Dr Simon Reads... BBC 500 Words (2015 Winners) - Children's Writing Competition

Dr Simon Reads … BBC 500 Words

If you missed it, I suggest reading the 500 Words 2017 post before going any further for way of explanation. The short version is, 500 Words is an annual writing contest set by the BBC for children of 13 and under, with three finalists from each of the two ages categories selected and read out by famous actors. Both the range and quality of stories are generally excellent and worth checking for yourself. Here, I just discuss the winners and point out why you should read them, or even better, listen to the celebrity readings. If you can access the BBC, try this link http://bbc.in/2jCr9e9

2015 was a bumper year, I think, not just in the quality of the stories but also in the quality of the celebrity readers; they are nearly always good, but this year each one really brought something extra to each story and raised it up into brilliance.

And without further ado…

Cake Wars by Emily Potts

Bronze Winner 2015, Age 5-9

“There were sugar shoes, spun sugar, blown sugar bubbles and sugar paste figures. There was iced lettering, iced gems, iced flowers, iced piping work and a selection of paint work and gum pastes all decorating particularly perfect sponges, fruit cakes and sandwiches. Lily, aged nine, stood shyly at the side of her ordinary Victoria sandwich with jam, butter cream and a dusting of icing sugar.”

We start with a comedy piece, pure out and out farce, inspired by The Great British Bake Off. It’s quite common in 500 Words stories for a celebrity or two to feature, quite often the Queen, and this one features GBBO’s Mary Berry (ex of this parish). At a village baking contest, Lily age 9 with her simple Victoria sponge cake is a lone figure amidst all the elderly, and super-competitive, ladies with their elaborate bakes. There then follows a sequence of humorous attempts at sabotage by the old ladies, each spiking the other’s baked goods, swapping biscuits for dog biscuits, sprinkling white dog poo as icing sugar, and other shocking activities. Each thinks they are the only one to have done this, but we the reader know that everyone’s work apart from young Lily’s has been tampered with.

Of course, the judging does not go well. “From outside people could hear Mary Berry shouting and screaming and the sounds of loud throwing up”. The only un-sabotaged cake, and the winner, is Lily age 9 and her simple Victoria sponge.

Who doesn’t love mayhem at a village fete? A comedy of village snobbery worthy of Anthony Trollope, but with added scatology. Sally Hawkins, who stars in the Paddington movies, reads this one; she’s fine, and does the story justice, but doesn’t really add much that I can remember. But there’s better yet to come.

Blue, by Laura Akhurst

Bronze Winner 2015, Age 10-13

“Memories of her first swimming lesson, kicking legs, blowing bubbles, orange armbands, mastering the mushroom float, the exhilaration of launching herself into the blue of the pool. Her dad looking on from the spectator’s gallery beaming with pride…”

There are three kinds of story that are pretty much guaranteed to feature in the 500 Words finals – a knockabout comedy, a dystopian future, and tales of love and loss. Blue is about a young woman in a swimming contest, possibly something high level, possibly the Olympics, we aren’t told and it doesn’t matter. We know from her inner thoughts that this is important, this is something she’s worked for.

We move back in her memories, all based around experiences in the water and all featuring a loving father – bathtime as a tiny baby, trips to the beach, first swimming lessons, a snorkelling trip when the two of them are older. Each little vignette is a perfectly formed gem, shining with atmosphere and feeling.

At the end she wins her race and looks up to the stands. Only her mother is there, an empty space where her father would be if he were still alive. Read by Eleanor Tomlinson, Demelza from Poldark, this is a moving, beautiful story. It’s worth watching the video of the reading if you can. Despite the real feelings shown in the story, Laura’s father is very much alive and well, but he seems to have got something in his eye by the end. As do I.

The Word That Wouldn’t Come Out by Robyn Fielding

Silver Winner 2015, Age 5-9

“I am a word. An ordinary, plain, word. I am the word “and”, I told you I was nothing important. I live inside a brain, owned by an 8 year old girl called Bella.”

The emotional rollercoaster that is the 500 Words final whips us another way, into a story that features two other popular 500 Words subjects – a heartfelt description of living with a disability, coupled with an unusual point of view.

The word “and” tells us what it’s like to be a word living in the “brain pond” of a girl with a stammer. The brain pond is where all the words live, swimming in cosy warm water, and if you have a stammer your brain pond is particularly warm and cosy, and sometimes the words get stubborn and refuse to be fished out by the tongue and be spoken. It’s a lovely piece, imaginatively written, that really brings a condition to life (Robyn herself has a stammer and knows of what she writes, I guess this is her best way of explaining to others how it feels). Charles Dance, the terrifying Tywin Lannister, reads this one; seemingly an odd choice of reader at first for what is a lighter, imaginative piece, but he really endows it with power and gravitas as well as a touch of warmth, and his authority is such that you end up thinking that you will always be understanding of people with a stammer for ever more, or else.

