Azura “Zuri”
Photo © Copyright 2014 The Phoenix Rising School,
used with permission

From Heidi Smith, Communications and Outreach Manager for Rainer’s Phoenix Rising School (PRS) on PRS & RSE student Azura “Zuri”:
“If you were an author, imagine hearing this from a ten-year-old reader: ‘Your book was so much more than a required English book. It taught me to be more giving and self-sufficient . . . it really made me think about the world. I saw that not everybody has the most glorious life.’ This particular testament to the power of literature came from Phoenix Rising fifth grader Azura, a.k.a Zuri, a participant in the Library of Congress’ Letters About Literature contest. Azura is currently a semi-finalist, one of seventy-eight out of the original 50,000+ entrants.

‘It makes me feel awesome,’ says Azura. ‘I feel more confident in what I do because someone has seen it and they think it’s good. I feel better about my work.’ She actually began to visualize winning back in January. ‘We were doing this project called the House of Wisdom and it had a couple of slots where you could write what you wanted,’ she says, ‘so I wrote that I wanted to win the writing contest.’

For the contest, students were allowed to pick any book they wanted. Azura chose Almost Home by Joan Bauer, a story of a homeless teen whose only companion is a dog. It had a big impact.”
Read more of Smith’s report.

Read more of Smith’s report published in the Nisqually Valley News.