Art & writing awards 2005.

More than 250,000 students from across the nation entered The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards this year. On these pages, we feature some of the award-winning work. To view more great work by your fellow students, or to enter your own, go to scholastic.com/artandwritingawards.

My Reality Is a Fantasy

Mixed Media by Cody Greene, 16 Cave Spring High School Roanoke, Virginia

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In Defense of Brown (Who rarely speaks for
himself)

by Claudia Hess, 18
Penn Manor High School
Millersville, Pennsylvania

   The color I get along with best is brown.
   Brown doesn't require you to put on any airs
   or mind if you can't walk in heels
   the way pink seems to.

   I feel awkward around pink,
   as if I ought to know the difference
   between tan and taupe,
   which I don't,
   although I'm pretty sure they're both
   shades of brown.

   Luckily brown doesn't take offense at my ignorance.
   All I need for brown is to be as human as possible,
   as real as thick, chapped skin,
   as natural as soil,
   as honest as a riverbed.

   Brown doesn't mind my mousy hair,
   or the fact that I colored it,
   in a failed attempt
   to make it appear more blond.
   Nor does he take offense that he is always chosen last
   from a stack of construction paper.
   He doesn't even seem to be bothered that toothbrushes
   are never offered at the dentist's office
   with handles of his hue,
   or that he wasn't included in the rainbow.
   As often as he's cast aside
   he nonetheless never seems to judge,
   like purple,
   who will only associate with II-year-old girls
   and mythological creatures.

Itch

Sculpture
by Anna Wagner, 16
H-B Woodlawn Program
Arlington, Virginia

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Aftermath in Winter Months

by Alexander Zezulin Foreman, 17
Montgomery Blair High School
Takoma Park, Maryland

   A bridge, whose falling guillotined
   a ship that trusted it to hold,
   now bobs as a mess of floated steel
   all trashed and whitened by the cold.

   The ship, cross-sectioned as a blueprint,
   goes down in two. The river sighs
   and shuts its two banks tight to lock
   its trophy in a case of ice.

Grass

by Rachel Belieu, 16
Boiling Springs High School
Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania

   Outside the window
   where I have sat so many times
   dreaming or crying or writing
   a little boy races a lawn mower
   partly because he thinks
   he is invincible
   and partly because he knows
   life is beautiful.
   He dodges trees and cackles
   as the sharp blade skims the grass.

   And I look inside myself and say,
   Jaded at sixteen?!
   At sixteen, already afraid
   to close my eyes and jump.
   Always writing, inking out
   desires and passions and dreams
   but never following through.

   I reach out an ink-stained hand
   grab life by the scruff of the neck.
   "Come on, kid," I say.
   "Let's go."

Bonaroo 04

Photography by Griff Luttrell, 16 Webb School of Knoxville Knoxville, Tennessee

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