Here are the winning entries from 2009.

Aden O’Connor Age 6

Kapiti NumberWorks’nWords

Leaves

Trees have leaves and then they don’t.

Where do the leaves go? I think they get blown away by the wind.

Autumn makes the leaves fall off and summer makes them grow back.

We put our leaves in the compost and we put our compost in our garden to help our plants grow more leaves.

 

By Taylor Chadfield   Age: 8

Wanganui NumberWorks’nWords

The Magical Hut

Hayley woke up from a deep sleep. She stretched her arms and legs and leaped out of bed. After dressing quickly, she zoomed down stairs. Suddenly she remembered when walking home from school yesterday with her friend Amelia Jane that today they were going to explore a hut that they had spotted in a paddock. Amelia was waiting patiently on the corner for Hayley. Pretty soon she appeared, together they climbed a brick fence. As they approached the black sparkly door their hearts started to beat fast. They crept inside and looked up and saw a black cat with glowing green eyes. She was busy combing her whiskers with a gold brush. “Mellow”, she purred. “Welcome, my name is Samantha. I would be delighted if you would join me for a tea party”. “Sure thing”, cried the girls. Samantha said, “Diddley dow set up now”. With that the table popped up, the cups and plates flew out of the cupboards. The jug started boiling, the teapot rattled and the cupcakes popped themselves into the stove. Amelia Jane and Hayley could not believe their eyes, their jaws dropped. The table was loaded with all sorts of goodies. They chatted all afternoon. “It’s getting late now we better go home”, said Amelia. “This is our own secret”, purred Samantha. It is our secret nodded the girls. We will be back tomorrow. They left very contented with big full tummies.

 

WHY ME?

By Hannah Hondroudakis

Aged 14 years

NumberWorks’nWords Chevron Island (Australia)

I was running, my heart was pounding like a bullet in my chest, and my legs were aching like hell! This wasn’t paradise, this was my living nightmare. As my feet continued to pound the concrete path, I heard the policeman behind me slow to a jog, and at the same time, my mates caught up with me. “That was awesome, dude” Levy chortled, with his hands on his knees to stop him from falling flat on his back with laughter. It was only when Cash took the bulky package from my firm grasp did I realise, I still had the widow’s handbag. For the rest of the way home I pretended to laugh along with the other two as they recalled the evening’s events. To tell the truth, it was horrible, the first time I set eyes on that poor lady, I didn’t want to do it. I guess that makes me a sissy, but I’m not cut out for this, breaking the law, and constantly being on the verge of death.

To be truthfully honest, my life had always sucked. My dad died of a brain tumour when I was two, and mum died a few months ago from the same thing, so I was sent to live with a foster family. I hated them; they never listened to me and tried to change my life around. So I ran away, towards a life on the streets. Well, it wasn’t all bad. Soon I met Levy and Cash who haven’t once let me down. It’s just… I felt like I was the world’s worst person. Sometimes in life, a guy just needs a father to talk to, or a mother to take care of him.

We rounded the corner and came to an alley way where we had lived the past fortnight. Levy slumped on the concrete straight away, letting his rolls of fat flow out from beneath him. To most people, Levy looked terrifying, but to us, he looked like an overweight pig. He had a large round face with dark brown hair just covering his tiny little ears. Cash sat awkwardly on a piece of debris, counting the total of our loot. He had a long, skinny figure with short, blonde curly hair and an oval sort of face. I on the other hand have really dark olive skin with medium, black, wavy hair and a smooth skinny body. I was pretty tall, but not as tall as Cash.

I curled up on an old rug and tried to get some sleep, it’d been hard trying to get some shut eye lately, and I had had a few nightmares the past couple of days. Always the same one, my parents standing there in the light but when I tried to reach out for them, they kept slipping away into the darkness only to be replaced by a fiery red creature with an evil grin. I closed my eyes and tried thinking of all the good memories I could remember of my mother; her smile, and how her hands were always stretched out to grab me when I needed her. This worked until I woke up in the darkness, shaking from head to toe with balls of sweat rolling down my forehead.

I calmed right down after a few deep breaths and got up to take in the early morning air. There was only a tint of pink in the sky but it was obvious it was morning. After a while, I sat up and waited for the other two to wake up. I listened to their heavy snores, Cash was the first to come round, then Levy, soon we were all up and the sky was a deep blue with odd clouds scattered across the horizon. We sat and chatted for a while before hitting the streets, wondering what havoc and destruction we would cause today. Suddenly, Cash stopped; he was looking at the bank with a wicked smile playing across his face. I knew that look, throughout my time on the street; I’d learnt to avoid this look. This was the look of planning something big, something to really make people run and scream in horror. “What if we rob the bank?”

I was horror struck, I didn’t want to do it but I had no choice, we planned our exhibition then grabbed our stuff and set our plan to action. I grabbed my gun and held it above my head as I entered the bank. The audience shrieked and cried in horror as I stood there, I was glad that the black balaclava was over my head, it hid the fact that my face was as white as a sheet of paper. To the occupants of the bank, I was terrifying, a danger, and a threat. I was shaking all over, my vision blurred and my senses completely cut off. The sound of sirens was audible above the muffled shrieks of my audience.

My heart suddenly left my chest and started beating in my throat; I witnessed everything as though it was in slow motion. The gun left my hands and I was running flat out, out the door and into the panicked street. I pulled off my balaclava and as I passed through the crowd, I saw the police arresting Levy and Cash, and tears ran silently down my cheeks. Some might say that my sudden flee was out of cowardice, others say it was out of bravery, I didn’t care, this wasn’t my life to live. I ran back to my foster home, my parents all cried with me because of the reunion, I never told them what had become of during my absence, and the police stopped searching for me.
That was twenty two years ago now, today I have a wife and a son to call my own. I will never forget Levy or Cash, and I’m sure they’ll never forget me; they gave me the strength to overcome my adversity and start a new life, a chapter in my life.