State Library Announces Letters About Literacy Contest

    The State Library of Louisiana’s Center for the Book, in partnership with the Louisiana Writing Project, announces that Letters About Literature, a national reading-writing contest for students, is now accepting entries. To enter, fourth through 10^th grade students should write personal letters to authors, living or dead, from any genre explaining how the author’s work changed the student’s way of thinking about the world or themselves.

    The national LAL team will choose up to 50 entries in each level from each state and finalists will be chosen by a panel of judges from throughout the state. Louisiana’s first place winners’ entries will be submitted to the Library of Congress for the national competition with the chance of winning $1,000.

    State winners in each level, to be announced in April, will receive $100 for first place, $75 for second place and $50 for third place, made possible by a Library of Congress grant. State winners will be recognized at the Louisiana Book Festival on Nov. 2, 2013.

    Students may enter either on their own or through a classroom teacher, school or library. There are three competition levels: level 1 for grades 4 – 6; level 2 for grades 7 – 8; and level 3 for grades 9 – 10.

    The student’s letter and entry coupon, available online or on the attached flier, must be sent by Jan. 13, 2013 to Letters About Literature, P.O. Box 5308, Woodbridge, VA 22194.

    Teachers and home-school instructors along with school, public children and public young adult librarians can download Letters About Literature lesson plans for their curricula and programming as well as find entry forms at www.LettersAboutLiterature.org.  

    For more information about the State Library of Louisiana, visit www.state.lib.la.us.