San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Poway first-grader’s poem wins honor
Zoe Corona of Poway went on a staycation last summer with her family to La Jolla Shores. The 6-year-old Garden Road Elementary School student enjoyed it so much she wrote a poem about her experiences.
It’s titled “The Pacific Ocean.”
I love when the waves touch my toes. It feels like I am home.
The sand in my toes fills my heart. The seashell close to my ear.
I can feel the ocean in my heart. Blue ocean.
White sand.
I am happy.
Zoe’s mother, Amanda Corona, entered the poem into the California Coastal Commission Poetry Contest. Zoe won an honorable mention.
“It made me feel good. I was a little nervous, but then I was feeling brave to do this,” Zoe said.
This winning poem has inspired a bevy of girls’ road trips for mother and daughter. “The Pacific Ocean” will be on display in Ventura in May and June, in Mendocino in July and August, in Newport Beach in September and October and Marin County in November and December. The two hope to visit them all.
Zoe’s poem was selected out of the entries for kindergarten and first grade. It will also be published in the May issue of Chapman University’s online poetry journal Tab: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics.
“It’s my first time writing a poem,” Zoe said.
Amanda Corona said she got the idea to help Zoe write a poem after receiving a challenge email from Garden Elementary to write a poem about nature in California. She asked her daughter what she liked about that topic and the answer was — the beach. “All together, we put it in a poem,” Corona said.
Zoe said her two favorite things to do at the beach are to put her toes in the water and collect seashells. When she’s not in the sand, she likes to spend time with her father, Ignacio, her 3-year-old sister, Mila, and their Jack Russell terrier, Spencer.
“When I’m not at the beach, I draw the beach with paper and crayons,” she said.