CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE LIBRARY
by Mary Russell, Director
NH Center for the Book
at the N.H. State Library

The Center for the Book at the N.H. State Library will once again be participating in Letters About Literature, a writing contest for readers in grades 4 - 12 sponsored by the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in partnership with Target Stores.

To enter, students are asked to write a personal letter to an author, explaining how his or her work changed their view of the world or themselves. Young readers can select authors, living or dead, from any genre-fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic. A panel of New Hampshire judges will select the top essayists in the state in each of the three competition levels: Level I for children in grades 4 - 6; Level II for grades 7 and 8; and Level III, grades 9 - 12. State winners will advance to national competition and the first-place winner for New Hampshire at each competition level will receive a $100 cash prize plus a $50 Target gift card. Six national winners will each receive an expenses-paid trip to the nation's capital to read their letters during the National Book Festival in the fall of 2005. In addition, the national winners will each receive a $500 Target gift card redeemable at any Target Store or target.com.

Deadline for entries is December 4, 2004. Complete contest guidelines, the required entry coupon, a 16-page teaching supplement to guide students through the reading-writing process, a list of books that inspired last year's semi-finalist essays, and the winning New Hampshire essays from 2003/2004 are available on our website at: http://www.state.nh.us/nhsl/bookcenter/programs/letters.html.