1st Place 3rd-4th Grade: ‘The Little Tree’ by Abigail Herndon, Frankford Elementary, teacher Shawn Hill/Amber Workman
By Abigail Herndon
The fog was rising and the snow was falling. I was the first one awake, so it was very quiet, except for a small crackling noise. “What is that sound?” I wondered. “It couldn’t be the snow because it doesn’t crackle”
I looked around at my friends, they looked different. I examined them a little closer to see that they had no leaves. “What happened to their leaves?” I wondered. I noticed a tremendous amount of leaves under me and my friends. I examined myself. I was alarmed to see my own branches empty.
Soon, my best friend, Haley woke up. “Haley, you don’t have any leaves,” I told her. “You’re not going to fool me this time, Abby,” she said. “By the way, what happened to you? Your leaves are gone!” she said.
“I don’t know what happened, but it happened to you too. Look at yourself,” I said.
“Ok, I’ll look at myself, but if my leaves are there, you owe me five bucks!”
She looked at herself and said, “Help me put my leaves back on before Kamon and the others wake up.”
“I don’t think I can!” I exclaimed.
Shortly after, Sheridan woke up, along with a couple others. We both had a lot of questions to ask her, but we waited a couple minutes before we started bombarding her with questions.
“Excuse me, Sheridan. Could we ask you a couple of questions?” I finally said.
“Sure, you can ask me anything,” she replied.
“We were wondering if you could help us put our leaves back on,” I said.
Sheridan explained to us that it wasn’t that simple. She told us that we couldn’t just put our leaves back on. She also explained that in winter, it is too cold for our leaves to survive.
We were devastated. We immediately cried because we wanted our beautiful leaves back! Sheridan quickly put our minds at ease because she explained that our leaves would come back in the spring when they were able to survive. We shouted with glee to discover our leaves would be back before long!
With Sheridan’s help, we figured out why our leaves fell off and when we will get them back. As winter becomes colder, we will go into a deep sleep, and we will awake again in spring!