Writing Awards Are Kid Stuff for 3 Students

The San Gabriel Valley’s three new nationally recognized authors spoke out on creativity, writer’s block and handling success last week, but first they had to get excused from class.

No problem. Their English teachers at Santa Fe Intermediate School in Monrovia, Hillcrest Elementary School in Monterey Park and Muscatel Junior High School in Rosemead understand the demands that success imposes.

The three students wrote short stories that were among the 108 winners selected from among 10,000 nationwide entries in the Young Writer’s Contest. The winning stories and poems will be published in May in an anthology called “Rainbow Collection.”

Ty Fukumoto, 12, a sixth-grader at Hillcrest, wrote a first-person account of what it’s like to be an odd-shaped hole in a ceiling acoustical tile, triumphant when an earthquake made possible “justice and freedom for all ceiling holes.”

Pamela Guenat, who turned 12 on Thanksgiving and is in the seventh grade at Santa Fe, wrote about a Thanksgiving birthday celebration in Depression-era Kansas. “I wanted it to be old-fashioned,” she said.

Bich Lien Nguyen, a seventh-grader at Muscatel who turned 13 last week, drew from her memory of being 7 years old and temporarily separated from her parents when they were “boat people” escaping Communist Vietnam.

Publishers of “Rainbow Collection” called it a coincidence that three of the winners, out of five from California, live in the same area. There was only one winner from California last year.

Free Distribution

The entries pass through five stages of judging by journalists, editors, authors, English teachers and reading specialists who evaluate originality, content and grammar, according to the contest’s founder, Kathie Janger of McLean, Va.

Janger is one of two authors who created the Young Writer’s Contest Foundation in 1984 to encourage students to write and to give them national recognition. “Rainbow Collection” is funded by the Ronald McDonald Children’s Foundation, and its 15,000 copies are distributed free to major public school systems, all children’s hospitals, state boards of education and several other agencies.

In interviews, the three young writers said they have always loved writing, and now, because of the recognition they have received, they are considering it as a possible career.

They approach writing in different ways--Ty spinning out fanciful stories on a home computer on which he also tries to invent games; Pamela working hard on class assignments, and Bich Lien mastering English, which she “knew not one word of” when she was in the first grade.

It’s the creative process that most appeals to Ty, he said.

Fourth Prize

Last fall, when he was assigned to write about “something inanimate,” inspiration struck as he gazed at the ceiling. “Harry the Hole” is his umpteenth written work and fourth major prize winner, following top awards in district contests that he won in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

“That’s what first excited me--winning in the fourth grade,” he said. “I like to write creative stories. Not biography, because it’s hard not to copy from the reference work.”

Ty’s teachers, Carol Torricelli and Pat Callaghan, said he is an A student, does superior work in every subject and is well liked, especially for his stories.

“He soars,” Callaghan said. “The kids just love him.”

“The rest of the class is just enthralled,” Torricelli said. “When we read several stories written by students, they can always pick out the one Ty wrote.”

Submitted Last Fall

Ty said he had forgotten all about the contest because his teachers submitted his story last fall, “such a long time ago.”

To celebrate, he said, his mother made his favorite dish, a bean casserole.

As for the future: “Hopefully I’ll be a writer,” he said. As for now: “I’m just me.”

Pamela said she has “been making up stories and poems and stuff since the third grade.”

An A student all her life, she was suddenly hit with writer’s block last December after getting a bad grade on one story.

“I had to bring my confidence back up,” she said.

Family Love

Being a winner in the Young Writer’s Contest did it. “The Thanksgiving Ribbons” is about family love and growing up. It was one of 12 entries submitted by teachers in the Santa Fe school.

“I was like shocked, then nervous,” Pamela said, when she learned she was a national winner. “Then I felt like I’d accomplished something. I intend to keep going.”

Her teacher in honors English, Gail LaBau, said of Pamela’s success: “I wasn’t surprised. Pam works hard. It was a quality piece, and she’s a high-quality student.”

Last week, when Bich Lien was lunching in the Muscatel School cafeteria, her English teacher, Carol Mahoney, “burst in yelling,” according to them both.

“I was so embarrassed,” Bich Lien said with an ear-to-ear smile that appears to be permanent.

Terrifying Storm

“I was so excited!” said Mahoney, who last fall had assigned the seventh-grade class to write about a storm. She submitted 10 entries in the contest, including Bich Lien’s moving story about temporarily losing her mother in the family’s flight from Vietnam in 1981 and surviving a terrifying storm on the Indian Ocean.

“That was the only storm I knew about,” Bich Lien said.

Despite the success of “The Storm,” Bich Lien said she prefers writing fiction. “ I like the creativity. Then I can end stories in different ways.”

In real life, Bich Lien’s story ended with her family reuniting eight months later in California. Her father, once a university professor in Vietnam, is an engineer in a private firm, and she now has two little brothers and is a straight-A student. “Except for an A- in P.E.,” she said.

Bich Lien has begun considering writing as a career, she said. “This year, every time I write something, Mrs. Mahoney praises it. Before, I got depressed because I worked so hard on stories and all I ever got was a good grade.”

Her father joined in the excitement when the family learned the importance of being a winner in the Young Writer’s Contest.

“I think my dad is overreacting,” Bich Lien said. “This is big because it’s nationwide, so he calls his friends to tell them. I get so embarrassed.”