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Winner of 11 national awards including an International Reading Association Children's Choice, a Teachers' Choice, and a Children's Book Center Starred Our Choice! The contest theme of hopes and dreams across a lifetime is inspired by the bestseller Dream: A Tale of Wonder, Wisdom & Wishes by Susan V. Bosak. 15 of the top illustrators in the world each offer a gorgeously illustrated page in a poetic, multilayered story about life's hopes and dreams, inspiring both children and adults. Find out more about Dream.
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Courtnay Barrells, 18
and his grandmother
Ibolya Gyurcsik, 68
Courtnay is in the Advantage Academy program at Southgate Adult & Community Education in Southgate, MI. His Poetry in Motion teacher, Jane Hunyor, encouraged him to enter the Listen to a Life Contest.
Congratulations!
I've whined about many things I've had to deal with in my life: growing up poverty-stricken, the deaths of both my drug-addicted parents, my personal substance abuse problems, and living on my own from a young age. Ah, there I go again, lamenting my life! But talking to my grandmother Ibolya convinced me that I shouldn't complain. My burdens have been light compared to hers...
Ibolya was born March 14, 1938, in Communist, war-torn Budapest, Hungary. She shared clothes, food, and one bed with her parents and five siblings in a little shanty. She was taken by the secret police and interviewed relentlessly numerous times. Growing up was very rough.
Ibolya dreamed of making a better life for the family she would one day have. At eighteen she married Joe Gyurcsik. During the revolution, they secretly escaped by train to Italy with my then infant mother. They boated all the way to Australia where they lived for six years, then moved to Canada where my uncle and aunt were born. In 1967 they moved to Michigan where they still reside.
But Ibolya's life was still beset with hardships. She had a bipolar, drug-addicted daughter whom she saw buried, a son with a gambling addiction, and another daughter with Crohn's disease. She had to take care of her grandchildren because our own parents were too incapacitated. Still, she persevered in order to see us through.
Ibolya has survived so much strife by carrying on without complaining. She just never gives up. At the slightest struggle I want to quit; she has endured so much more than I, yet she's happy. Her story has taught me that no matter what, life is worth living. I am inspired to have her dream of a better life realized through me.
Click here to read all the other winners.
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