By Julie

I was a plain girl. Limp brown hair framed my face, the color of peachy silly putty, and milk-chocolate eyes. At school and most of the time at home, I was just what I looked, like: ordinary. But if you caught me alone in a room with a piano, I am not modest enough to refrain from saying that you would never want to leave. Music flowed from the piano, domesticated and tamed by my fingertips as I stroked, note by note. As much as I loved the works of Mozart and Bach, I mostly enjoyed writing my own music. I could spend hours on end replaying, putting tidbits of songs together, scribbling notes onto sheet after sheet of blank notepaper. However much I was entranced by the glossy, dark instrument, I lacked one thing: confidence. I would grow up to be a “house mother”, as I called them, or a nurse, or a lawyer. Never would I see my name in a thick book of music, accompanied by beautiful notes. But all of that was about to change. On a pleasant day, I was alone in the house, bound to the piano, testing out scales and chords and scrawling down potential titles on the tops of sheet music. It all began when someone left the windows open. My ears tuned to the melodic flow of the ebony and ivory keys, I did not notice a noise from the third-floor bedroom. After I abandoned my joy to make lunch, I sensed a bit of a fluttering noise from upstairs. Almost as if paper were being blown from the desk. But after a minute, it slowed and ceased. Shrugging it off, I returned to the piano, experimenting with an #A. Just when I had finished the phrase, I heard the doorbell chime, shattering the song. Ding-dong! I stood and hurried to answer the door. When I pulled back the door something amazing happened. Fourteen slender paper birds blew from the gusty tug of the wind onto the hearth. They were the same wallpaper birds which were a design of the wallpaper on the third-floor bedroom. Not even closing the door, I almost didn’t realize that this was irregular. I am guessing I was a bit numb from shock. I walked slowly to the piano and began to play the first scale in the song I had been composing. In a whirlwind I was suspicious didn’t come from outside, the wallpaper birds rose, slower than life, as the song built into climax the birds flew in a flurry around me. Just as I was nearing three-quarters through my song, the sound of the doorbell rang again, accompanied, by a timid knock on the partially-open door. “Martha? Benjamin?” The voice of our next-door neighbor, Mr. Watson, spoke quietly. The birds, who had stopped circling me, flattened against the wall. Mr. Watson’s plump, spectacled face peered inside. “Erica? Was that you playing? You should play in the Town Music Festival, I dare say. You have serious potential, I’m quite impressed! Quite a beautiful composition. Are either of your parents home?” I grinned in spite of myself.

As Mr. Watson wrote out his message, placing it by the corded phone, Erica’s plain face glowed with pleasure.

Our next penguins, the Yellow-eyed Penguins, live up to their name. Their eyes of pale yellow, gleaming like bright topaz gems, will grab your interest right away. These intruiging penguins are the rarest out of all of them! Their population is 1,500 to 2,000 pairs, which is very few next to the macaroni, which probably has around 2,000,000 pairs! They live on the coast of New Zealand and a few more southern islands. They nest in forests! They can be seen residing in little nests resembling shallow bowls, lined with twigs and grasses, like a sparrow or some other flying bird’s nest. However, the yellow-eyed penguins’ nests are on the forest floor where they can reach. These penguins need a lot of personal space: most of the time, nests are spaced out widely to one nest per hectare! This proves that the penguins seek solitude: they are the least socialable of all the penguins and seem to enjoy being out of sight of others except their mates and chicks. Even the little chicks don’t huddle off in créches, or nursery groups, like most penguin types. They like to stick with their parents. If you watch, some people see yellow-eyed penguins scuttle down to the sea to catch food at dawn or dusk! Their diet is 85% fish and 15% squid. They much catch a lot to eat, since they’re such swift swimmers! Another amazing fact about these penguins is that they can live to 20 years old! Yellow-eyed penguins are probably the closest penguins to the “original penguin” in appearance. They have grey-blue backs and white bellies. Their bills are red-purple. They are the third largest penguin, after the emperor and king. They get their name from their stunning yellow eyes. A crown of yellow feathers circles their eyes and wraps around the back of their head. However amazing these penguins are, they are classified as threatened or endangered. Their forests are sometimes chopped down, forcing these brilliant birds to nest in high grasses. Mammals, like dogs, cats, and ferrets that people have brought to the country can harm or eat them there! A Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust was formed to help save these penguins. Every school in New Zealand got educational resource kits, and with everyone pitching in, the lives of yellow-eyed penguins began to improve. It fills me with joy that if people try hard enough, they can save species! If you can’t believe all of these interesting facts about yellow-eyed penguins, go to New Zealand and spot these birds with their beautiful yellow eyes for yourself!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

