It was a temperate summer evening at my aunt’s house in upstate New York. Having nothing to do, my cousins and I scooted chairs from the patio into the wide, grassy yard and sat, looking up into the big blue sky and letting the gentle wind graze our faces.

The wind seemed to carry encouragement on its current, and the clouds drifted by with an air of comfort. I suddenly felt a burst of energy, and I hopped to my feet. Feeling lighthearted, I broke into a run.

I don’t usually run. Generally, I’m not very fast, and running exhausts me. But that day I felt different. Energy pulsed through me; I gained speed, my feet coming down on the grass and springing upward again. I felt strong, but at the same time, I felt effortless. I curved onto the cement near the back of the house, leaped over the stone path, and approached the grass again, starting a new lap.

Read the rest at KidSpirit Online…

What is normal?
Is normal fitting in?
Is normal being like everyone else?
Is normal a good thing?
No one person is the same
Yet most people are normal
That’s what makes normal, normal

Read the rest of Brandon Reiter’s poem, “Normal,” at KidSpirit Online.

“What are we are supposed to get out of school?” I asked one of my closest friends earlier this week. “What’s the point?”

She looked at me for a moment, and then replied, “To produce a person who can form intelligent opinions on world issues, listen to other people’s ideas, and work together with them.”

“If everyone just finds one thing they love learning about, and pursues it…,” I added, “…then it doesn’t matter how ‘smart’ they are,” she finished. “Their interest will take them where they need to go.”

Read the rest of the article at KidSpirit Online…

KidSpirit’s teen editors read their own pieces and those sent in by teens around the world, and do a Q&A with Chris Shoemaker, head of teen programming, as part of TeenLIVE at the New York Public Library. Q&A starts just after 39:00.

Teen photographer Katie Hartman describes the feeling of finding a moment of total solitude in a dark room one summer in Maine.

I have spent seven weeks every summer for the past seven years at a camp in a small town called Poland, Maine. Very few people have ever heard of Poland so I answer their puzzled looks with “Poland… you know, like the water.”

Poland Springs is the only major attraction in Poland and the town itself is tiny by my big city standards, but it is the perfect place to spend my summers.

Read the rest…

A blank page can be scary. Sometimes when I start a project, I feel anxious. When I am creating I feel a range of emotions, such as joy, fear, and surprise. Creating is like taking a long walk with many twists and turns and returning safely home with a prize.

Creating something can be as delicious as eating pumpkin pie or as difficult as having a test on Monday morning. Even though sometimes the journey is difficult and full of questions, when I create I have a feeling of freedom because I can express myself any way I want to. When I make something new I learn something about myself. Creating is like taking a net and capturing my thoughts and bringing something new that has never been seen into the world.

Read more…

Last September, my mother told me that we would have an Afghan girl, Nilab Nusrat, staying in our house for a few months.

My mother is the founder and board-member of a 10-year-old organization called Women for Afghan Women (WAW; www.womenforafghanwomen.org). WAW works to secure and advance Afghan women and children’s human rights. In addition to many other programs (see sidebar), WAW also runs three Children’s Support Centers for children whose mothers are in jail. In Afghanistan, when mothers go to jail, the children go with them if no family member is willing to take them. The jails are awful places for the children, and without education, so WAW tries to get these children out of the jails and into the support centers, where they not only have a home and access to education, but also have a loving and supporting community and access to many programs. Because these children have spent long periods of time without education, WAW focuses on tutoring them so that they can get into good schools where they will do well. They have excellent tutors, and nearly all the children from the shelters are among the top of their classes. Nilab is one of these children.

Nilab was born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and lived there all her life, except for a brief stay in Pakistan. For the first part of her childhood, she had a pretty great life. She had gone to school, loved her parents and siblings, and had many friends. And then, when she was 11 — just 6 years ago — her father, for reasons she isn’t comfortable with sharing with the press, set himself on fire, right in front of Nilab’s eyes.

Read the rest of the article at KidSpirit Online.

Gautama Mehta, Caie Kelley, and Akash Mehta read excerpts from their award winning pieces at the 2011 KidSpirit Awards. Read more online writing by teens, including poetry, and essays by going to www.kidspiritonline.com.

In celebration of the release of the Hunger Games on Friday, we’ve dug through our archives for a teen review of the book by one of our Ed Board members. Read it as you prepare for you viewing extravaganza!