It’s not often that middle schoolers can claim to be published authors, but for 42 Islip students, the assertion is valid.

Last year, while enrolled in Steven Taff’’s eighth grade Honors English class at the middle school, they wrote short pieces for the Survival Sagas fiction writing contest “Mission Contamination: It's Going Viral....Tales from New York.” Inspired by the theme of “contamination,” whether from a natural mutation, a chemical attack or a manmade experiment gone wrong, the students – all now freshmen at the high school – crafted original tales of fear and redemption, grim sacrifice and struggles of survival against the odds, in just 100 words. The resulting mini-sagas by these young writers were recently published in a “Mission Contamination” anthology paperback book, which can be read in the middle school’s library.