We're on our summer break in the Northland now. Denali Students may still post their Raven stories, but commenting is limited, for the time being, to the students. Enjoy our site, and thanks for visiting.

Our class was featured in a story on the Fairbanks Daily News Miner Youth page. The kids were thrilled to get this recognition. The reporters spent about an hour with us on Thursday morning, interviewing students and watching them work.

Students asked the news guys a few questions while they were here, wanting to know about being a professional writer. They'll probably have more to say after they read about themselves in the paper. A few have already reported on it.

We do like to get comments. Feel free to leave some if you wish. Thank you for visiting our website.

Little House on the Prairie is about the Ingalls family, who move from their log home in the Wisconsin woods to what they call "Indian country."

In the first chapter the Ingalls family left their home in early spring, while the Mississippi River was still frozen. They needed to leave early in the year so that they could cross on the river ice. What would it be like to live in a time when a river could keep you from going where you wanted to go? Nowadays, we jump into our car or hop on a plane and we can get to just about anywhere we want in practically no time. It wasn't like that back then.

Welcome back to our website for the beginning of a new year. I hope you had a pleasant winter break. It would be interesting to hear from everyone about what they did while out of school. My broken hand kept me down a bit, but I read a couple of books - mostly stuff about history and technology.

We had a couple of visitors to Tell the Raven. Logan wants to play tag with Caesar. He wrote 5 things about himself that people might not know, and then he "tagged" 5 other people who he wants to do the same thing. If you want to play, go right ahead. You don't need to be tagged, if you want to go ahead and write about yourself.

This is a little announcement about me, and what I'm doing on Monday.

I was called for jury duty. That's where a person goes to court so they can be chosen to sit on a jury. The jury is a group of people who decide about a court trial. That is, the jury members listen to lawyers and witnesses in a court case and decide who is responsible for whatever the problem is. Sometimes they find a person guilty, or responsible for something that happened, and other times the jury might decide that there isn't enough evidence to prove who is responsible.

I don't know if they will pick me for a jury. First you have to go in and they ask a lot of questions. They want to see if you know any of the people in the case, or if there might be some other reason why you would not be able to make a fair decision in a case. So maybe they won't pick me for a jury. If they don't pick me, I will come back to school. If they do choose me, then I have to go to court each day for as long as the case is heard.

Have you heard about the volcano that has been acting up?

You can read more about it.

Picture Date: September 24, 2006
Image Creator: Read, Cyrus
Image courtesy of AVO/USGS.
Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey

We're publishing again on Tell the Raven. I'm excited to see what this year's new writers have to say. It's fun to see them take off.

Feel free to leave comments on their stories, and ask them questions about their work.

We learned about building towers.

It took planning, cooperation, and imagination.

We started small.

Have a look ate our
Found Headline Poems.

In Esperanza Rising, Marta told the farmworkers who lived at the labor camp that they deserved better living conditions, and that they should join the labor strike by refusing to work. Many of the workers yelled at her and told her that they needed the jobs, and they did not want to do anything that might cause them to get fired.

Is Marta a trouble-maker, like some of them say? Or is she a hero who is trying to help the people?

When we read today in Esperanza Rising that "she never held a broom" I wondered what other things Esperanza might not know how to do. I can't imagine being a person who didn't know how to do any work at all. Both of my parents worked. They had jobs, but my mom was home with me when I was very young. She did housework, though. My dad fixed things and made things. I learned to work from them. I tried to use the tools that they used. I played in the kitchen with the pots and pans. I pushed the vacuum cleaner around. I played in the garage with my dad's tools. I certainly remember holding a broom. I think we learn a lot when we're kids from watching our parents.