Even though you’ve heard mostly about penguins like the adélie, emperor, and king, it’s not really realistic- most penguins live where it’s warmer or are even beach bums! A good phrase to describe the Galapagos penguin is “soaking up some sun rays”! These penguins live off the coast of Ecuador on the Galapagos Islands, on the Pacific Ocean. The air temperature can get over 100 degrees F, water temperature to 82 degrees F, and the dark feathers on their backs to 124 degrees F! This is 100 degrees (or more) warmer than the frosty Antarctic! Appropriately, Galapagos penguins nest in burrows, underneath plants, and in lava rock crevices. How do these penguins beat the heat, being the penguins living in the hottest climate?! The chilly Cromwell Current offers a refreshing dip, and the penguins spend a whole lot of time making a splash there. You might notice them panting like dogs that just ran like crazy. Humans sweat, but penguins lack sweat glands and lose body heat by panting. They hold their flippers slightly outward to lose more body heat and to keep their feet from getting sunburned! Even so, this type of penguin is officially endangered. There are only 15,000 birds left! This sad truth makes me want to hop a ship to the Galapagos and do something to help! Galapagos penguins are one of the smaller species, the smallest banded penguin. They have white stomachs and blue-black backs and heads. A blue-black band runs across their chests. Their bills are long and thin, like two burnt french fries stuck on top of one another! They are sometimes confused with their look-alike, the Magellanic, but Galapagos penguins are smaller and have thinner belly marks. So don’t take it for granted if you have air-contitioning and fans to keep you cool!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

The third Antarctic bird braving the cold down at the bottom of the world is another regal penguin: the King. King penguins are unique, skilled, and even wacky! King penguins don’t exactly live in Antarctic. They’re sub-Antarctic, they live around North Antarctica. They’re not the most abundant species of penguin, but they live in humungous colonies of up to 20,000 birds! Kings are a lot like Emperor penguins- they even look almost identical to them, but kings are just a bit smaller and more brightly colored. They have pupils the size of pinheads in the light, but they grow tremendous in the dark. This lets them catch up to 2,000 fish in the dim waters of the sea! It does sort of help that some fish glow in the dark, though. The king penguin babies are a little strange- they don’t look like their parents or even penguins at all! They are almost as large as their penguin parents, plump, fuzzy with no sleek feathers, and brown all over! They look so different that people used to think that they were another species, dubbing them “woolly penguins”! The king penguins eat squid and fish, but the dads can go for a month without food while their mates are at sea! But the babies are even tougher, able to fast for five months at once and lose 68% of their body weight! Parents are able to pick out the voice of their child from hundreds of chicks in a penguin créche, or huddle. When the chicks are in their eggs, adults keep them in their warm brood patches on their feet, the only penguins to not have nests. Parents take turns balancing the egg. Another interesting fact is that most penguins use a little hop to move around, but kings prefer running with their feet. To be able to observe these creatures at work and play would be more amazing than a trip to Hawaii for me.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was part of a school project.

