The Young Voices Foundation, a non profit group that seeks to encourage children to develop stronger writing skills, will announce the short story contest winners today. Their website features winning works by children exploring and examining their world through language.

If you know a school age child, encourage them to write for you. Help them learn how important their words can be, and how reading comprehension helps them every day.

If, when I asked “why do I have to  diagram sentences every other grade,” someone had answered “so you can understand what the writer is trying to say - literally, figuratively,” I might have been a little happier. I would have been even happier if that person had told me how useful I’d find it when writing for the multitudes of readers who have English as a second or third language.

Well, maybe not… I was a teenager.