Every two years the Wellington Children’s Book Association
invites Years 7 and 8 students to submit an original 500-word children’s story
into their competition.
In 2013 the Award was judged by Eirlys Hunter. Here is her report.
Jack Lasenby Writing Competition 2013: Judge’s Report
Once again there were lots of great stories to choose
between, and choosing between them was hard. The winner I’ve chosen is A Choice To Make.
Congratulations to the writer of A Choice to Make for a believable and moving story. It packs a lot
into a few paragraphs but never feels hurried.
This writer has been very clever. The story has an
earthquake in it, but it’s not about
the earthquake – the earthquake is just the reason that Christian’s train stops
unexpectedly. And it’s also the reason why the frightened old lady’s purse has
tumbled out of her bag. What the story is about,
is Christian surprising himself, and discovering that he’s not a bad boy, as
his father has always told him, and he has told himself. He’s actually capable
of doing good.
I like stories in which the protagonist (main character) has
an experience that changes them in some way and this is a terrific example.
Not surprisingly, there were lots of stories that included
earthquakes among the entries this year but none of the others worked as well
as A Choice to Make. The maximum
length for entries is 500 words, which is not enough to tell a complicated
story. A lot of entries were very well
written but ended abruptly just as something exciting happened, as if they were
episodes in a serial. I wanted to shout, “No! I want more, you can’t end the
story here!” Some of the stories that
were well written but seemed to skip over, or stop, before the most important
part included: Pain; Nightmare; Troubled
Secrets; Promise; Surprise on Soames Island; Goodbye and You Can’t Run Forever
Highly commended
Bird Flyers – another
complete story in which someone changes their mind (and a clever title!)
The Old Man – an
imaginative and empathetic character study
In The Garden – a
lovely atmospheric piece of writing
Rocky and Luna – two stories, about two cats, by two writers
who have each written from one of the cats’ point of view. The dialogue between
the cats is the same. Very clever – and the characters are nicely cat-like.
Congratulations to everyone who entered.
Eirlys Hunter
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