Dr Simon Reads... BBC 500 Words (2019) Part 2: Finalists ages 10-13 (Children's Writing Contest)

Dr Simon Reads… 500 Words 2019

The final 50 stories are now up for the 2019 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.  The prizes have grown in recent years; now each winner gets a hard-bound copy of their story illustrated by a famous children’s illustrator (e.g. Quentin Blake, Helen Oxenbury etc.), and first prize not only wins books for their school but now gets a personal tour of a famous landmark.

I’m going to do what I did in 2018 – give a brief description and discussion of each of the finalists and at the end make my predictions for winning stories, who will be announced on the 14^th of June. After, I’ll 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.

Read or listen to the stories for yourself here https://bbc.in/2JNkjzt

Ages 10-13

==[JUST THREE WORDS]== by Adam John – A good start, with a strong and clever tale about a coffee machine so advanced that it’s able to know what kind of coffee will make its customers happy. But, like an Asimov story, the Coffee Bot thinks bigger and tries to save mankind using only its three word display.

Anne Wilson by Logan McElfresh – There are lots of entries this year told from the point of view of an unusual or normally inanimate protagonist. This is the first in the queue, and it’s a powerful tale of depression and how it chooses to strike the eponymous Anne because of her social isolation.

A Walk in the Park by Beth Halliwell – A chilling atmospheric story where things aren’t quite as they seem. Beth conjures up great imagery with her use of vivid language full of jagged edges and splinters.

Bamboo Magic by Grace Chapman – A bit of Asian-themed fantasy next, where an old lady who carves bamboo figurines for the children is imprisoned by an Emperor who wants her artistry only for himself. There are some lovely delicate touches to the sad story which makes it feel very East Asian.

Blue Cool by Katy Sarah Gunning – The next in the collection of inanimate narrators, this one is told by Blu-Tack, characterised as a kind of diamond-in-the-rough, by turns sinister (in its ubiquitous presence) and friendly. The narrative voice in this one is very strong and makes a very strange concept work really well.

The Boy Who Wished to Be A Girl by Jasmine Yeomans-Hughes – I recall a trans-accepting story last year, this one is even more direct, with Louis wanting to be Louise, and becoming inspired to be true to herself by visions of strong women of past and present. Pretty moving stuff.

Clot and the Antibody Army by Benjamin French – From sensitive portrayal of gender identity to a pun-filled roustabout wherein a boy’s immune system is personified as a series of brave soldiers fighting a war against blob-like invaders, the Haemo-goblins. Gloriously vivid and inventive.

The Day the Door Opened by Emily Gibson – Next on our roster of unusual narrators, a red football sock long lost in the wahing machine but recently emerged from the depths to infiltrate a wash of white shirts (with the inevitable results). Another very inventive piece of writing.

Hamish the Tap Dancing Sheep by Jessica Burns – Hamish the sheep loves to tap dance and is very good at it; his family want him to go on Sheeps Got Talent, but doing traditional Scottish dancing like them. The delightfully surreal set-up allow for lots of sheep-based word play.

I Should’ve Stayed at Home… by Henry Doust – A very atmospheric and tense piece of writing which starts with an ordinary day and becomes a very detailed description of the narrator desperately hiding. Henry peppers his taut writing with lovely descriptive detail. And of course, being 500 Words, there’s a twist ending.

Is This the Real Life, Or Is This Just Fantasy?  by Shaun Townsley – A tremendously clever piece of writing  describing an agent code-named Galileo and his mission to rescue the Killer Queen from the clutches of Figaro on the planet Mercury. As you might have guessed by now, this story is peppered with titles and references to Queen songs, and the joy of it is how Shaun just keeps them coming but without ever feeling too forced. Made me laugh out loud.

Left by Hannah Hope – And here we go with another strange narrator, in this case a pen, forgotten and imprisoned inside a pencil case until somebody needs it when the WIFI goes down. Not only is some of the language in this story delightful and luxurious, especially when the pen meets the paper (it feels a bit steamy!), there’s a nice little fillip at the end when the pen is used to write this story.

Medusa’s Makeover by Cissy Bailey – There are few poems in this age group too; this is the first I got to. It’s a comic story about the difficulties that having snakes instead of hair can create when one wishes to get a new hairstyle. Hairdressers won’t touch it, and even the reptile house at the zoo don’t want to get near it. Plus a few hapless people are turned to stone by mistake. There’s also a moral about being true to oneself.

My Brother is Magical by Evie Baker – The narrator tells of all the special powers that her brother possesses, super senses, super memory, spinning for ages. It’s a warm and well-written story about living with autism.

My Time Again by Rosy Riley – Tissues at the ready, it’s a 500 Words story about old people. The 100 year old narrator makes a dress for her grand-daughter to dance in, since her dancing days are long gone. But magic happens and she is young once again for one last marvellous dance. Or perhaps it’s simply her last dying dream. Very sweet, shades of The Little Messenger and The Starlings of West Pier. Should do well.

