"Reading with A Challenge": Carroll Student Wins Essay Contest

One of Carroll’s 5th grade students, Jarrett Hurwitz, recently met Kevin Youkilis as a first prize winner in an essay contest!

The essay contest was organized by the New England Mobile Book Fair as part of the Youk's Kids Reading Group, and students who signed up were required to read four books and write an essay of 200 words or less. The essay needed to address the following questions: "why reading is important, why you love to read, what your favorite books are, why charity is important, and/or why you want to meet Kevin Youkilis." Each month, the winning essays would receive an autographed baseball, and at the end of the baseball season the first prize winner for each age category would win the chance to meet Kevin Youkilis!

This past November, Jarrett Hurwitz won the first prize in this contest for his age group and met Kevin Youkilis, which was highlighted in a local Boston area newspaper. Congratulations Jarrett!

Below is Jarrett's winning essay:

Reading with a Challenge
by Jarrett Hurwitz
5th Grade

When the thought of reading comes to my mind I suddenly think about a variety of things. I think about the fact that everybody should know how to read and all the different magical kinds of books anybody can read. Reading is so important because there is reading everywhere.

I am dyslexic which means I have a hard time learning to read, my brain is wired a little different than others. I go to a special school that teaches me a different learning method. My favorite book is called Thank you Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco. I love this book because it's about my life. The girl in the story is dyslexic and her teacher, Mr. Falker, realizes that and helps her, but the girl had to struggle through being teased and feeling horrible about herself. The same thing happened to me. I also love this book because I got to meet the author who happens to be the girl in the story.

Charity is important because you should always help others that are less fortunate then yourself. Recently, I gave money from my birthday to help find a cure for cancer. I gave money every week at temple to help get Seeing Eye dogs for blind people, I do service learning projects at school which teaches us to protect the environment and help save endangered animals. I would like to do some kind of charity to help people who are dyslexic.

I would love to meet Kevin Youkilis since I recently moved to Boston from New York. Don't worry; I love the Boston Red Sox even though my dad is a Yankee fan!!! It's also very nice of Kevin to form this reading group. I look forward to hopefully meeting my favorite player. THANK YOU!!!