Briana Beebe is a third-grader at Centennial’s Mark Twain Elementary School, but she might be on her way to becoming one of the great American authors herself.
By kindergarten, Briana was already penning fiction. At 8, she recently learned firsthand the pressures of writing under deadline with minutes to spare.
“I lost my story. I couldn’t find it so I had to write it all over again,” the third-grader said. “I think I lost it for a reason. Maybe I wasn’t descriptive enough, or not everything made sense.”
The unplanned rewrite paid off. The young author was recently named a grand prize winner in the second annual “Be a Famous Writer” contest, a nationwide competition.
“I was scared and excited and kind of jumpy when I found out,” Briana said.
The third-grader took top honors in the 4-to-8-year-old category for “Mountain Dog,” a 997-word story about a beloved pet who runs away during a family’s difficult move to a new home.
While the narrative is pure fiction, Briana says some of the story’s aspects may have been culled from her life.
“I love animals and love to write about them,” she said. “We lost our cat because someone opened the door when we were doing the cable thing. I don’t know if that inspired me.”
Among “Mountain Dog’s” most descriptive moments is when lead character Kylie Neverheart, who is distraught over a lost dog and her family’s unsettling move, finds needed solace while climbing an oak tree outside her new home.
Little pieces of the wood started crumbling off and fell into the shimmering snow. I reached my hand up onto a branch and swung rapidly onto another one. I kneeled down and got comfortable as the tree carried me away into my daydreams. I felt a breeze and I felt free.
As Kylie escapes into the simple childhood pleasure of scaling a tree, she spots something fluttering down below. It turns out to be Sky, the girl’s lost husky.
The moment’s poignancy attracted at least one of the contest judges, Danny Kallis, creator of the popular Disney Channel series “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”
“It’s impossible for me to resist a story with climbing oak trees and finding your lost dog to make a new house feel like home,” Kallis said. “It was well written and made an old man like me go, ‘ahh.’”
Other creative professionals who helped judge more than 1,000 contest entries were “Princess Diaries” author Meg Cabot and Jim Davis, creator of the popular “Garfield” comic strip.
“Be a Famous Writer” was presented by the interactive storybook website MrsP.com. Actress Kathy Kinney, best known as the vulgar Mimi Bobeck on “The Drew Carey Show,” portrays the matronly Mrs. P., who reads stories in her “Magic Library.”
As part of her prize, Briana’s “Mountain Dog” will be be produced as a website video featuring a reading by Kinney and art from award-winning illustrator Robin Kaplan. Winning stories will also be available as free downloads from iTunes on March 2 in celebration of Read Across America Day.
Briana will also receive her own bound illustrated copy of “Mountain Dog” and a gift certificate from the Powell’s Books retailer.
Although Briana is considering a career as a veterinarian, she plans to keep writing stories built around animals too. Her work in progress is a “Narnia-like” tale of a young girl and her horse who wake up in a magical land.
For his part, Kallis hopes Briana and other kids her age will continue committing their imaginations to paper.
“I am such a believer in reading and writing,” he said. “That is part and parcel of what shapes you as a person. Anything that permits young people to pursue those interests is valuable.”
Briana, a student in Mark Twain’s gifted and talented program, promises not to disappoint.
“Even though I’ve already won a writing contest, I want to become even better at writing,” she said. “I want to write a story that’s as good as ‘Narnia’ or ‘Harry Potter.’”