Al was a bright young eight year old boy living in a shack in New York City. He was a kind and friendly boy who helped out while he could but was eager to learn. One summer, he was playing outside with a flat soccer ball he had found when a man walked up the road and started talking to him. Al was a very social boy and easily struck up a conversation with the man. Before he knew it, he was playing soccer with the man and when Al got a determined look on his face and ran up the road to catch the ball, the man suddenly gasped, "You look just like my brother!" Al smiled and asked, "Well, what happened to him?" The man explained his brother's fate and at first, Al was sympathetic but then began to relate. After all, his father had also run errands late one night and never came back. The police suspected foul play, but nothing was ever determined. As the man began to describe his brother, it became more and more apparent that the man's brother seemed like Al's father. The two of them excitedly ran back to the shack to talk to Al's mother. The man instantly recognized the woman and the two of them embraced and chatted happily, catching up after 10 years. Al's long-lost uncle spent the night in the shack and in the morning, told Al's mother that he had a fun, summer adventure in mind to keep Al occupied for the day. The mother agreed and knew that Al needed something fun and out-of-the-ordinary in order to have some resemblance of a childhood. Al's uncle led him to Ellis Island were there were some rocks forming small niches. In one of the niches, something glinted inside. Al's uncle told him that if he climbed inside, he might find buried treasure buried underneath the small glinting piece of metal on the surface. Al clambered inside and soon found himself to be trapped and the waves started to crash onto the rocks as the sun set. The uncle left him behind and Al was alone, nervous, and disoriented. Before long, the waves washed some of the small pebbles off of the metal object and it turned out to be a lamp. Al hugged it close to his chest, scared of what was to come and when he did, the lamp began to get warm and shake. Within the next minute or so, a genie burst forth and spoke to Aladdin. Thinking he was dreaming, Aladdin responded without thinking much about it and was rescued.
Author's Note: I based my story off of
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp part 1 from the
Arabian Nights unit which is from the book One Thousand and One Nights translated by Richard Francis Burton and published in 1885 as The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.
Aladdin depiction by online artist Shelziru
Taylor, you had a great twist in the story! You also did an excellent job at describing the scene, but one suggestion is to slow down the story. I felt a bit rushed as I was reading through. I think since it was such an interesting story, you could really develop the characters and setting more in individual sentences instead of all combined into one or two.
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