On Feb. 21, Bhavya Patel, son of Rajesh and Avani Patel of Ronceverte, was announced as the Greenbrier County’s Young Writers Contest winner in grades 1 and 2.
His story, “Garage Elves Save Christmas!” will go on to compete in the West Virginia State Young Writers Contest in Charleston.
Patel is a second grade student in Deborah W. Johnson’s class at Ronceverte Elementary School. Johnson stated, “Bhavya is a creative, gifted, hardworking student who I enjoy teaching and having in my class. I’m so proud of his accomplishments. When I announced that Bhavy’s story had won the county competition, all his peers clapped and verbally congratulated him.”
Since 1984, the Young Writers Contest has been held under the auspice of the WV Writing Project. It is managed by CWVWP at MUGC with the help of the State Department of Education. Young Writers Contest, which is funded by the WV Department of Education and supported by Marshall University Graduate College, the University of Charleston, and the Charleston Daily Mail, has grown to showcase and honor student writers in grades 1 through 12 in every county. Over 800 students, teachers, parents, and family members attend the celebration day at the University of Charleston each year. Such outstanding participation symbolizes the importance of writing for students and their teachers in West Virginia.
Patel, along with other county winners, will be recognized at the April Board of Education meeting.
Garage Elves Save Christmas!
By Bhavya Patel
Let me tell you a about what happened to my sister Jiya and I two Christmas’s ago. We woke up early Christmas morning and rushed downstairs to look at the presents under the tree. No presents! It looked like Santa never came.
Something just wasn’t right. We went looking for Santa. We searched the woods behind our house. We spotted Santa’s sleigh. It had crashed! Reindeer were nowhere to be found and gifts were everywhere! I told Jiya I thought we should start searching for Santa by walking in circles around the sleigh and spreading out. We searched for two hours and we gave up and went home.
When we arrived back at our house, we could see through the window. There was Santa, sitting on our couch watching TV. Jiya and I went inside. I said, “Santa, why are you in our house?” and Jiya said, “Santa, we saw your sleigh. Are you ok?” Santa looked at us and told us about crashing his sleigh and coming to our house to use the telephone to call the Garage Elves for help. He said our gifts were under the sleigh and he had to wait for the Garage Elves to fix everything before he could deliver our gifts.
We told Santa he could stay at our house and wait where it was warm. Four hours later, Bob the Garage Elf knocked on our door and told Santa his sleigh was fixed and all the reindeer were hitched up to his sleigh. Santa told us to come outside with him and he gave us our presents. He also gave us a choice of keeping his secret or sprinkling us with sleeping dust to make us forget the last six hours. We chose to keep his secret.