1st place:

Dear Eudora Welty,

In your book One Writer’s Beginnings, you perceptively state “Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood’s learning is made up of moments. It isn’t steady. It’s a pulse…Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Here and there, it’s the same world.”
I have discovered the world all over again through reading your book, a true work of art. There are rare individuals who have never lost the inquisitive wonder, the fascination and love of life that is so often only granted, for a time, to children. It is refreshing to see the world through your eyes as you look back on the moments of your life with the maturity and wisdom of a woman and the spirit of a child. Through the example of your life, you teach us that life is indeed made up of many precious and irreplaceable moments. You capture these moments in your writing and hold them up to us, each one a treasure. In today’s hectic society, we frequently hurl ourselves into a frantic stream of life, always intent on reaching a far-off goal, or grasping a way of life better than our own. We sometimes forget that the journey towards that goal is not a means to the end, but is rather that wonderful experience called life.
As you grew older and began exploring the outside world as thoroughly as you explored the world of your family, you explain, “The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater then the scene, I came to see, is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined to any frame.” You celebrate the diversity of human life in your writing. All too often we are concerned with what others think of us. Much valuable time is wasted trying to fit into the frame that others have created for us. You recognize the potential in every person and see everyone you meet as an undiscovered world. People take each other for granted. While reading your book, I was struck with the way you portrayed everyone you came into contact with as significant in your life, whether they were the gossipy neighbor lady, the town librarian, or your first-grade teacher. You made them all important by recognizing the impact they had on your life, great or small.
Your love of your life is apparent in your book. You came from a loving and protective family, and your existence knew very little hardship, yet you realize that to really live it is necessary to take chances. You revealed this in One Writer’s Beginnings when you discussed one of your characters, a music teacher named Miss Eckhart. “Exposing yourself to risk is a truth Miss Eckhart and I had in common. What animates and posses me is what drives Miss Eckhart, the love of her art and the love of giving it, the desire to give it until there is no more left.” Your writing is a true outpouring of yourself, a gift to everyone who reads it. As you close One Writer’s Beginnings, you reflect, “As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be daring as well. For all serious daring starts from within.” Often all those accolades go to those who have risen above a terrible past. You prove that inner strength is learned in many different ways, each valuable and significant. Thank you for sharing the beautiful story of your life, and teaching me what makes a life worth living is all the small events that enrich each day.

Anna Compton, Harrisonville Senior High School

2nd place (tie):

Dear Robin McKinley,

Recently, I seriously contemplated stealing a library book, a book that I have loved since forever. Thankfully, I have not committed this petty and heinous theft. I have realized that I would have destroyed the wonderful memories associated with the magnificent volume. This book, written by you, has inspired me for years.
The Hero and the Crown did not look promising the first time I laid eyes on it years ago. Thick and unwieldy, it displayed the most atrocious, puzzling cover. Bound with fabric, the whole book had a nasty, pale, red-orange color. I do not remember why I wanted to read this old, battered book, but the nice librarian with the gray, twinkling eyes checked the book out to me and I owned it for the next two weeks.
I returned it the next day.
Checking out books and returning them the next day became a very bad habit of mine. I returned this difficult book because each chapter contained more words than in any other single book I had ever read!
I could not read The Hero and the Crown the first time; yet, I could not forget about such a book. I looked at it again and puzzled about the illustration on the cover. An enormous red creature with overshadowing wings and a body covered with scales loomed over a small figure on a white horse. Fascinating. I checked the book out again.
I returned the book the next week. But I had read the first chapter. There are people like me who must learn in small, painful steps, but we are very persistent. Well, books are patient with slow people like me, and your book was especially so.
I do not remember how many times I checked out The Hero and the Crown, but I enjoyed doing it. I knew that whenever I needed that book, I would find it in its place on the middle shelf of the first brown row on the backside of the sagging bookcase. Strangely, no one else checked the book out (for which I am grateful); I always found it when I needed it. In small doses, I read the book.
Reading proved challenging and enchanting. The struggles of the heroine, Aerin, reflected my own struggles. Both of us were lonely strangers to the country where we lived; I was a Vietnamese emigrant who had escaped from a country where the enemy had won the long, devastating war, and Aerin was a princess not accepted by her people, who considered her deceased mother an evil witch. In Aerin, I found a friend and fellow journeywoman, one who knew what I experienced. We both struggled to find our identities in the countries where destiny placed us, countries that did not seem to want us.
For many years, Aerin and I have had adventures together. Today, I am a junior in high school. I have long since finished reading The Hero and the Crown, but I reread it often, finding courage and strength. While Aerin fights dragons to make a place for herself in her country, earning the love of the villagers she saves from those fire-breathing monsters, I fight my own dragons to find my place in America: learning to read and write English and discovering the people around me. My latest struggle in this never-ending quest is my most challenging thus far.
Throughout The Hero and the Crown, Aerin tries to find her destiny by fighting malicious little dragons; then she fights the largest and most evil one of all, killing it and becoming a hero. But her people will not accept her façade of dragon-killer. Aerin realizes that she must go on an adventure to rediscover the identity of her mother, her link to the past and knowledge of herself. Like Aerin, I am also not contented. Even though I have become an American, a part of me yearns to discover my past and to explore the country that was once mine, Vietnam. I have only recently realized this and I write to you to say that I now have the courage to uncover the past and learn about that event upon which the fate of so many lives hung, including my family’s: the Vietnam War. Well, good-bye for now; I go journeying with Aerin. You see your book has made me realize my destiny. I want to rediscover Vietnam.

