The Frederick Law Olmsted Society will honor the winners of its annual Reflections on Riverside student poetry contest at an event to be held Thursday, July 28 at 7 p.m. at the Riverside Public Library, 1 Burling Road.
Student poets will be reading and sharing their poems, which were selected as winners of the contest. This year 138 children in grades one through eight participated, submitting poems that captured their thoughts on Riverside’s landscape.
First-place winners from participating elementary schools were awarded cash prizes, and first- and second-place winners were presented with a framed certificate and a candy bar featuring the Olmsted Society’s trademark oak tree designed by Aunt Diana’s.
First place winners for 2011 were Michael Kusz, of Ames Schoool, for “Des Plaines River”; Olivia Liu, of Blythe Park School, for “Mother Nature and the River”; Anna Strubbe, of Central School, for Des Plaines River”; Gia Cincay, of Hauser Junior High, for “River”; Maddie Meehan, of Hollywood School, for “Frederick Olmsted”; and Kane Layng, of St. Mary School, for “Arbor Day in Riverside”.
All of the entries, along with poems from 2010, will be included in a bound book Reflections on Riverside and Other Youthful Verse, Volume II. It will be published this fall. Volume I (poems from 2007-09) is available at the Riverside Public Library.
