The Jack Lasenby Award 2013


Every two years the Wellington Children’s Book Association invites Years 7 and 8 students to submit an original 500-word children’s story into their competition. 

In 2013 the Award was judged by Eirlys Hunter. Here is her report.



Jack Lasenby Writing Competition 2013: Judge’s Report

Once again there were lots of great stories to choose between, and choosing between them was hard. The winner I’ve chosen is A Choice To Make.

Congratulations to the writer of A Choice to Make for a believable and moving story. It packs a lot into a few paragraphs but never feels hurried.

This writer has been very clever. The story has an earthquake in it, but it’s not about the earthquake – the earthquake is just the reason that Christian’s train stops unexpectedly. And it’s also the reason why the frightened old lady’s purse has tumbled out of her bag. What the story is about, is Christian surprising himself, and discovering that he’s not a bad boy, as his father has always told him, and he has told himself. He’s actually capable of doing good.

I like stories in which the protagonist (main character) has an experience that changes them in some way and this is a terrific example.

Not surprisingly, there were lots of stories that included earthquakes among the entries this year but none of the others worked as well as A Choice to Make. The maximum length for entries is 500 words, which is not enough to tell a complicated story.  A lot of entries were very well written but ended abruptly just as something exciting happened, as if they were episodes in a serial. I wanted to shout, “No! I want more, you can’t end the story here!”  Some of the stories that were well written but seemed to skip over, or stop, before the most important part included: Pain; Nightmare; Troubled Secrets; Promise; Surprise on Soames Island; Goodbye and You Can’t Run Forever

Highly commended

Bird Flyers – another complete story in which someone changes their mind (and a clever title!)

The Old Man  – an imaginative and empathetic character study

In The Garden – a lovely atmospheric piece of writing

Rocky and Luna  – two stories, about two cats, by two writers who have each written from one of the cats’ point of view. The dialogue between the cats is the same. Very clever – and the characters are nicely cat-like.

Congratulations to everyone who entered.

Eirlys Hunter


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