VM Tech Computer Services (located at 14122 Central Ave, Suite G, Chino, CA 91710) "is sponsoring an essay contest for all local high schools.  The winner will receive a new Tablet PC, prizes will also be awarded for 2^nd and 3^rd place (sic) [ . . . ]. This is [their] way of giving back to our community [ . . . ]. The winner will be announced the day of our Ribbon Cutting on May 24^th.  The last day to submit your essay to VM is May 11^th 2012."  Therefore, if you'd like to get credit and have me submit it for you, your last day must be May 10th.

For more information, please see the essay contest entry form under class files on this page.

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

biographical information taken from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a clerk at the Navy Pay Office. His father, John Dickens, continually living beyond his means, was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824. 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory, 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory earning six shillings a week to help support the family.

earning six shillings a week to help support the family. This dark experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy that became a defining experience in his life, he would later write that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age."

This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and the world he would create through his fiction.

Dickens would go on to write 15 major novels and countless short stories and articles before his death on June 9, 1870. He wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, but the Nation would not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands of mourners overflowing the open grave. Among the more beautiful bouquets were many simple clusters of wildflowers, wrapped in rags. taken from http://charlesdickenspage.com/

Satire: using laughter as a weapon to point out flaws in society