Detailed Essay Guidelines

Stories Rule! How Your Voice Can Stand Up for What’s Right

The Big Idea: Stories are powerful. They help people remember, understand, and create change.

The Book and the Real World
In the book The Last Cuentista, the main character, Petra, uses her family’s stories (cuentos) to remember the past and protect important memories. Her stories help her stand up against a future where people are forced to forget who they are.

In real life, a young girl named Sylvia Méndez and her family used their personal story to fight unfair school laws that separated students based on race. Their story helped change the law and made schools more fair for everyone.

Your essay challenge is to write an essay explaining how stories can be powerful tools. Show how storytelling can be used to:

• Keep culture, history, and memories alive
• Stand up to unfairness or help people understand what is right
• You may use examples from The Last Cuentista and the story of Sylvia Méndez to support your ideas, but do not just retell their stories. Use them as evidence to explain your thinking.

Connect It to You: Now think about a story that is important to you, your family, or your community. Share that story and explain:

Culture & Memory: How does this story help protect your culture, identity, or important memories?

Fairness & Justice: How can telling this story challenge something unfair or help others understand justice?

Why It Matters: Why is this story important to you and your community today?

Your goal is to explain how storytelling works and show how its power connects to your own life and experiences.