a $5 gift certificate from Northside Creamery in Westfield and a certificate from the Athenaeum.

Doyle said that more children started writing stories than entered the contest.

“This leads me to believe that some of them simply didn’t get turned in. Perhaps we will have an online submission from in the future to streamline this process,” she said.

Despite the low number of submissions, Doyle was pleased that the Athenaeum took the effort to get the contest up and running again.

“We love running these contests and understand that sometimes it can be hard to motivate children to write over summer break,” she said. “We’re considering running this contest again next year, but changing the format to include original comics [and] graphic novels.”

She said that based on previously observed attendance at comic-related programming and the popularity of the Athenaeum’s graphic novel collection, Doyle believes this could help attract more participants.