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28 November 2025

Posted by Melissa Dehn

Junior & Young Writers Week 2: African Mythology

As usual, we opened this week’s creative writing workshop by describing our week, this time through weather metaphors. The weather has been quite changeable lately, and everyone’s weeks seemed to have been as well, ranging from “finally sunny because I got a haircut,” “cloudy but with a chance for a party,” and “a puddle with no reflection because I don’t remember anything” to “a busy tornado.”

The junior writers played an impressive game of Zip-Zap-Boing to warm up, and the young writers did Buzzy Bees.

Afterwards, both groups tackled the “alternate uses” creativity exercise and came up with a variety of interesting objects, some of which definitely need to exist in real life: a hat that can also hold your phone, a wall-hanging spider house, and a ring that animals can portal through.

African mythology was the theme for the week, focusing on animal-based fables and origin stories, which seemed to really inspire everyone. After listening to the tales of why the jackal has a long black stripe on his back and how Anansi became a spider, the writers were rich with ideas of their own.

Didn’t you know?

  • Tree salamanders grew fins and turned into axolotls after being bitten by fish.
  • Turtle doves used to be regular pigeons, until they helped a magical turtle.
  • Squirrels are fast because they eat an abundance of nuts, including Malteser nuts.
  • Turtles have shells because a bunch of drunken teenagers once taped a large rock to a turtle’s back and it couldn’t get it off.
  • Dogs ended up with a tail because they won it from humans in a gamble – unfortunately, they lost their heads in the process.

And many more unique, imaginative stories!


While there won’t be a workshop on the 22nd of November, at least everyone got to exercise their brains plenty.


- Melissa

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