On a bright, cheerful day
Skipping round, giddy with joy and spring
And warm weather
Caressing us with a warm, gentle breeze
The sky is bluer than blue could be
The grass is bright and greener than green
The flowers have sprung from the ground
In a frenzy of bright, colorful petals
Some of which
Flap their wings
And carry on to another back yard
As butterflies and bees.
Suddenly, all is quiet,
A hush comes over the garden,
Our world seems to freeze.
A jewel, a bright jewel of green and blue and red
Rises, over the fence
Hovering in a regal way,
Its long, thin beak turned up.
Humming bird, queen of the garden,
Lands in a sea of flowers
Which bob up and down for her amusement
Takes off again, properly buzzing
The Queen takes a sip
From her royal feeder
Slurping nectar so daintily
So fragile
I can see why this tiny jewel-bright creature
Is a Queen.
The bird, in all her splendor,
Drinks to her pleasure,
Thanks the flowers politely,
Picks her royal self up
And flies away with her royal Queen posture.
I rest back on the grass,
In wonder
Of what I have witnessed:
The Queen of Mother Nature
At teatime!

The dough feels squishy and moist, but floury under my hands. “Squish it, Kimberly, squish it!” Magic squeals in his high, excited voice. Minna giggles. “Squish it!” she agrees. “Squish it flat!” I squish it to Magic and Minna’s preference, then roll it back into a ball to give Minna a turn. She pounds the dough with her fists, squashing it into a lumpy bump, giggling all the while. Magic has gotten a chance to pound the dough into a contorted circle already, so I help my brother and sister pinch the crust and smooth out the bottom of the powdery off-white dough. “Look, a pizza!” Minna giggles. “We’re making a pizza!” Magic screeched excitedly. “Just make sure it’s baked enough, unlike last time.” Nina calls from the living room, in which she is reading one of her old magazines. “We will, this time,” I say, turning to my little siblings. “All right. Now, who wants to do the tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings?” I asked. “Toppings!” Minna shrieks in her four-year-old voice, maybe a bit too loud. “Cheese! Wait- no, tomato sauce. Yeah, cheese. Wait, I like doing the tomato sauce better.” Magic ponders, as if it’s the greatest decision he’ll ever make. “Okay,” I say, not knowing what Magic really decided, and I let him slather on a thin coating of red tomato sauce. But he doesn’t stop at a thin coating. “Um, I think that’s enough,” I say to Magic and Minna’s gales of laughter when the crust is filled with red substance, and wipe about half of it up. How is it that we are always able to use half a jar of the stuff? I sprinkle on the cheese, then finally succumb to Magic’s whining that he wanted to do the cheese and let both of them dump on some shredded mozzarella, moist and cool from the fridge. I don’t care that they sneak fingerfuls of the cheese into their mouths, and I don’t argue that we should put the cheese away. I remember how I was when I helped Nina make pizzas at their age. Luckily, the family likes their pizza very cheesy. Minna’s chubby hands find their way into the mushrooms, peppers, ham, and pepperoni. I help Minna line the outside of the meal with a border of peppers and make a smiley face with the pepperoni. She hasn’t left enough patience for the mushrooms and ham, so they go all over the place. “It’s the smiley guy’s freckles.” Magic observes. I pinch up a bit of garlic, let it loose onto my wrists, spread my arms wide, and fling it out on the pizza. “Cool!” Magic and Minna giggle and squeal, jumping up and down. I let them fling a little bit of garlic around the kitchen (I’d dust it up later), but just a bit because more than a touch can violate the perfect taste of the Italian delicacy. “Can you spin it around on your fingers like the cooks on TV?” Magic asks. “I think you’re supposed to do that with the dough,” I said, “And I don’t think I can, anyway.” Or rather, I didn’t want to risk an overturned pizza. I scooped up the pizza on the black slate and lower it into our old oven. “We made a pizza, we made a pizza!” The little children giggle as I chop up a loaf of Italian bread, Magic butters it, and Minna sprinkles on a tiny bit of garlic (even Minna has learned just to use a bit on the garlic bread). When we have together set the table like waiters and waitresses, poured out water for everyone, and I’ve cut up a fruit plate, the kitchen is filled with the wonderful aroma of a warm pizza dinner. Our mouths water as I remove the pizza from the oven and set the giant smiley face down on the table. When everyone is sat down, Mom cuts it and I take a bite, a bite of a slice of sheer paradise.

