June 1, 2006--Good Company: Sylvia Plath and Jessica Atkinson
Reading yesterday in the NY Times about the Scholastic writing competition, through the mist of time, before the instant proliferation of news from around the world with images tumbling in profusion out of the TV and from the Internet, I recalled more innocent days when once a week Junior Scholastic magazine would arrive at PS 244 in Brooklyn and how through it pages I would catch glimpses of lives beyond my provincial Borough.
The publisher, Scholastic Press, now best known as the source of the Harry Potter books, through this annual competition offers another view of this larger world.
The Times article (linked below) is about one of this year’s winners, Jessica Atkinson from South Carolina. She is not one of your prep-school kids busy building her resume for her applications to Harvard and Yale. In fact, if she hadn’t won the $10,000 prize it is likely that there would be no college in her future; and who knows, maybe little likelihood that she would realize her considerable potential as a writer. Over the years since 1923 when the competition was established by the founder of Scholastic, winners have included Bernard Malamud, Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, and now Jessica Atkinson.
Hers has been a hardscrabble life. A life so difficult that she is reluctant to talk about it. But though she does draw inspiration and material from it, even at just fifteen she is already able to transform it into art so powerful that most assume that everything she writes must be totally autobiographical.
As is often the case, when someone from a background such as Jessica’s is discovered, it is by an unusually talented and caring teacher. In this case, a Rene Miles who has been teaching English for 32 years. Ms. Miles noticed Jessica’s talent when she was eleven, from a poem Jessica wrote called “Flame.” She was struck by lines that revealed an emerging talent and offered a glimpse into the hard realities of Jessica’s life—“I am like a flame, so elegant in a way, yet so dangerous to curious fingers.”
I know the CEO of Scholastic, Dick Robinson. Yes, Dick is a businessman, quite happy that sales of the latest Harry Potter entry sold more than 11 million copies in hardcover and that this has contributed mightily to Scholastic’s bottom line.
But over morning coffee at Balthazar in New York, Dick really comes to life when talking about the kids whose lives are changed as the result of the various Scholastic competitions. Dick is especially interested in the children “in the middle,” who tend to get overlooked while those at “the bottom” and at “the top” have all sorts of special programs available to them. He frets about how to find those in the middle who thus get lost. And knowing Dick and knowing Scholastic, I know he will do something about it.
There are too many Jessica Atkinsons out there just waiting for their chance.
The publisher, Scholastic Press, now best known as the source of the Harry Potter books, through this annual competition offers another view of this larger world.
The Times article (linked below) is about one of this year’s winners, Jessica Atkinson from South Carolina. She is not one of your prep-school kids busy building her resume for her applications to Harvard and Yale. In fact, if she hadn’t won the $10,000 prize it is likely that there would be no college in her future; and who knows, maybe little likelihood that she would realize her considerable potential as a writer. Over the years since 1923 when the competition was established by the founder of Scholastic, winners have included Bernard Malamud, Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, and now Jessica Atkinson.
Hers has been a hardscrabble life. A life so difficult that she is reluctant to talk about it. But though she does draw inspiration and material from it, even at just fifteen she is already able to transform it into art so powerful that most assume that everything she writes must be totally autobiographical.
As is often the case, when someone from a background such as Jessica’s is discovered, it is by an unusually talented and caring teacher. In this case, a Rene Miles who has been teaching English for 32 years. Ms. Miles noticed Jessica’s talent when she was eleven, from a poem Jessica wrote called “Flame.” She was struck by lines that revealed an emerging talent and offered a glimpse into the hard realities of Jessica’s life—“I am like a flame, so elegant in a way, yet so dangerous to curious fingers.”
I know the CEO of Scholastic, Dick Robinson. Yes, Dick is a businessman, quite happy that sales of the latest Harry Potter entry sold more than 11 million copies in hardcover and that this has contributed mightily to Scholastic’s bottom line.
But over morning coffee at Balthazar in New York, Dick really comes to life when talking about the kids whose lives are changed as the result of the various Scholastic competitions. Dick is especially interested in the children “in the middle,” who tend to get overlooked while those at “the bottom” and at “the top” have all sorts of special programs available to them. He frets about how to find those in the middle who thus get lost. And knowing Dick and knowing Scholastic, I know he will do something about it.
There are too many Jessica Atkinsons out there just waiting for their chance.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:25 AM
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