The Magic of Reading

Iris Potter had a special ability to actually go into the world of a book she was reading. Right now she was reading about Sage Silversoul, a clumsy wilderness guide who could shape-shift.

Sage was in the forest frantically trying to dodge a bird. She crashed against a branch and ran out in the open green grass, out of the forest, her short brown hair tangled and crusted with mud from running. Sage began to turn into a fire-orange scaled dragon, flying up into the air. In a moment, she flew away from the bird and right over a roof of a house, when she started to turn back to human. She fell through the roof with a big crash.

As Sage came to her senses from the shock of the fall, Iris all of a sudden became an actual character in the book, able to talk.

“What happened to you?” Iris asked Sage.

“A swilla bird was chasing me. And I’m really scared of birds!” answered Sage.

“H’mm, I might know how to get rid of your fear of birds. In one book I read a long time ago, someone was afraid of birds, so they had to find a bird’s nest and eat an egg from it.”

“I’ll do anything to get rid of my fear of birds! Swilla birds only nest on shining oak trees, so we need to look for one.”

The two girls set out to find the swilla nest. They walked around for quite some time before they finally saw the shining oak tree. Sage and Iris climbed up the tree. There, they found the nest, full of sparkling blue swilla eggs.

Hesitantly, Sage drank a raw egg. “I’m going to test if I’m afraid of birds by shape-shifting into a bird.”

She shape-shifted into a blue-grey swilla, calmly looking at herself. “It worked!” Sage said excitedly. “Thank you, Iris!”

Iris stopped reading the book and went back to her own world. She was happy that she was able to help Sage conquer her fear. Iris hoped that tomorrow’s reading would bring more exciting adventures.

Credit to these Crowd Sorcerers: Leah M., age 10, San Diego, CA, for Iris Potter; Abigail B., age 13, Your Dreams, for Sage Silversoul; and Katie M., age 11, of Chelsea, MI, for swilla