Oh, and the story builds towards the last sentence in a very clever construction; I do like it when these short stories hang on the last sentence, the children always seem to manage to do that without making it feel like M Night Shyamalan’s weaker works.

Londoner Pigeon by Hannah Sennouni

Silver Winner 2015 Age 10-13

“Hello, I'm Bart, your average London pigeon. You know, filthy feathers and scabby legs and all that. I was born one of 3 chicks, but 'coz to the increase in London buses, I'm the only one of us left. Shame, innit?”

Written in London vernacular, Bart the Pigeon narrates his life in Trafalgar Square, dodging kids on scooters, begging for crumbs, trying to catch the eye of a pretty robin. The old ladies, in particular, are good sources of food – “I dunno why, but old ladies are obsessed with feeding us. Like they think we're magic ponies or something”, including one called Elizabeth, who’s possibly someone important. It’s evidently kind of meant to be the Queen, but there’s enough ambiguity that it might not be (except for the rewards in the end). Bart ends up inadvertently saving Liz from harassment and robbery by some “yobbos who think they're so cool but really they're just boys with their trousers too low who watch rude videos and use enough hair gel to stick Taylor Swift to the ceiling”, because some moldy bread he ate earlier gives him diarhhoea all over them. It’s quite scatological this year, I’ve noticed!

As a reward, Bart gets a statue in Trafalgar Square and TV appearances. This is read by Barney Harwood who presents children’s magazine programme Blue Peter, and since BP gets a mention in the story this is possibly why (I think BP are involved in pushing the 500 Words contest quite heavily as well). Barney has good comic timing, and brings Bart’s cheeky Londoner narrative style to life really well. Some really good turns of phrase and comic writing by Hannah.

Fight for Life by Sofia Zambuto

Gold Winner 2015, Age 5-9

“The silence was terrible. I knew it would hit us at any moment. When it came the wave was colossal and came crashing down on us. Two of my little ones clung to me. They saw their father go under. He disappeared. We didn’t see him resurface.”

This is another of my favourite 500 Words stories. It describes a mother’s desperate attempts to save her children from a terrible destructive wave of water, and at the start we are left thinking of something like the Boxing Day tsunami. As the story goes on, however, there is a most fantastic twist and we realise that the mother, children and the situation, are perhaps not quite who and what we thought.

It’s written in a wonderful kinetic style, short sentences and repetition give a strong momentum and sense of urgency – “The wave, the flood is coming again. Run with me now, as fast as your legs will carry you. Follow me now. Follow me!”. It’s read by Sir Kenneth Branagh and he gives it every ounce of his knightly acting chops. You feel the panic, you feel the urgency. And when the twist comes, Sir Ken delivers it with great relish and timing, getting just the right reaction from the crowd. The applause at the end is thunderous.

I can’t really say much more about this one without giving away the twist, which it all rides on. Go and watch it, it truly is a gem.

It’s A Wide World by Amabel Smith

Gold Winner 2015, Age 10-13

“The Government uses weight to control society, like puppeteers pulling the strings of their obese, obedient dolls. Everyone except me; no one has ever seen me sprinting through the fields because no one ever looks past their screens, but tonight I feel like someone is watching me...”

An excellent piece of writing from Amabel (yes, I did spell that as written). We are given two viewpoints in this dystopian tale. The first is a first person view from a girl who goes running in her old, battered trainers, in direct contradiction to government edict in a sad future where people are kept indoors addicted to their screens. She runs at night, Amabel writing a glorious evocation of the freedom of running. We return to her viewpoint at the end of the story for the punchline – not a cunning twist or capstone like some of the 500 Words stories, but a great ending nonetheless.

Between this we switch to the viewpoint of Jonathon, a young hacker lazily playing with government spy satellites. Via his viewpoint we get more detail of this bleak and joyless world; he represents in many ways the opposite viewpoint to the running girl, but is also a rebel in his own way.

Read by Jeremy Irons (from lots of stuff, but you’ll know him as Scar from the Lion King surely), Irons is one of those actors, like Charles Dance, that could read the phone book and imbue it with stirring gravitas. He delivers this story with relish, and well he might, it’s very well written. I particularly like the way he pauses and then leans into the microphone to deliver the final line, it really brings weight to it and is how Nick Jonas should have done the end to e-Courtroom.com (or would have, next year.. oh dear, doing these backwards is a little awkward).