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BookTrust announces winners of Me, Myself and I competition
Five budding authors and illustrators Nancy Biddlecombe, Charlie Parry, Jinyao Wang, Eissa Adebambi and Anya Mather have won Nadia Shireen’s Me, Myself and I competition.
BookTrust, the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, launched the competition with their current Writer in Residence Nadia Shireen in April 2018. Primary school children were asked to write a story of no more than 500 words putting themselves as the main character using their first name. The prize for the five lucky winners was getting their story printed by Penguin Random House.
BookTrust Writer in Residence Nadia Shireen said: “A huge hooray and thank you to every single young writer who entered the ‘Me, Myself and I’ competition. You’re amazing! I was completely overwhelmed by the number and quality of entries. Kids wrote in from every corner of the country with gorgeous, funny, inventive and - quite frankly - utterly *barmy* stories. It made me feel so proud and hopeful for our future, because we have a nation absolutely teeming with imaginative young writing talent. Well done, authors - you are absolutely crazy... but in the very best way. And please keep writing and drawing so we can all enjoy the brilliant worlds you have created.”
The winning stories My Little Brother Jamie, Leaping Beauty, The Battle vs Wizzard and ME! The Tree Monster and The Wrong Way, explored an eclectic mix of topics such as adventure, friendship and food!
Nadia set up the competition so that children could read a story about themselves because she believes it’s important that every young reader can see themselves represented in the books they read – regardless of gender, ethnicity or social class.
BookTrust CEO Diana Gerald said: “A huge congratulations to the five wonderful winners, your stories were brilliant and touched on some great topics such as adventure and friendship. We’ve loved working with Nadia on the ‘Me, Myself and I’ competition, helping children have more confidence to write themselves into stories. It’s such an important and excellent exercise as it helps to widen the appeal of reading, so that every child, whatever their background, sees reading as ‘for them’.”