Island Lakes student’s award-winning story has magic touch

A keen interest in magic and the ability to spin it into a compelling story has earned Island Lakes student Colton Van Gerwen top honours in a national writing competition.

Van Gerwen’s three-page story titled The Invisible Book of Magic took home the first prize in the 2007 Imperial Oil Foundation Writing Contest.

“Colton is quite the storyteller. Just playing on his own and thinking up his own little worlds is totally his thing. We couldn’t be more excited and proud of him,” said his mother Jasmine.

The contest Van Gerwen entered was part of the TD Canadian Children’s Book Week, which ran Nov. 17 to 24, 2007.

This year’s theme, The Magic of Books, encouraged students from grades 2 to 6 to write spellbinding tales of wizards, magicians and dragons.

“This was right down Colton’s alley, he actually had a membership to the Young Manitoba Magician Society last year. He really holds a keen interest in the world of magic,” Jasmine said.

When told of the competition, Colton didn’t hesitate to get started. He began telling his mom of a misbehaved kid who stumbled across a magical book he found in a cave.

“The boy took the book home and with every little part he read he began to turn into a spider,” Colton said.

“He went to Spiderville and saw a witch who turned him into a spider completely, but then he promised to be a good boy and she changed him back because he stayed a good boy.”

Richard Scrimger, author of the Norbert series and Into the Ravine judged the Grade 3 category and was quite impressed by Colton’s winning submission.

“I applaud Colton’s creation, a not very likeable hero who nevertheless gets our sympathy as he realizes that he has fallen into the witch’s trap.

“The Kafka-esque transformation scene is the coolest moment in any of the stories I read,” Scrimger said.

The story Colton wrote for the contest wasn’t his first, his mother says. Colton has wrote about six or seven stories in the past, often stapling the pages together to make them look like books.

This was the first time Colton has formally submitted his writing to a contest and his success has encouraged him to continually do so in the future.

“I learned you should always give it a try because you never know if you are going win,” Colton said.

For his efforts Colton has received a $200 gift certificate to any bookstore of his choice.

He says he is most likely to spend it on SpongeBob SquarePants books or books about pirates.

Colton says he already has an idea for his next project.

“It is going to be about a kid who is rich and owns a hotel, but it is haunted, I’m going to start that in a few days,” Colton said.

Colton’s winning story, along with honourable mentions in the Imperial Oil Foundation Writing Contest, can be found online at www.bookweek.ca.