The Neag School of Education is proud to announce that a Connecticut student, Aleema Kelly from CREC Montessori Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., is the national winner of the Library of Congress’ “Letters About Literature” contest for Level I, grades 4-6.

Kelly, a sixth-grade student, wrote to Alex Gino, author of children’s novel George, about a young transgender girl. She won $100 for winning Connecticut’s statewide contest, for Level I. In Connecticut, more than 400 students participated across grades 4-12, resulting in six winners for the three levels. As part of the winning the national prize, she will receive a cash award of $1,000.

“Aleema’s first-place finish at the national level recognizes her skill not only as a writer able to convey thoughtful, complex ideas, but also her ability to read, analyze, and find personal meaning in literature,” says Wendy Glenn, a Neag School professor and the Letters About Literature faculty representative for Connecticut. “Her letter was particularly compelling in the way it revealed the impact of the novel on her as a person. She even conducted her own survey research to gather her classmates’ perceptions of gender norms to both inform her understandings and to challenge the assumptions her data revealed.”

“Winning the Letters About Literature contest means a lot to me,” says Kelly. “It helped me realize I could encourage other kids to feel better about being themselves. I also thought that hopefully other kids will take the time to read the book and become as inspired as I was to be more comfortable in their own skin.”

“I think everyone, not only in middle school, but at all age levels should read this book because it deals with an important issue that many people have to face. It means a lot to me to be able to inspire more people to feel comfortable just as they are and not pretend to be anybody else that they aren’t just because they are scared of how someone in their class will think of them,” adds Kelly.

According to Kelly’s teacher at CREC Montessori Magnet School, David Adamson, “Her letter spoke to the concerns of so many people nowadays, that many people are threatened by those who are different, and that prejudice is growing in some areas and against some groups in particular.”

“I think her letter won because it hit on an issue currently being discussed in the present day media and because her letter showed what a real preteen (she herself) thinks about an issue that to her seems very simple – ‘be who you feel you are no matter what,’” says Adamson, a library media specialist at CREC.

“In addition to the aforementioned ideas, the fact that a student can talk about, think about, and write about the really big ideas that a book can bring up is so important to the development of good thinking, solid analytical skills, seeing things from all sides, writing and rewriting, and analyzing how a writer makes a character come so alive that the reader learns from a fictional character’s challenges,” adds Adamson “This contest lets students think about issues bigger than themselves, issues that adults and societies struggle to understand and come to grips with.  It also forces students to find books that deal with issues that go beyond those presented in a basic story read for pleasure or amusement.”

The Neag School of Education was the 2016 Connecticut sponsor for the Letters About Literature (LAL) writing contest for students in grades 4-12. The Neag School was awarded the sponsorship as a result of its sustained commitment to educational outreach in the areas of literature study, reading, and writing.

LAL is a national contest in which elementary, middle, and high school students are asked to read a book, poem, or speech and write a personal letter to that author (living or dead) about how the text affected them personally.

Glenn says the Neag School’s involvement helped foster students’ literacy skills while also promoting professional development opportunities for educators, as graduate students from the Neag School teacher education program, along with schoolteachers from across the state, served as judges at the state competition.

“Sponsoring the program was important in that it gave students the opportunity to write authentically and think creatively about literature,” says Glenn.

The Neag School was Connecticut’s first state-level sponsor of the LAL program in five years and will continue to sponsor the state contest again next year. “In our first year of sponsorship, the Neag School was particularly successful in reaching out to school districts and students that had not participated in the past, thus expanding the influence of this excellent program into more communities,” adds Glenn.

Winners from each state for each of the contest’s three categories (grades 4-6, grades 7-8, and grades 9-12) received a cash prize and state recognition and advanced to the national competition. More than 40,000 students nationwide entered the 23rd annual LAL contest, made possible by a grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The theme of the 2015-16 competition was: “How did an author’s work change your view of the world or yourself?”

For more information, visit s.uconn.edu/NeagLAL.