Year 11 2021 student Angus had great success in the Kids Writing Competition run by Better Read Than Dead Bookshop.
Required to write on the theme of red, Angus wrote a short story A Colour with Many Meanings, which combines discursive writing with a short narrative in which a young man is forced to confront serious youth issues. His work has been published in print in a collection titled Colours Red.
Below is an excerpt from his story:
The colour red. A bright, vibrant, happy colour. It catches the eye, it helps paint the sky a myriad of colours in the mornings and the evenings, turning it from a deep blue into a wild, vivid display.
And yet, it is also the colour of danger, of pain, of blood.
Animals coloured red are displaying that they are poisonous, or venomous, or dangerous in other ways. Red animals keep other animals away.
Red plants, however, attract animals. Red flowers attract birds, which unknowingly collect the pollen from the flower, and fly away, spreading it far and wide so that a new generation of plants may take root and rise up from the soil.
Red is a symbol of happiness, a symbol of beauty, a symbol of danger, of pain and blood, a deterrent, and an attraction.