Middle School Challenge

Journey of an Axolotl Author: Finn Grade 6

I stared at my empty room. All the furniture was gone, with no books, no pictures, and no alarm clock that woke me up every morning for school. I opened the balcony window and stepped outside. The tall buildings rose as high as the sky, the green park with a rusty slide, and the karaoke parlor. This was a goodbye to everything I knew. I left the room, closing the door behind me softly. The walls along the side of the stairs were old and brown. The third step of the staircase always creaked when I stepped on it.

“Are you ready to go?” my dad asked.

I nodded. I stepped outside and got into the backseat of the brand-new rental car. I sat next to my brother, Len. Out the window, there was my house. The green roof and the brown walls, the mailbox, always empty, that would clatter in the wind, and the persimmon tree that grew bright orange persimmons every September. All of this passed by me as my dad drove onto the highway. We passed baseball pitches and rivers. Houses and malls.

Finally at the airport. My dad unloaded the luggage into a cart while my mom looked for the papers. It was July in Tokyo, burning hot as usual. I just wanted to

get into the airplane. No, I wanted to go home. We walked into the cold air-conditioned room and checked in.

The plane ride was like going into a room full of buzzing flies. Babies crying, kids shouting and adults snoring. My seat was next to Len’s. He was snoring while listening to heavy metal rock music. How is he surviving all of this? I took my album out of my bag and looked through it. Pictures of me and Marina were in there, from when we were three years old until fifth grade.

I had fallen asleep while gazing out at the blue sky. I woke up to the noise of people moving around. I had slept through landing. I got up and waited for my turn to get out of the plane. The second the two sliding doors opened, I felt a gust of warm wind hit my face. The temperature didn’t have much of a difference to Tokyo. I fanned myself with the book that I brought into the plane.

“Dad, why is it taking so long? I’m going to melt,” I complained.

“The taxi is coming. Be patient, Akkiko. It’s fine, the house won’t run away from us. Grandma won’t let it go,” my dad answered calmly. It wasn’t ok. My whole life was ruined because my parents were being too protective of my grandma. She was fine alone! She was able to live for two years alone! Not just that, but my plans to spend the summer with Marina were ruined. The school that I got accepted to and Marina, my friend’s birthday party. My life is over, and I’m not overreacting.

After becoming the most popular kids in the city, Mike and his friends are having the best time living in a world where magic and the modern world live together. But after Mike sees a murder at a fair, the kids are thrown into a magical conspiracy involving political assinations, returning monsters, and secret government deals. Now the kids must race against a monster army to find the Wizard’s Gem, solve the murders, and stop the secret monsters from achieving their evil and deadly plans.

Horror in the Kingdom 2 is the sequel to a book the author wrote in fifth grade but decided to not publish in the challenge and instead wrote the much more superior ideas in the sequel. It’s a fantasy/mystery story involving themes of friendship, courage, and understanding. It takes people deeper into a world where magic and modernity live together, and goes deeper into its lore and how this world works. The story celebrates friendship and finding the flaws within yourself and making a change for the better.

Authr: John

Grade 8

A bite was all it took for the plague to begin. Now the school of ISB is overrun by zombies, hungry for the taste of flesh.

A group of students must guide themselves out of the school of the undead to see the end of the controlled apocalypse. They will work through their histories with each other while also defying the pupils and teachers. Each of them turned into zombies.

Blood will be shed, sacrifices will be made, and souls will be lost.

Warning: this book is not for children younger than 12 or those who are easily disturbed.

My Name is Margot

Author: Ginny Grade 7

The Savior of Tarumba

Author: Leo T. Grade 7

Brody is a 13-year-old boy and is the son of the city of Tarumba’s leader. When an ancient evil reappears and snuffs out the Flame of Life, the only defensive measure the city has against it, the civilians are threatened, and worst of all, Brody’s Father gets kidnapped.

Now, Brody must race to find the three sacred objects needed to relight the Flame of Life that were scattered across the land by his ancestors 1000 years ago.

Teen

Author: Kanan Grade 8

Author: Chloe B

Grade 8

To the world, she is absent, her mind lost in the folds of memory.

“Why are you running?”

Her eyes are hollow, swollen around the edges. The circles underneath them are almost as dark as her hair.

“God you’re such a child.”

She stands separate from the others, her long skirt billowing around her ankles, hands clasped tightly in front of her.

“At this point you should give up…”

Her parents stand together on the opposite side of the room, statues in their movements; they do not speak, they do not show emotion.

“Because you…are stuck with me…”

Her sister is fixed to a bench, her teeth sinking into the top of her lip. She grips the bench with an urgency.

“Whether you like it or not…”

The girl can not move from the sea of black, she is stuck, drowning in its never ending waters.

“I will literally always be there…”

It chokes her, squeezing everything she once was out, burying it beneath the wooden casket.

“And I will never leave you.”

He had said he would always be there, that he would never leave her.

She had believed it.

Christina’s Locket

Author: Alekhya Grade 6

One frosty night, as a window creaked open on 6th Avenue, a shady figure crept into a mansion and leapt into the master bedroom, where a celebrated songstress, Christina Johnson, was sleeping soundly. The figure had a gun that looked like it wasn’t its first rodeo.

Moments later the room was filled with a terrible high pitch scream, and then abruptly fell silent.

Charlotte Williams and Max Buman are not ordinary 11 year olds. They have a mission; to solve the case. Their first clue? Christina’s Locket.

In a far future, two young girls, our age deal with their own battles and struggle to keep their heads above the water. In this future, the world has stopped spinning and there are two sides, a side with sunshine; the Bright Side and a side with darkness; the Dark Side. Each girl struggles with their own set of situations that they have been presented with due to their circumstances. Yet all of this comes to a halt when The Government announces something spectacularly horrifying.

It is a story told from two vast perspectives, one from a girl who has it all and one from a girl who has nothing. But under the surface, both struggle with problems, as once you start to look closer, cracks appear within the once crystal-like glass.

Will they be able to change their fate, or is fate written in the stars?