Class wins national prize with story

If you haven't read "Rampage in the Cold" yet, you haven't read the newest mystery adventure to come out of Noblesville.

Twenty-two fourth-grade students from Stony Creek Elementary School worked long and hard to produce this masterpiece - and their work has paid off handsomely.

The class of Mrs. Marba Bertling learned in February that their adventure story about a grandmother who takes extreme adventures won the grand prize in the national ClueFinders mystery adventure writing contest. The class will be receiving an iMac computer loaded with the Clue-Finders software.

"Rampage in the Cold" took about six weeks to write. When the class started, they knew the contest required them to include the ClueFinders' characters in the story. That includes Joni, the leader of the junior detectives; Santiago, an inventor; Leslie, whose encyclopedic knowledge helps uncover facts during the adventures; Owen, who often has a lucky hunch; and Laptrap, a computerized gadget that Santiago invented.

Everything else in the story came out of the minds of the Stony Creek students.

The adventure is about Ma-Maw Dot, Owen's grandmother, who had left on a solo trip through four oceans on a small boat. When no one heard from Ma-Maw Dot for several months, Owen called on the ClueFinders to help locate her.

They send Laptrap, whose locator chip finds her and sends back clues to help the detectives figure out where she is. The detectives decipher the clues to learn that Ma-Maw Dot's boat was shipwrecked off the coast of Alaska. A rescue crew saves Ma-Maw Dot and returns her to her home.

In the end, Ma-Maw Dot lets the ClueFinders know she is never going on a boat again.

"Next time I'm taking a hot air balloon!" she declared.

Writing the book was an adventure in itself, the Stony Creek students agree.

Because this was a class project, they found they had a lot of ideas to sort through. Democracy ruled as the favorite characters, adventures, and illustrations started to come together.
Probably the easiest decision of all was having Ma-Maw Dot marooned in Alaska.

"Mostly everybody thought of Alaska," said Chelsey. "Most of us have never been there."

The hardest part of the process was making sure the story line made sense and the plot flowed.

The book was hard to write, but it was fun at the same time and the class learned a lot about Alaska in the process, said Ellen.

Chelsey also thought writing was hard sometimes. "We did mess up and we made a lot of corrections," she said.

"We messed up about a hundred times," said Kelly.

"It was sort of complicated at first because we had to think of what would go best with the story and what illustrations would go with it," said classmate Aaron.

But whenever the fourth-graders thought they were out of ideas, Mrs. Bertling came to their aid.

"She gave us spurts of inspirations all the time," said Diana. "She really should get the credit for all of this."

Chris agreed.
"When everybody was fighting over what to do, she had ideas," he said.

Ma-Maw Dot is a favorite with all the students.

"She is always doing something crazy," said Laurie.

"Rampage in the Cold" was a hard title to come up with, Ellen said. "Everyone put a title on a piece of paper and we voted on the one we liked. We looked up 'rampage' and we liked that."

As excited as the class was about its masterpiece, Mrs. Bertling and the students were a little hesitant to submit it to the contest at first.

Contest rules called for a story between 150 and 300 words and "Rampage in the Cold" exceeded 300, Chris explained. Others at Stony Creek were asked to read the book to help eliminate words.
With the words cut back as much as the class thought they could be, the book was shipped and only the waiting remained.

Although she since has received official word from ClueFinders, Mrs. Bertling was at a technology meeting with other Noblesville teachers when she first found out the book was a winner. A colleague looked up the ClueFinders' website and found her class listed as a winner.

"I couldn't believe it! We were so excited!" Mrs. Bertling said.

It was late Friday afternoon, though, and the announcement to the class would have to wait.
When the class learned the news the following week, their screams could be heard throughout the school.

"Even the kindergartners could hear us - and they're the farthest class away!"