Rosa Parks Swings on Mars

31 Oct Rosa Parks Swings on Mars

Imagination can take you anywhere. Using your imagination while you have a pen in hand can lead to the creation of some interesting – and sometimes wild - stories. Interesting, wild, funny, and fantastic are all adjectives that could be used to describe the stories generated by the young authors who stopped at Hope’s table at MightyFest on the last Saturday in September.

In its second year, MightyFest offers writing workshops, author talks, and a literacy carnival with fun activities, as well as theatre and food vendors for children and their families. Hope Partnership showcased the middle school with an impromptu story writing activity. Participants were asked to draw one card from each of three boxes and to create a story in five minutes using the words on the cards. The boxes contained the names or titles of characters such as doctor or Barack Obama; place names to set the story; and action words. If a prize was given for creativity, it would have been presented to the dad who put Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks on Mars in search of the best swing set in the universe, while his wife and 13 year-old daughter wrote their own stories. After finishing their stories, writers read them aloud and were rewarded with an Olympic-style neck ribbon.

Hope Partnership joined Mighty Writers in presenting MightyFest. Mighty Writers is a non-profit whose mission is to “teach children to think clearly and write with clarity.” The organization operates six writing centers in Philadelphia and Camden.