Meet David Xu, 2nd Place Winner - 4th & 5th Grades Category

David Xu is the 2nd place winner of the 4th and 5th Grades Category of the 2012 Spark READiness Freedom to Read Essay Contest.  Students in this category were asked to respond to the following passage and instructed to cite any sources they consulted.

Frederick Douglass said: "Once you learn to read you will be forever free." Who is Frederick Douglass? What do you think he meant? How can reading make a person free?

Below is David's entry:

Reading:  the Bringer of Freedom

     Frederick Douglass was an enslaved boy, but by learning to read, he became a freedom fighter.  Unlike most other slaves, he was taught to read by his slave-owner's wife, Sophia Auld.  After the lessons were stopped by the slave-owner, he taught himself to read and write in secret.  Eventually, he was able to escape to New York.  For the rest of his life, Frederick Douglass spoke out against slavery and for equal rights.

     Frederick Douglass once said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."  In his case, reading literally freed him.  If he had never learned to read, he probably wouldn't have even thought about freedom.  He probably would have just believed that he was meant to be a slave until he died.  Because of this, I think he meant by this quote that when you learn to read, even if your body is trapped, your thoughts are free.  By reading a book, you can feel that you are in a different place, free to do as you wish.  You can do, see, and experience faraway things, and you can also discover new ideas and gain new knowledge.  If Frederick Douglass had never learned to read, he would have just continued in ignorance.

     In my opinion, I think reading makes you free because, when you go into a book, you feel as if you are free of all the limits that the world puts on you.  When you go into a book, anything becomes possible.  By reading, Frederick Douglass went from an enslaved boy to a freedom fighter.  What will reading make you?

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

David is a fifth grader at Hunters Bend Elementary School in Franklin. He is ten years old. David enjoys playing cello and also plays tennis. He loves reading, writing, and math. In his free time, David plays with Legos, reads the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and spends time with his three siblings. His favorite animal is the mouse.

Judges commented that David's entry was "to the point and well written."  They noted his "clearly original thoughts in paragraphs 2 and 3."  As the second place winner in our 4th and 5th Grades Category, David received a $20 gift card to Parnassus Books and a certificate honoring his achievement.   Congratulations to David!