Writing Assignments

[Kerri]

Sorry if this isn't the place to put this... but I've been taking a writing class for people who want to publish children's books/stories. I've done a couple of assignments and thought I might share them with you starting with my latest attempt at a short story for kids, Wild Tiger Chase.

Wild Tiger Chase
The hills seemed to sway gently like a deep green sea in the soft summer breeze. A little girl ran down a pebble strewn path. Sandy’s brown coverall dress pulled tight across her pumping legs while she ran, gasping for air while she called out. Her firelight colored braid thumped and wagged in the wind when she moved..
Her shoes caused the pebbles to crunch after she reached the top of the hill and looked around at the long grass. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called out again, her voice becoming hoarse.
Father was going to be very angry about this, she was sure. He had trusted her with a very important job and she’d lost the little creature. The dry hoarseness in her throat turned to a lump when she hiccupped over a sob. She wiped the blurry tears from her hazel eyes that were the color of yellowing grass. How could she have lost Tiger? Father had trusted Sandy with taking care of him for two days while he was in the city.
Father was awaited to be back soon and Sandy didn’t know where Tiger had gone. Not seeing any sign of him in the lush valley, she turned to the other side of the large hill. Down at the base there was a village. Hopefully Tiger had come here looking for father. After all, this was where he normally went.
Sandy realized Tiger probably wasn’t going to leap up at her while she was sitting there moping. She began running down the hill to the busy village.
Tiger was a good blaze wing most of the time. He followed father very well and was quick to obey commands from his shepherd. Tiger was special because he was a rare breed of blaze wing.
When she’d entered the village square, a dark haired girl named Tanya, who helped at her mother’s vegetable stand, noticed Sandy’s tears.
“What’s wrong, Sandy?“ The girl’s charcoal eyes took in Sandy’s nervous expression.
“Tiger’s gone!â€

[Esoteric]

It's not bad. By short story for kids, do you mean illustrated story? It's a touch short maybe to stand on its own.
Some things I'd like to point out:

Father had trusted Sandy with taking care of him for two days while he was in the city.

Tiger was special because he was a rare breed of blaze wing.

Try to avoid being this blunt with information, and when you are blunt with it, make sure it's in the right place. By that, I mean the prior sentence or paragraph must naturally lead into the direct delivery of this information, otherwise it feels like you're stopping the narrative to say, 'oh and by the way...'
So instead of:

How could she have lost Tiger? Father had trusted Sandy with taking care of him for two days while he was in the city.

Try:
How could she have lost Tiger? For two days she'd barely let him out of her sight, leaving him alone only to do her other chores. She'd been trusted to watch him--father's favorite--and now he was gone! Sandy cringed. Father was due back anytime now. What would he say when he discovered that his prized rare blaze wing was gone?

If you weave the information in, you don't get the "oh, and by the way..." feeling.

Another thing to be mindful of when constructing sentences (and I do this too), is to make sure it means exactly what you meant to say and can't be misinterpreted. Case in point:

Her shoes caused the pebbles to crunch after she reached the top of the hill and looked around at the long grass.

I thought: Why did her shoes cause the pebbles to crunch after she reached the top of the hill? Were they silent before? Was there some sort of delayed reaction where all of the pebbles suddenly went 'crunch!' as she reached the top of the hill? Lol, you can see where I'm going with this. Inadvertently, you've caused my imagination to stop and wonder about something which is totally unimportant to the story. Be careful about sentence structure.

[mechana2015]

Blaze wing?

Eso pretty much hit a lot of the other stuff on the head. The blaze wing concept needs to be stretched out and explained a bit better, even if this is intended to be a picture book... the random exposition about how special Tiger is, without further exposition would be even more awkward in that case. Perhaps the physical description from the last paragraph should be moved forward so it comes sooner and give us a better picture of the creature that the story centers around.

I'm also wondering why Tanya's hair color matters here. A relationship description or even just her name is cleaner and makes more sense, since (at least in my case) I rarely differentiate people by hair color unless it's rather unique. Dark doesn't strike me as unique at all, unless there's something about the culture setting or environment that says so.

[Kerri]

...hmmm... everyone I ask gives me different feed back...

the things you didn't like my teacher did...

and I only was allowed 750 words for this. I cut a lot of it in editing.

Well now I'm wearing my shoes on my head...

Except the blaze wing thing. Which, btw, no this isn't probably going to be published. But thanks anyway!

[Esoteric]

the things you didn't like my teacher did...

Can you elaborate a bit?

and I only was allowed 750 words for this. I cut a lot of it in editing.

That would explain the brevity. You really have to be focused (and practiced) to tell an entertaining story in one page. You did pretty well considering the limits.