Class:			UP3
	Topic:			When I opened my eyes
	Teacher's comment:			This was a submission for our annual World Book Day competition, promoting and encouraging reading for pleasure amongst our younger students. The lesson involved reading a short story in which the narrator finds himself/herself in a magical cooking pot that takes them on a magical journey. At the end of the story, the narrator awakes to find out it was a dream. The children were then asked to plan their own story. They did this in rough, using a mind map, before then writing their own story in neat to be submitted for the competition. This was the winning entry for the UP3 level. The stories were assessed not on the accuracy of the language, but on the inventiveness of the tale itself. The studednt has written a story that is funny and entertaining with real narrative flare. Lawrence Smith

The Work:

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a giant big silver bathtub. ‘Very curious’, I said to myself. The bathtub’s brim was taller than I was, so I had to peek outside on the tips of my toes. The bathtub was moving very slowly, as if it was a turtle. Hey, riding on something without some speed isn’t fun! So I grabbed the steering wheel in front of me and hit the gasoline. Hard.

‘Yahoo!’, I yelled. This is fun, I tell you. The stars whizzing past at an astonishing speed, cities and countries right below your feet. Uh-oh. Why did I go up? I was already above the clouds and I think I was still rising. Oh no! Pretty soon I was out of the earth’s atmosphere. I thought I’d die from lack of oxygen, but I found that I could breathe quite easily. I looked down and the earth was lighting up like a Christmas tree. ‘Must be the lights’, I chuckled, ‘Or it should be’.

Before long I saw Mars, and there was a boy with purple hair sitting there alone. I invited him to board my bathtub. He gladly accepted, and he got into the bathtub. He asked me if I was hungry. I said yes. Then he just reached up and pulled out a cookie jar within the midst of his thick purple hair. I was so surprised, I nearly drove the bathtub into the sun’s orbit. ‘How did you do that?’, I asked. ‘It’s natural’, he answered. ‘I just need to think about it and it pops up on my head’. Very curious, don’t you think?

We decided to land on Uranus to have a look. Uranus was cold and the air somehow smelled bitter. There was a tall woman and a dwarf, and their skin was both blue. The tall woman was in a bad mood and she was yelling at the dwarf for losing something. Then the woman saw us and our invading bathtub. She walked over and I saw she was wearing a blue bathrobe. It was hard to see because her skin was blue too. All of a sudden she yelled. No, she didn’t yell, she screamed. It was an ear-throbbing scream. ‘What are you doing in my tub? And what are you doing with my personal bag?’, she demanded. ‘Wait, she looks like a human from Earth, Miss. Please let me explain’, the dwarf said. The dwarf hopped in and yelled, ‘Wake up! Wake up! Wake up this moment! Instant! Now!’

Huh? When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying in a heap with my little brother, facing the old lady next door. I was so embarrassed! I was sleep-walking and I had mistaken the silverware she brought for a bathtub, her purple bag for a live boy! Oh, what an idiot I was!

Next time, when I opened my eyes, I won’t trust that silver bathtub ever again!