Local Video
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| Rat reporter tale wins writing award |
By: SUZANNE ROOK, Managing Editor
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Posted: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 11:45 pm
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NORTHFIELD — At 10, Julia Braulick is already an accomplished writer.
She writes and publishes a regular newsletter for family and friends, and last month the Northfield fifth-grader took first place in fourth/fifth-grade division of the Torrence Legacy Creative Writing Awards, sponsored in part by Scholastic Testing.
But the shy, soft-spoken Julia doesn’t plan on a career as a writer. She’d rather work toward her dream job: veterinarian to endangered species.
Julia, who lives on Winona Street with her mom, Leslie Schultz, and her dad, Timothy Braulick, has been writing for five years. That’s when she started her newsletter: The Winona Times. This spring’s edition included her stories, photos and illustrations about the trip she and Schultz took to France, as well as four of her poems.
Writing, she said, is a “fun hobby.”
The winning story, written using the one of the contest’s themes: “Shaking Hands with Tomorrow,” is called “A Tale of Cynthia Ratsworth” and features a newspaper staffed by rodents.
Ratsworth is a newspaper reporter worried about the ecological implications of publishing a newspaper. So Ratsworth and fellow rat reporter, Casey Hershberger, devise a strategy for getting the paper online while ensuring no staffer loses their job.
So successful is the newspaper’s Web site that it wins the Tom Morrow Award for Green Publishing, giving Ratsworth the opportunity to shake hands with Tom Morrow and Julia a way to creatively incorporate the theme.
Brainstorming, writing and revising the story took an untold number of hours over a two-month period, Julia said, adding that her entry was mailed well before the deadline.
A self-proclaimed animal lover with a special interest in rodents, Julia created the Ratsworth character while writing a story for a class at the Faribault Nature Center, later deciding the rat reporter had more adventures in her.
Schultz, who homeschools her daughter and helps Julia with the editing process, smiled broadly as she talked about Julia’s recognition and its potential for publication.
Scholastic Testing has plans to post the story online and is considering compiling the winning pieces into a book.
Read a copy of Julia's story here.
— Suzanne Rook is the managing editor and covers education. She can be reached at srook@northfieldnews.com or 645-1113. |
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