For a class at school, Sam had to write a one page essay to an author of his choice, telling that author how one of their books changed his life. Sam wrote to J.K. Rowlings about Harry Potter...Harry Potter? How could that change your life? Well, read Sam's essay below to find out!
The real exciting news is all the "letters" written to authors, where entered into a national contest, Letters About Literacy. We just found out that Sam's letter was actually one of the three honorable mentions, in Iowa, at his level (Level 1)! He was super excited and we were so proud of him!!
This explains the process:
There were 47,000 entries from across the country. The national Letters About Literature office read all these entries and returned the top letters to each state. A panel of Iowa judges for each of the three levels met to discuss the finalist entries and select Iowa’s first, second and third place winners and three honorable mentions in each level.
Earning finalist is outstanding given the number of students nationally and from Iowa.
Here is Sam's letter to J.K.Rowlings:
Here is Sam's letter to J.K.Rowlings:
Dear J.K. Rowling,
I was
never really fond of reading long books with many chapters and rarely finished
a book I had started to read. The books I choose were usually easy books with maybe
100 pages or less. But that all changed in third grade. My mom suggested a book
for me to read, your first book, Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. After I read the first chapter there was
no stopping me!
When I
started to read Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone I decided to set a goal, which I had never attempted
before. I knew the last Harry Potter
movie was coming out the following summer so I set a big goal for myself: To read the whole series of Harry Potter
before the last movie came out. This was an enormous goal due to the fact this
it was over 5,000 pages of reading! In order not to be overwhelmed with reading
5,000 pages, I decided to set smaller
goals for myself or I might stop reading the books. My first mini-goal, as I
call them, was once I finished Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone I would get to watch the first movie. That mini-goal
kept me reading until I finished the entire book! Not only did I read an ENTIRE
book, but I had reached a goal that I had set and boy did that feel awesome!
Two
main themes in I picked up your books, especially in the first Harry Potter
book, was meeting new people, making new friends and being accepted for who you
are. I’ve had this struggle many times
in my life for I have been to four different elementary schools in six years.
This year in fifth grade I worried so much about who I was going to hang out
with or even have a friend because I left my best friend back at my old school.
I now realize that attending many different elementary schools I have actually gotten
to meet many new people and make many new friends. I am slowly becoming more
confident when meeting new people and making new friends, which is a life skill
that will help me throughout my life.
In
fifth grade, at my fourth new school, I met one of my best friends, Luke. For
the first week of school, I knew people, but didn’t have a good friend to hang
out with. I knew Luke from
football, so I decided to ask him if we could sit beside each other for lunch.
He said, “Sure!” Ever since then, Luke and I have hung out every day at school,
during recess, at lunch and during class. I have gotten to know him even better
when I was asked to be on a basketball team called the Sonix. My parents showed me the team roster I was
pumped! My best friend Luke was on the same team! I also was excited to see
that I knew other people on the team because of all the schools I’ve attended.
In turn, I’ve set many goals for myself in basketball, just like I did
for reading. I’m very happy to say that I’ve accomplished a lot of my goals so
far!
I enjoy setting goals for myself, after being
inspired by completing your books, and I don’t think that it’s possible to stop setting
goals to improve my life. All of these goals I’ve set, and a lot of my
accomplishments so far started with
reading a book in third grade. For that, thank you J.K. Rowling for inspiring
me to begin setting goals for myself, following them through and being the new
kids isn’t so bad.
Sam Belding
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