Equally important to the Adélie penguin, the other Antarctic species is the exceptionally elegant Emperor penguin. Every winder’s end on this frozen continent, there comes a miraculous, exciting sound, full of wonder. Peck, peck! Peck, peck! The sound of hatching chicks! Why is this so miraculous, exciting, and wonderful? These emperor penguins are the only Antarctic bird to breed in the coldest season- winter! When baby eggs are struggling to thrive, temperatures can drop as low as -80 degrees, 80 degrees lower temperature than a freezer, and winds can get as raging as 125 MPH! How do even adults survive this cold, you wonder? Imagine wearing a thick, thick coat with even 70 feathers per square inch on it. That’s what the amazingly insulated Emperor feels like! Babies, after born, huddle together in créches, little “playgroups” to keep them warm. They also stay in their parents’ brood patch- a warm area under their stomachs- even after they hatch, until they can regulate their own body temperature. Another interesting fact about their way of life is that they can dive 1,752 feet underwater and hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time!!!!! In fact, these penguins are clearly record-breakers. The biggest penguins, they can get up to four feet tall, which is so tall they could walk on the bottom of almost half of the big pool at an average recreation center without a problem! Emperors have black beaks and white bellies with a tinge of orange around their chests. Wait- one more record coming up! Emperors are the only penguins that may never touch land in a lifetime other than ice floes floating in the water! No wonder they’re good swimmers! These penguins are literally the “Amazing Atheletes of Antarctica”. Imagine how amazing it would be to rule Antarctica like a real monarch as one of these awesome emperors.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

Although most people think of penguins as living in Antarctica, only seven of seventeen penguin species even go near this gigantic chunk of ice, and only two species spend their lives there. One of these phenomenal two species, the adorable and classic adélie, has been know to peck and waddle its way into people’s hearts. Holding the record for the furthest-south penguins, adélies even have a colony way down at the bottom of the world in Cape Royds, Antarctica! Named for a French 1830′s explorer’s wife, these penguins have black backs and heads and snow-white bellies. It’s one of the three brush-tail penguins, known for its brushlike tail. You’ve probably seen pictures of these adélies gliding along on their bellies. No matter how delightful their penguin swagger can be, sliding on their stomachs saves much more energy and waddling can be hard for them. In fact, walking takes 42% more energy than it does for a turkey! These penguins like to stick together. Gray, downy chicks huddle in a crèche- a kind of penguin day-care that keeps them warm and offers protection from skuas and other vicious birds that would like to gobble them up. The adults are often seen diving for food in groups. This keeps them safer from water predators, like leopard seals! If you know these perky penguins well, you can say that they’re as curious as Curious George, superbly intelligent, and of course- as cute as a button!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

When the sky begins to darken
And the stars begin to sway
I like to sit and think about
What will happen the next day.
Memories of anger, sadness,
Or hurting, it might include,
A dark and grumpy ring to it
Or a sticking sour mood.
But then again, it could so bring
A striking sense of joy
A trace of swelling happiness
A day you will enjoy.
It could be a mysterious day
Or relaxing, nevertheless,
Or equally exciting
Or one full of peacefulness.
As the sun begins to lower
And the owl begins to sing
I like to stop and wonder this:
What will tomorrow bring?

I pick away
Through all the thoughts
I’ve ever thought to think
Picking away for things to write,
Put down in
Pen and ink.
Although I may grow thirsty
I’ll soon find some tucked-away spring:
Wonder why I have not looked
Right here
For anything?
I’ll chip away through all the rubble
And find some chips of treasure:
A good idea, a rhyme sometimes
An ending for good measure.
If I look behind the bend of
My experience, I am told,
I sometimes search around and find:
Oho! I have struck gold!
Sometimes the things I’m looking for
Come in dreams I almost forgot
Possibly a hanging wish
Or an accidental thought.
When my cart of pleasure is filled so full
I take it to where I can melt
And spin my bits of treasure to
Something witty or heartfelt.
Then, I hurry back to my cavern
Of infinite fascination
And pick away at all my thoughts;
Mining for my inspiration.