Whiz Kid: Lily Kerr-Jung

Cleveland Heights Patch Whiz Kid of the Week: Lily Kerr-Jung

• Going into the sixth grade at
• Wrote a play that won in a contest sponsored by the
• Plans to participate in Power of the Pen next year and has 25 stories she’s working on just for fun

For the second straight year, Lily Jung thought she had blown it.

It had been several months since Lily Kerr-Jung submitted the script of a play she wrote for the annual  at . Winners for the contest receive a $100 savings bond, certificate and a book containing all the winning entries.

Last year, as a requirement for a playwriting class she took as part of the gifted program at y, Lily submitted her first play about two talking trees that took her three days to write, but it failed to make the final round.

The 11-year-old decided to give it another shot and submitted a new play in February called Magic Is Reality about a girl trying to convince her friend that magic exists, but by May her mother told her the entries had already been judged and the winners announced.

“I just figured that was it,” she explained.

It turned out her mother was mistaken, as Lily received a call from someone at Dobama telling her the play was a winning entry, making her Cleveland Heights .

“I was really excited,” she said. “It was weird because I thought it was over, so I was really shocked.”

In the play, the friend character denies the existence of magic, but is proven wrong when the main character uses a spell that creates the mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Lily said the play has a central theme of the importance of friendship, as did her first play she submitted for the contest.

Lily has been writing stories since kindergarten and has 25 stories that she works on in her free time.

“I like it because you can get out your emotions,” she said, adding that if she couldn’t write, “I’d start freaking out and spazzing out.”

Lily, who will be entering the sixth grade at in a few weeks, plans to participate in Power of the Pen, Vocal Music Choir and soccer. She also sings in the choir at her church,