BBC 500 Words Finalists 2018 Part 4 (Age 10-13)


Dr Simon Reads… 500 Words 2018

The final 50 stories are now up for the 2018 run of the BBC 500 Words Competition.

For more information on the 500 Words competition see my post on the 2017 awards; but in brief it’s a creative writing competition run by the BBC for children aged 5-13, who can any kind of story they like, as long as it is within 500 words. Three winners from each of the two age categories (5-9 and 10-13) get their stories read out by a famous actor in a live final, plus win a big stack of books. Since its inception in 2011 it’s grown massively with tens of thousands of entries each year.
In each of these ruminations I look at the winning stories, and the celebrity reading, but I encourage you to also check out the other 48 finalists for each year; the writing on display is often breath-takingly good. (http://bbc.in/2pWJLrW).

This year I’m going to do something slightly different – give a brief description and discussion of each of the finalists, but by bit, and at the end make my predictions for winning stories, who are announced on the 8th of June. After, I’ll probably do something similar to the previous years and discuss the winners and their celebrity readers in a little more depth, plus I’ll be able to see how good (or more likely not) my predictions were.

Ages 10-13 (Part 2)

The Arrival by Cerys McGrath – On a mysterious world, panic ripples through the populace at the arrival of strange new creatures. Shades of Ray Bradbury in an imaginative sci-fi tale.

The Dance of the Trees by Alex Edwards – a poem, about dancing trees and how the bushes are jealous and hateful of the ability of the trees. A good rhythm to the language.

The Lost Heart by Mahriya Zahid – A fairy-tale inspired story of a queen made lonely by power, told with some great imagery.

The Messenger of the Gods by Maya Stoll – Shades of American Gods with this one, a comic tale where Hermes looks to be replaced as the God of Communication by the high-tech Telecos. A very clever story, funny and well-written.

The Pianist by Sidarth Bansal – An old pianist play a concert, and his delusions conjure up his dead wife to play alongside him, with a tragic twist at the end. A bittersweet tale of loss.

The Realignment by Harriet Alsop – a tale about the end of the world, a momentous event, The Realignment, is due to be carried out by an alien race. We get the musings of a farmer who prefers simple things, and his chickens, and then an amusing reveal on the aliens.

The Teeth Exchange by Rivie Bates – Mischief in an old folk’s home when a new resident swaps around the false teeth of the residents. I must say, the BBC Dram Company reader does a really good job on the voices for this one, really brings it to life.

The Trouble With Mondays by Isobel Morrow – Monday is arrested and put on trial because no-one likes it. Some fun personification of the days of the week.

Toxin on the Tube by Poppy Brown – Yes, very good! The narrator has a task to release a toxin in a tube carriage, but it’s not the terrorist attack you might expect. Subtle use of language cues you into what really going on.

Who Am I? by Rosie Hunt – A tale told by the insidious force of anxiety, and its fight for control of a person using relaxation techniques. Very interesting and well written.

I’m A Boy by Daisy Moody – the first of the wild-card entries. A tale of gender identity sensitively told, somewhat akin to David Walliams’ Boy In A Dress but less upbeat.

AI by Arthur Edmonds – A Terminator-esque story of a family hiding from remorseless robot killers, some nice imaginative touches.

The Mystery of the Loch Ness Scarf by Liv Steinhardt – a great comic tale, starting with an article from “Myth Monthly Magazine”, which we discover is being written by an unusual author, delivering a fun twist. Some genuinely laugh out loud lines.

And, well, that’s it for the 2018 stories. Some really good ones in there this year. Best of this batch I think are Messenger of the Gods for a humorous and clever take on Greek myth, The Trouble With Mondays for its witty concept and The Mystery of the Loch Ness Scarf which is clever and funny. Toxin on the Tube and possibly The Arrival are good runners too; as with before the best ones have a mix of themes and ideas in them as well as good writing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr Simon Reads... Appendix N. Part One: Poul Anderson

Image
Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N: Introduction This is a new series that will feature sporadically, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. You will either know what I mean by “Appendix N”, or you will have no clue. In the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax provided a large number of appendices, from random smells to reputed magical properties of herbs and gemstones. Appendix N was a bibliography of works that inspired him. Back in 1982 when I first got hold of this book, there were only a couple of items on there that I’d read, and only a few other authors that I’d even heard of. Many years later, after, much reading, I returned to Appendix N expecting to have added greatly to the works on there that I’d read; but actually, there were still very few. Many of the authors were obscure or out of print authors of, for want of a better expression, golden age pulp; the kind that feature in Amazing Stories and the like. Now, ...
Read more

An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 121: Closing Thoughts

It took half as many posts to tackle the Qur'an as it did the Bible, 120 compared to 248, but it felt like longer sometimes. Perhaps because the Qur'an is written by a single man and deals with pretty much the same topic over and over, whereas the Bible is a compilation of multiple works, some of which are historical, some apocalyptic, some laws or building instruction, some philosophical, some poetic, some a bit of each. From that point of view, I'd have to say that the Bible was the more interesting work to read. Have I learned any great wisdom from the Qur'an? I'd have to say … no, not really. Granted, I probably didn't approach it with a particularly deep understanding of the material in the first place, but that (as with the Bible readthrough) was always my intent. Picking through line by line is still something of a deep dive, and in both books I tried to be alert for symbol and metaphor. Doing it that way, however, it's easy to miss thematic callb...
Read more

An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 140: The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities (Isaiah 21-25)

Isaiah 21-25 The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version). In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP And now: Isaiah 21 “And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:” Isaiah has a vision that causes him pain like the pain of childbirth, apparently. From out of the desert comes a chariot bearing news that Babylon has fallen, but I don’t know to whom. This chapter says to “ watch in the watchtower ”, from which I guess the Jehovah’s Witnesses get the name of their little newsletter. Also Isaiah, or the people to whom he speaks, are told to “ go set a watchman ”; another line ...
Read more