No Bear-Shirt Tall by Annabel Davies – The next poem, this one a slightly Beowulf-esque story of a dragon terrorising the land, that is beaten by a girl using her wits (the kenning-style title refers to her, no tall berserker is she, no mighty warrior, yet she defeats the beast). I really liked the way this one evoked the feeling of Old English heroic epics.

The Office Party by Jacob Harrington-Worrall – We had two modern re-tellings of fairy tales in the younger category, here Jacob updates Cinderella, who is Cindy, cleaner at a law firm run by Mr Prince, who is helped to go to the office party by an amusingly camp security guard called Freddy who helps her “borrow” some expensive clothing. Very funny, and the character of Freddy is hilarious.

Period 3 with William Shakespeare by Alexandra Ashton – Shakespeare is brought in as a substitute teacher for a class of unruly girls and doesn’t fare very well. Shakespearean quotes abound in creative ways.

The Problem of Being Invisible by Molly Jane O’Reilly – The third poem, and probably the most sophisticated of the three for rhyming and scansion. Gwen is the imaginary friend of a boy called Olly, and as he grows up she is only able to watch, with fondness, as he marries and gets old. At the end of his life the two are reunited as death allows him to see her again. Very touching.

The Supermarket Scamp by Eleni Malandrinos – A comic tale of a dog running amok in a supermarket with some lovely turns of phrase, I especially liked the busybodies getting involved.

Tyrannos-oral hygiene by Millie Robinson – Another comic story, this time about a Mr Tyrone King, a tyrannosaurus rex, visiting the dentist for the first time in 65 million years. The dentist gets creative with builders, gardeners and firemen involved. Part of me was kind of hoping the T Rex would eat everyone at the end, but it all ends happily instead, which is probably just as well.

The Terrible Claw by Amelia Cloake – Shades of the aliens in Toy Story here, expect here the narrator is a kind of Care Bare sharing space with others of his ilk and some thinly-disguised Minions, in a claw-grabbing arcade thing (what are they called, exactly?). Whereas the Toy Story aliens regard The Claw with religious awe, here it’s a terrible scary thing that wrenches you out of your home; but the narrator discovers that the outside world is not so bad after all. I loved how all the bears had rhyming names and that the bear called Lenny is described as “just strange”.

The Thief of Wishes by Jessica Noble – A shadow figure steals people aspirations from them, mainly it would seem in an attempt to impress his father. But an encounter with a girl with a particularly powerful ballet ambition causes him to have a change of heart. A great idea, a little bit like a Dementor and a little bit like the BFG.

What Am I? by Katie Savage – A dramatic and powerful piece of writing (the BBC Drama reader really give it relish!), another unusual narrator, this time Winter describes the fury of storms, biting cold, and how it enjoys imprisoning people in their homes. A veritable Jeremiad.

Why Did The Chicken… by Esme Harrison-Jones – A laugh out loud black comedy wherein a bunch of hapless chickens a bumped off one by one by their attempts to cross the road. It has a brilliant twist as well. Loved this one. Splat!

Reality by Harry Martin – You know what’s been missing this year? A dystopian future story. This one is almost one, starting with the narrator swimming off the coast of a deserted island where he’s been for some long time, and then him waking up to discover that he’s in some kind of virtual reality experiment. Really good at evoking place, with a wonderful contrast between the virtual reality of the tropical island and the sterile VR lab.

Something’s Scon Wrong! by Ruby Allen – A comic satire on British mores, as civil war breaks out after the Queen announces that “scone” must be pronounced to rhyme with “gone” and not “cone”. London becomes the scene of a battle involving jam and cream. Funny stuff.

Speaking With No Words by Isabel Kershaw – Not a million miles from the Dysgraphia Word Zoo, this too is about what goes on in the head of a girl who has difficulty expressing herself in words. In this case, though, it’s more the spoken word that she has trouble with, not the written word, and this story, self-reflexively like the story about a pen (Left) becomes the story we are reading.

And that’s it for the 10-13 year old category. It’s funny how there’s quite a lot of overlap in themes; this often happens when there’s some kind of major event – Olympics in 2012, anniversary of WW1 in 2014, plastics in the ocean last year, but this year there isn’t such a common theme as far as I could tell. Perhaps a greater awareness of mental health?

Top picks that I really liked: Why Did The Chicken…(because it’s really black and funny), Just Three Words (clever formatting and a wise story) and Is This The Real Life, Is This Just Fantasy (very clever word play and a fun story too).

Next I’d go for A Walk in the Park (for great atmosphere and a horror ending), Blue Cool (a great narrative voice) and My Time Again (because the judges love a weepy).

On the last tier I’d go for Something’s Scon Wrong (because it’s just plain funny), My Brother is Magical (cleverly written and touching), The Office Party (another good fairy tale update) and Period 3 with Mr Shakespeare (clever wordplay again, and funny to boot).

Ooh that’s tough. I can see another couple there that might be chosen above any of those, but for me don’t quite reach the heights of the others. Now roll on June 14^th!