Marina likes pretty much all the subjects she studies. She even gets a kick out of adding and subtracting big numbers in her head! There’s only one thing about school she doesn’t enjoy.
“Anything with, like, writing stories about myself,” says Marina, who is eight. “I don’t like writing nonfiction. I like writing fiction.”
Marina lives in Berkeley, CA, with her Mommy, Em; her Mom, Jen; her 13-year-old brother, Emmett; and the family’s two dogs, Baxter and Bernard. She describes herself as “funny, happy, and expressive.” . Those qualities come through in her writing, too. Not long ago, Marina’s third grade class read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka. Then, the teacher asked Marina’s class to write their own versions of a fairy tale. Marina wrote a story called “Sleeping Beauty Is Not So Sleepy.” In it, Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on a cursed spinning wheel and falls asleep, just like in the original. But after that, Marina’s version takes a unique turn…or two, or three!
Marina tells her version of “Sleeping Beauty” with gusto.
“This takes place twenty years into her sleep. She was in her dreams, so bored. She was bored out of her mind, literally! She was thinking, ‘I should wake up.’ Meanwhile, the prince is racing up the stairs,” says Marina. “He got to her bedroom, and when he was about to kiss her… ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ Her eyes fluttered open. And then she said again, ‘WHO. ARE. YOU?’ He’s like, ‘I’m the prince who is supposed to get you to wake up.’ And the princess responded, ‘Well, as you can see, I don’t need you anymore. I don’t need true love or somebody to wake me up.’ And with that, the prince left, quite confused. He went up to the author’s office. He marched up to the author’s office and said, ‘We really, really need to talk!’ And the author replied, ‘Okay, do you want a drink?’ End!”
Even when it’s not for an assignment, Marina likes writing stories. Sometimes, she draws a picture and writes a “backup story” inspired by the drawing. Marina and her friends also make up stories together. They often pretend to be characters from a manga series about an adopted kitten called Chi’s Sweet Home. Manga is a type of Japanese graphic novel.
Pretending to be different characters comes naturally to Marina, who has acted in her school play every year.
“You know how I don’t like to write nonfiction stories? Well, that’s because it’s like I get to act and be another person. I get to step in somebody else’s shoes,” says Marina.
Instead of trying out for specific roles, the students play games where they act like different characters. Then they are assigned to roles. Still, Marina says, “in pretty much all of them I have been the character I wanted to be.”
She thinks her success comes mostly from hard work.
“A lot of other people are just like, ‘I’m totally gonna get that role.’ But I’m actually thinking to myself, ‘I’m maybe not the best, but I’m going to try my hardest anyway.’”
Marina isn’t quite sure what she wants to be when she grows up.
“I don’t really worry about my job or anything, because it’s going to be like a hundred years from now,” she says. “I think I do like to write stories, so maybe I’ll be an author when I grow up. I don’t know. An illustrator?”
After all, why settle on one role now when there are so many exciting parts to play? There’s no limit to whom you can be when you have an imagination like Marina’s.
