Texas 2016 Letters About Literature Winners!

(L TO R) Texas Center for the Book Coord., Rebekah Manley, LAL Winners Tiffany Wang, Benjamin Hu and Sarah Helmbrecht and TSLAC Director and Librarian, Mark Smith at TLA 2016.

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Over 1,800 Texas students entered the Letters About Literature Contest this year. Congratulations to all the winners. First through Third place winners are listed below. First place winners have advanced to national judging!

All 4th-12th graders are invited to participate! Read a book or poem and write a letter. You could be on this list next year! Submissions are due to the Library of Congress by December of 2016. For more information about the contest, see details below.

Teachers, librarians, parents, neighbors, and beyond— please share this opportunity and cultivate a love of reading. As you will read in the winners’ entries, this contest takes words off pages, creates a heart connection to story, and organically cultivates life-long readers.

Level I Grades 4-6

Placement	Winner	Letter	Hometown	Piece	Author
1^st Place	Benjamin Hu	Read Benjamin's letter Watch a reading of the letter	Sugar Land, TX	“The Bad Beginning”	Lemony Snicket
“Only when a clamshell opens up can you tell if there is a pearl inside.”

2^nd Place	Zainab Mansoor	Read Zainab's letter	Houston, TX	“I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban”	Malala Yousafzai
“My life is different from yours.”

3^rd Place (tie)	Alexandros Costas Jacoby	Read Alexandros' letter	Dallas, TX	“‘Hope’ Is The Thing With Feathers”	Emily Dickinson
“The first time I read your poem, ‘Hope Is the Thing with Feathers,’ it made me feel confused…”

3^rd Place (tie)	Eladio Zamora	Read Eladio's letter	Pharr, TX	“Esperanza Rising”	Pam Muñoz Ryan
“I would like to share my life story about my grandpa…”

Level II Grades 7-8

Placement	Winner	Letter	Hometown	Piece	Author
1^st Place	Sarah Helmbrecht	Read Sarah's letter Watch a reading of the letter	Austin, TX	“The Beginning of Everything”	Robyn Schneider
“I read the beginning of everything on an airplane.”

2^nd Place	Lauren Hockema	Read Lauren's letter	Austin, TX	“Bridge to Terabithia”	Katherine Paterson
“Try harder, not like that, just go do something else!”

3^rd Place	Ainsley Murnahan	Read Ainsley's letter	Keller, TX	“Perfect”	Ellen Hopkins
“Your book, Perfect, has made me realize that the world isn’t as innocent as it seems.”

Level III Grades 9-12

Placement	Winner	Letter	Hometown	Piece	Author
1^st Place	Tiffany Wang	Read Tiffany's letter Watch a reading of the letter	Denton, TX	“The Year of the Dog”	Grace Lin
“Your book saved my life – or, at least half, of it.”

2^nd Place	Alex Montellano	Read Alex's letter	Paris, Texas	“The Giving Tree”	Shel Silverstein
“The open page of my copy of The Giving Tree begins with…”

3^rd Place	Salma Ruiz	Read Salma's letter	Mission, Texas	“A Thousand Splendid Suns”	Khaled Hosseini
“All my life I have dealt with one simple yet confining and limiting fact…”