Britain’s 1000 Young Authors Have Got Talent

If you want to see real talent, you just need to look at the 1000 young writers who took part in the Young Author of the Year competition in SuperClubsPLUS and GoldStarCafe.

Sponsored by Intuitive Media and Scholastic UK to celebrate the National Year of Reading, the competition encouraged children to show their writing talent.

Scholastic has huge enthusiasm for encouraging children’s reading and writing and they share Intuitive Media’s passion for children’s learning, but encouraging children to read and write can sometimes be a challenge, so it was good to see that engaging children in a their own social learning networks, working predominantly at home with their online friends, made all the difference. The results speak for themselves.

All the children’s entries were of a very high standard and covered a variety of themes from romance to horror, mystery to science fiction. With over 1,000 entries from both communities, the competition judges, authors Dan Freedman and Rachael Wing had a very difficult job choosing the winners. One winner from each community will be presented with a notebook computer by Dan or Rachael and the winners will also be offered live Hot Seat interviews with the professional writers.

And the winners are...
The award-winning story from SuperClubsPLUS, was The Forest by Abhyankar. It's about a small boy Tom who, alone in the forest encounters the Last Wolf in Britain. Here's an extract where Tom is trapped high in a tree and...

"Tom watched in horror as the sleek, grey mammal, its eyes full of malice and mouth dripping saliva, came to the very tree he was sitting in. Tom thought he was safe, until the wolf gripped the tree, its claws digging in, and bizarrely, began to clamber up. When it reached a branch, it leapt to the next. Then the next, and then the next.

Tom had no time to think. He dived out of the tree, and hit the rough ground rolling. He began to run. The Wolf howled and dropped down and chased. A salty liquid was running down Tom’s face, perhaps it was sweat, perhaps it was tears. It was probably both. Tom stole a quick glance at his hand, which was throbbing unusually and gasped. A huge gash from a tree branch ran the length of his lower arm. Tom felt like stopping, like giving in, but inside him, something had awoken, it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t worry. It was anger. Pure, animal anger." - Abhyankar, 11.

Judge, Dan Freeman said of Charlotte's tale:

"I loved the central idea, thought the story telling was excellent and some of the imagery was top class. I would like to read more!"

Twelve year old author, Katherine won the GoldStarCafe Young Author award with A Day to Remember, in which an elderly survivor of the WW2 concentration camps experiences a harrowing flashback:

"When Dorathy woke up she was in a small, grey room. There were two beds and a bowl of water on the floor. The beds were metal and had no covers on them. It was freezing cold. Her granny breathed a sigh of relief and ran to hug Dorathy. Dorathy hugged her back, trying to make sense of what happened. She realised she was in an isolation unit. There was a small window in the door, just small enough for Dorathy to see out of. There was a room full of showers down the dark corridor. Germans were walking round, collecting people to go into the showers. No one seemed aware of what was going to happen, but Dorathy and her granny knew. They were the only ones who wouldn't fall for it. If they went in that room they were going to die...

...They were getting closer the showers. Dorathy's granny picked up more strength and kicked the door closed. Gas started to flow down from the showers. Everything seemed to be in slow motion to Dorathy. She looked from a distance as families were dying inside the room. She took a few steps further. A mother was cradling her baby, even though it was obvious it was dead. Soon the mother was too. The room was filled with gas by now. All that was left was the few who were struggling for their lives, the rest were corpses lying on the floor." - Katherine, 12

Judge, Rachael Wing, a published author when she was only 14, explained why Katherine's story stood out as one in a thousand:

"I have chosen Katherine's A Day To Remember, because I felt that the story grabbed me straight away, and when I got to the end of the collection it was the one that I remembered the most."

What did the children think?
There was huge enthusiasm for the competition. Many children told us they took weeks to perfect their stories and did most of the work in their own time at home. Here's what GoldStarCafe member, Nicole thought about the experience:

“I had a lot of fun writing my story and reading other people's. I think the hot seats were great! They were really inspiring and it's unbelievable that Rachael wrote her book at 14 years old. That's just like a year older than me! I thought her book was awesome and I've read it like 10 times. I did take a lot of time with my entry. It took me about 3 to 4 hours to complete and I am really chuffed with it. The prizes are really amazing. It really motivates people knowing there is a big prize up for grabs and that they have a chance of winning even just for writing a story.” – Nicole, 13

And here Grieg gives an insight into the writer's mind:

"I thought the hotseats really helped because we got to know how real authors came about with their stories and how they started etc. Sometimes when I write stories, they just jump from the top of my head on to paper (or on to the keyboard) and then there are other times when it takes some time and thinking to create them. With my entry on this occasion I was quite impressed by how fast I thought it up and how I improvised my way through the story." – Greig, 13

What do children write about?
So what do children write about when given a free choice? Alyx Price, Group PR Director at Scholastic took a sample of 300 of the stories and analyzed the children's chosen themes. Here's the top 10 most mentioned story themes across the age range:


Well, parents feature heavily - their presence or their absence. Orphans are popular characters (is there some wishful thinking going on here?). Mum is a more popular character in their writing with 23% mentioning her specifically and only 7% mentioning Dad. Lots of kids like to write happy endings, but there's also a focus on death, anxiety and conflict with friends and siblings. There's still room for magic in kids' imaginations with 23% of primary children including magic in their stories, but this falls to 7% in the secondary children. Does the magic fade?

Imagination and talent
The competition created a huge buzz in SuperClubsPLUS and GoldStarCafe and Intuitive Media intends to feature more writing challenges in their communities. Scholastic UK were also delighted with the outcomes. Alyx Price said:

“This was a fantastic competition to run during the National Year of Reading; Intuitive Media and Scholastic were inspired by the December theme of ‘Write the Future’. The young people wrote about so many varied topics and I am really impressed with the imagination and talent that they have displayed. It was great to see how much they all enjoyed the challenge too. The stories were of such a high standard and I am sure that many of them will become authors or journalists in the future.”

The 2008 National Year of Reading is a year-long celebration of reading, in all its forms. It aims to help build a greater national passion for reading in England – for children, families and adult learners alike.

TEACHERS! - to see the Young Authors' stories, email Intuitive Media or call 0800 169 1024 for a free teacher account. Visit SuperClubsPLUS or GoldStarCafe and take the Tour.