Recently, I was surprised and pleased to find a check in the mail for being a winner of Children's Writer's Historical Fiction Contest. I'd forgotten about it since entering back in September. My story, "The Secret Zoo," is set in occupied Warsaw and inspired by true events in young Rys Zabiniski's life. He and his family were members of the Resistance and used their zoo to help hundreds of Polish Jews escape to freedom. Their extraordinary courage was most recently documented in the best selling non-fiction book, THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE by Diane Ackerman.

I'm told "The Secret Zoo" and the other winning stories will be noted in an article in the March 2011 issue of Children's Writer. Yay for Historical Fiction!