Young Author Touches the Heavens with a Winning Story

By Alli Rainey

Ask 9-year-old Michael Ciaglo what his favorite activity is and he’ll answer without hesitation: “Reading and…well, reading.”
With such an early love of literature, it’s no wonder Michael told his first award-winning story in kindergarten, when he took third place in a contest for kindergartners through third-graders sponsored by the Rocky Mountain PBS series Reading Rainbow.
“It just so happened we were watched Reading Rainbow one day,” recalls Michael’s mother, Carol, “and later Michael was running around telling a story he’d made up. We thought it was so cute, I wrote it down.” (Parents are allowed to transcribe stories dictated to them by younger contestants.) She later submitted the story to Reading Rainbow’s Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, where it placed third.
The following year Michael nabbed first place for first-grade contestants and in 1999 again won first place for his story, Why There is Day and Night: A Legend, which he wrote and illustrated for a third-grade project.
The story details an argument between the sun and the moon as they try to determine who should dominate the sky. “The sun and the moon didn’t compromise at first,” Michael says, “and the Native Americans were really mad about that. The moon runs away from the sun and the sun has to go find it. Then the Native Americans send an eagle to the sun and moon. The eagle tells them to stop fighting, and they do.”
Michael’s tale stood out among the more than 400 entries submitted to the 1999 Colorado Reading Rainbow contest, winning him a $50 gift certificate to Tattered Cover Bookstore and an appearance on ZOOM, a nationally aired PBS show written by children for children. The story was also selected to compete in the national Reading Rainbow contest, where it received an honorable mention.
The contest was started in 1994 to “inspire children to create their own stories and pictures, and to foster a love of learning and reading,” says Alison Monaghan, Rocky Mountain PBS outreach coordinator, who administers the state competition. Submissions are judged for originality, storytelling and integration of text and illustrations by a panel of judges including teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators and publishers.
The Emmy award-winning Reading Rainbow airs weekdays at 12:30 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS, while ZOOM - where Michael was a guest star - airs weekdays at 4:30 p.m. Contest winners, including Why There is Day and Night: A Legend, are published on the Rocky Mountain PBS web site at www.rmpbs.org. The site also lists contest rules and information.
Though Michael is now too old to be eligible for the contest, his siblings Max, 7, and Katie, 5, are following in his footsteps. Both love to read, write and draw, and plan to continue the family tradition.
Even without a contest to enter, Michael will keep on doing what he enjoys most. “He still loves to read, and he’s a natural artist,” Carol says. So don’t be surprised to see Ciaglo’s name on the best-seller list someday in the future!