[Press Release] unpublished excerpt, Inglewood, CA, 2.06
On the afternoon of February 23rd, Maria Jimenez received a call to accompany her daughter Luz to school on Friday, but no one could tell her why. The surprise was bigger than either mother or daughter had imagined--out of 50,000 high school students across the nation to submit entries to Oprah Winfrey's National High School Essay Contest, Morningside High School's Luz Jimenez had been named one of the 50 winners.
The essay topic--"Why is Elie Wiesel's book Night relevant today?"--was no light matter; students had to delve deep to relate the Nobel laureate's Holocaust memoirs as a teenage boy to the present day.

