Michelle dropped a phonebook-sized stack of papers on the counter- 90 stories for me to mark from my field trip to her Grade 7 classes last week. Wow, how do teachers and professors do it? But at least these are an absolute hoot to read. I marked ten of them tonight, only 80 more to go! Here are some early highlights:

"It was a very bloody war and swords were flying everywhere with hands still attached.// Xerxes wept and sobbed and cursed at the Spartans.// All of the Persians piled upon the rangers killing them all and blood was everywhere but at least only 1 Persian soldier died but they gave him a proper burial." -Connor

"Deranged Snowmen from New Jersey took over the north they hadn't seen us because we camoflaged our igloos." -Ryan (I also liked his spelling- "slottered" makes way more sense than the true spelling!)

"Societies ruined, houses burnt down, blood curdling screams of horror is all that you hear in my town.// We were about to give up when we heard a scream it sounded like 5 year old lil Jimmy." -Haley

"After 5 hours of battle the snowmen came out with some sort of snowball plasma cannon. It was so sophiscated our troops didn't know how to dismantel it." -Zach

Anyways, I was really impressed. The stories had a fair bit of "sophiscation" to them. Quite a few students chose to use this drawing by Travis Hanson as a springboard (hence the deranged Snowmen from New Jersey), while so far only one used this one, which of course, I expecially dig. And sadly, the bear in that story is an antagonist:

"But Fuzz (a coyote) wouldn't come; instead he fought the bear, bitting and scratching, but Fuzz was no match to a bear. The bear hit Fuzz so hard he went flying into a tree with bruises, bumps, lumps, and blood all over him. "Nooo!" screamed Lily and Billy-Willy. The bear walked away with a happy look on his face, like he had accomplished a really hard task." -Carissa