DANA POINT : Well-Versed Teen-Ager to Be Published

Brittany Longdon is like many 13-year-olds. She likes to ride her boogie board and play basketball.

She also enjoys writing poetry.

Two of her poems will appear this year in books put out by the National Library of Poetry, a Maryland-based publisher.

One of the poems, about the Holocaust, captures Brittany’s thoughts after she visited a Los Angeles museum exhibit as a 10-year-old.

It begins: “A million children died today, their bones burn all alone. A man so mean, a heart so weak, the children had to go. . . .”

The seventh-grader at Marco Forster Middle School said she has written about 35 poems that she is proud of. But Brittany said she never thought that her work might end up in a published collection.

The two poems were entered in contests held by the National Library of Poetry, in Owings Mills, Md. The second poem is titled “Trees.”

J.R. Longdon, the girl’s mother, said she figured that it might be worth a try to get the poems published: “It’s very deeply thought out and flows very naturally for her. My husband and I sit down and look at this stuff and say, ‘Where did this come from?’ ”

Officials at the National Library of Poetry said that they publish about 10% of the 20,000 to 25,000 entries received annually. The National Library of Poetry prints from eight to 10 books of poetry a year. Brittany’s poems are scheduled to appear in books due out in the fall and winter.

Brittany said she usually writes about what she has seen. Any poems she writes this summer, she said, will probably include observations about surf and sand.

“They’ll probably be about the beach,” Brittany said. “I go there a lot.”