Competitions & Themed Booklists

Deadline January 2025

Daunt Story Competition

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Last year, many of the children at St Stephen’s entered the Daunt Books Children’s Short Story Competition. Indeed we even had some winners from our school over the past few years. What an honour to have four published authors in our own school. This year, I would like to encourage any other keen writers from St Stephen’s to enter, as it is a wonderful opportunity to write a story for pleasure and potentially see it in print! The winning stories will be published in an anthology with cover designed by illustrator Laura Carlin and will be introduced by Hiba Noor Khan, author of Safiyyah’s War and her eagerly anticipated The Line They Drew Through Us.

How do I submit? You should email your story as an attachment to l.pereira@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk by Wednesday 22nd January. Please put your child’s name, age and class as the email title and on the story attached. Eg: Sally- Y4 Rosen (Age 9). The competition is open to all children aged four to fifteen. The story must be all your child’s own work and must be between 300 and 1500 words.

Please make sure that the stories are typed, double-spaced and single sided. We will then forward all St Stephen’s entries to Daunt bookshop by the closing date. A copy of the children’s stories will be kept in a special folder in the Library for all to read.

Results will be announced in March 2025 and winning stories will be published in during summer term. A copy of all entries will be kept in the school Library as a keepsake for the children to read.

Good luck and I look forward to reading your children’s stories!

Author Day & Booksale

What a great success! Our Author Day & Book sale raised £415 to buy more books for our school Library. A huge thank you to non fiction author, Christopher Lloyd, illustrator, Fiona Lumbers and Claire Gill for bringing Mr Benn to our school in the form of theatre. Also thank you Daunt Books for another wonderful book sale!

June 2020

500 Words Black Lives Matter

A special edition of the 500 Words competition for children, focusing on themes related to the Black Lives Matter movement, was announced on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio UK this week.

Former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman is on the judging panel for the competition. She has written more than 60 books for children and teenagers and is best-known for her critically-acclaimed young adult book series ‘Noughts & Crosses’, which addresses racial injustice.

Also on the judging panel are authors Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Charlie Higson and Francesca Simon.

The competition opens at the start of The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio UK on Monday 29 June at 6.30am. Entries will be accepted until 11.59pm on Friday 3 July. Visit 500 Words to find out more

Themed Booklists

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