Iraq through the eyes of a young writer

Staff

Published Saturday, April 30, 2005

On Thursday night, Steve Ishak gave an auditorium of Young Writers parents and friends a look at the war in Iraq through the eyes of someone who was there before the U.S. troops.

"I didn't want to see my country burning," the King's Fork High junior told the crowd at King's Fork Middle, reading from his nonfiction work, "Journals of an Iraqi Kid."

"I didn't want to see children killed. But I was sure that we needed the war to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I am so thankful for the American soldiers who came over here to help us.

"My dream had come true; they came here and we are free," he said of seeing American soldiers line the streets of Iraq. "That's what I thought when I saw them in out streets. I said to my dad, 'Are we free finally, or is this just a dream?'"

Ishak's work nabbed him first place among 11th grade nonfiction writers - and the judges weren't the only ones who liked his work; Ishak got a standing ovation from the crowd.

"I wanted to make many people know what we went through and what we saw," he said. "A lot of American soldiers fought and died to make us a free people."

Over 80 writers from kindergarten to 12th grade received awards for their work in fiction, nonfiction, autobiographies and poetry.

"All year long, we encourage writing," said chairman Frances Robb. "This is a culminating activity."

A quarter-century veteran of singing, dancing, writing and storytelling, Kim Norman opened the presentation.

"This is absolutely as important as handing out awards to athletes," said Norman, who works in graphic design at the "Smithfield Times" weekly paper. "I just think this is wonderful. They need to realize that everybody has a story to tell, and that one story is just as important as another."

There were plenty of stories to be found around the program; Kilby Shores student Ethan Wright was named the city's top third-grade fiction writer for his novella, "Lightning and Flippy," a tale of a dog and a dolphin.

"I have a Yorkie (like Lightning), and I'd love to have a dolphin," Ethan said. "It's about eight pages, and I wrote it in three days. I want to write when I grow up, so I can be famous."

Driver Elementary student Dawn Wright found that writing about oneself isn't as easy as we might think.

"It was really hard to decide how to start off," said the third-grader. "It was hard to think about what I wanted to say and then write it."

Eventually, she got rolling. She wrote about learning to walk and talk. She wrote about her first trip to Water Country, U.S.A. She wrote about her little brother ("the most annoying person I've ever met. Where's the receipt?"). She wrote about her first culinary experience ("I made tuna casserole, and it smelled divine, if I do say so myself").

It worked; her self-story was named the finest.

"This was what I'd dreamed of since kindergarten," she said. "This was just to show my parents that I could be a writer."

jason.norman@suffolknewsherald.com

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