cricket league
First prize 10 and under
Logan Navar, age 10 Boulder, UT
The Birthday Dragon
It was an unusual birthday. Colorful banners blanketed the backyard. Kids chased each other through the grass. Adults talked. It all went downhill from there. My little sister was turning five. On her birthday cake, painted in frosting, was a fat, pink Daisy the Friendly Dragon, a character from her favorite TV show.
At least it’ll taste good, I thought, as the tug-of-war for little kids ended. I, as her older brother, got the honor of cutting the cake. But when the knife touched the cake, something that sounded like thunder and looked like an emerald supernova exploded, shooting outward from the cake!
When the dust cleared, standing before us was something like a thirty-foot-long, bright green snake with red eyes, black horns, and huge, batlike, leathery wings. It wasn’t Daisy the Friendly Dragon, but it was a dragon.
People screamed and ran in all directions. I watched in horror, behind a bush, as the monster set fire to all the banners and tore at the house with foot-long claws. Everyone else had run away or hid like me. Everyone, that is, but the birthday girl. I wanted to