Minh Phuong Nguyen, Mehlville Senior High School

2nd place (tie):

Dear Friend,

The first time I read The Perks to Being a Wallflower was October 25, 2001. I know this specifically because I wrote about it in my journal. A friend recommended it to me earlier that summer, but it wasn’t until I had thoroughly scoured every branch of the St. Louis Public Library system (there are only three copies of The Perks in circulation) that the treasured item fell into my possession four months later. I began reading in the car as my brother and I drove to school that morning. I found myself reading The Perks every hour that day. I finally finished Charlie’s last letter in my room after school. As I finished the last page, I sat silently on my bed, holding the book and thinking. I knew that I was not the same girl that walked through my door that morning.
That afternoon was neither the first time nor the last time that I reproachfully recollected my freshman year of high school. Charlie’s experience was decidedly similar to my own. We were the same problems in different packages. He was quiet and passive, where I was relatively loud and boisterous. My behavior was not characterized by eventual drug experimentation or a lust-driven fling or two. However, I did manage to successfully and flawlessly project the image that I was okay, even when my emotions lied on the opposite end of the spectrum.
In fact, I did such a great job of deception that even three years later, the vast majority of my friends haven’t the slightest inkling of the depression that marred that vulnerable time in my life or what had to happen to get me out of it.
Even afterwards, when I thought of the needlessly bleak existence I led, I often wondered if my depression was the effect of a vague cause or group of causes or if the pain was self-inflicted. I’ve always striven to be atypical, and yet had just become a part of a statistic – one fraction in an ever-growing mass of stereotypically apathetic, emotionally distraught teenagers.
Mr. Chbosky, my greatest fear is that I am a victim of the times. Would I have turned out differently if I had been born to another set of parents in a different time period? Did someone else make me the way I am, or do I have only myself to blame?
From all the morsels of truth I extracted from your book, this is by far the most comforting to me:
“I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
I can’t control what has happened. But the fact that I, as cliché as it may sound, have the power of control what will come out of my experience is paramount. No doubt exists in my mind that some situations will be more difficult than others. How I handle adversity will determine the person I ultimately become.
I have made the truest friend and ally in Charlie. I see pieces of myself in him, and I never would have met him without you. Thanks for the introduction.

Elizabeth Sharp, Eureka High School

Honorable Mention:

Dear Mrs. Toni Morrison,

I owe you my deepest thanks for helping me to appreciate the image I see in the mirror, the voice I hear when I speak, and the rhythm in my step as I walk. Many attitudes remain the same as they were in my parent’s youth. Some people still stare at others because they are different and some still carry hatred and anger in their hearts because another person’s skin color is not the same as theirs. Yet, there are those who do not carry such hate in their hearts, but allow themselves to be influenced by the bold intimidation of those who do. Those without hate often change their personalities and ways of thinking in order to become a part of an attitude which appears to be strong. However, this hatred is based on fear, it is weak.
While reading The Bluest Eye, a complex of emotions filled within me. I found myself putting my emotions and all of my heart into the lives of two girls, Claudia and Pecola, who both struggled to truly find themselves. Although I cannot say this book and these two young girls mirror my life completely, I can say the strength found in Claudia and the wanting to be accepted in Pecola’s heart was not only their own, but mine as well.
Being a black author, you forced me to relate myself to your words on a greater level than any other because of our similar skin tones and life experiences. You then caused me to ask questions about the strength of my heart, and if I could handle the pressure of never thinking I was good enough. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola regrets the way she looks, calling herself ugly and wanting to fit in. During her tribulations, my heart yearned for some understanding of how she could not search into her own soul and find the beauty and love that was placed within. I then realized, I needed to do the same. Growing up in my neighborhood, children that shared my ancestry were very scarce. In middle school I became active in various organizations, and in high school I became a part colorguard, yet I was still not happy. I still felt excluded. Mrs. Morrison, after searching my soul, I was finally able to answer the question you forced me to ask myself “Why could I not find peace within?” My answer was simple. I was trying to be someone I was not. I spoke and talked only briefly with those who share my same skin color and I was never asked to come to parties by those whom I grew up around. I felt the need to be noticed, to make others laugh, to bring others joy while ignoring my own feelings and needs. When I realized I was attempting to please others and denying what truly brought me joy, I then changed. I reevaluated my life and became true to myself.
I am still part of guard and now a captain; I have formed relationships with my peers that appreciate who I am and accept the real me. Not because of the way they changed but because I looked into the mirror and saw an image of a fake person without true friends, without a real family and without a clue. I became confident in myself and began to relate to another young woman in the book, Claudia. Claudia refused to let anything change her. She acknowledged her weaknesses yet she didn’t let them destroy her. She shared her strengths without giving away her soul.
Although there are still people who do not approve of me and do not like me, it does not matter because I love myself and I know that being myself and staying true to who I really am will better my life. Thank you Claudia, thank you Pecola and thank you Mrs. Toni Morrison for helping me find myself and not allowing me to create a fantasy world just so I could fit in.

Lauren Brown, Eureka High School