Back in April, Miss Mouse and I agreed it would be fun for her to enter the PBSKids Go! Young Writers and Illustrators contest. At that time we were still able to pull in PBS with our antenna (we are PBS-less and sad now!), and she and I had noticed some info about the contest.
Miss Mouse worked all week on developing her story line and plot. She painstakingly - and I mean p.a.i.n.s.t.a.k.i.n.g.l.y wrote out each word herself, sounding most of them out herself (part of the rules said that children were allowed to use their own grammatical sounding out of words). Handwriting is not easy for this lefty; she works very hard at it with our "official" handwriting program now in first grade, and she had to work exceptionally hard to write neatly on Kindergarten-level lined paper last spring.
She also illustrated her story. Illustrating also has been a challenge for her. I've never - never, ever, once in her whole entire life - said anything to indicate that she is not good at drawing or coloring. The truth is that she may end up being an excellent artist, and I am determined to not let my opinion on her preschool or early-early-early elementary drawings color her potential for the future. That said, she drew a bicycle about ten times before she and I finally agreed it looked like a bicycle. We went through a lot of construction paper that week! In hindsight, if we had started earlier, she would have been feasibly allowed, by contest rules, to submit pictures she had taken as illustrations. She really is already a quite decent photographer (for a six year old!!!), and she would have enjoyed that immensely. The fun thing about doing it the way we did, though, was seeing her work so hard and finally produce a product that she was happy with. Life will be full of hard work on things that she won't necessarily be natural at, and it is such a privilege to see her developing the determination she will need to confront challenges later on!
We all trooped down to the local PBS office (Miss Mouse will quickly point out that she was the one who spotted the building as I was planning to turn the opposite direction.....) to drop off her submission the second week of April. Then we waited. And we waited. And we waited. And eventually, we sort of forgot about it, and from time to time when Miss Mouse would mention it, she would say, "I must not have won, but I really had a lot of fun coming up with my story and drawing all the pictures! I worked really hard on that, and I didn't know I could write the words so nicely on that lined paper! That was really hard work.". I would tell her how proud I was of her having worked so hard, and then the subject would be dropped for another week or so.
And then.....
The second week of May - the week of her Kindergarten graduation, which came complete with a cake and party with Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Dick, - a packet came in the mail. It was a really, really BIG packet, and it was from PBS. The problem? Mike brought in the mail at 9 p.m., and it was specifically addressed to Miss Mouse. I thought I might go insane waiting until morning.
And then.....
I looked at the back of the giant manilla envelope, and saw a list of names with one name highlighted for us. It was a list of winners, and they had highlighted Miss Mouse's name as the Kindergarten Red Ribbon Favorite winner!!!!!! Hold onto your hats - I went crazy! I was jumping around the living room, just going nutso!!!! Mike stared at me awhile and then informed me that I was "worse" than any hockey mom he'd ever seen. I just smiled wider.
Out of over 300 entrants, spanning the entire Prairie Public viewing audience (think MN, ND, Manitoba, SD), including some submissions from classrooms in the Twin Cities (I know because some of the winners were from there), she was a Red Ribbon Favorite! What that meant is that she did not win the "Grand Prize" for Kindergarten entries, but she was one of the three runners up for the Kindergarten category. The greatest part was how she had totally and completely made peace with not winning or placing. I think that was what had me so incredibly excited. She had let it go and found the positive in her work - and we got to surprise her in the morning with this huge packet of prizes and the knowledge that she was chosen as one of the best entries after all!
Phew. So, there. There's my bragging. Here's the one I'm bragging about. I hope it is clear that what I am most proud of is her character, her resilience, and her determination. The "win" was a cherry-on-top, and one that we won't always get to taste. Still, it was something I don't think either she or I will ever forget!
Oh, and for anyone who would like to read Miss Mouse's story, which is about a tent and a horse who go travelling together, you can find it here: http://www.prairiepublic.org/events/kids/pbs-kids-go-writers-contest
I just read through it again online and have decided that my favorite illustration, hands down, is of the tent and the horse playing Go Fish!
1 comment:
Finally had the chance to read the story and see pictures. Great job!
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