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Read the Wicked young writers' awards 2011 winning entries

Discover the poems and stories by winners aged 6 to 26 in the Wicked young writers' awards 2011

Read judge Michael Morpurgo's top tips for writing

5-7 Winner: Yetunde Lanlehin, age 6, London
Alex and the Tooth Fairy

Alex had perfect white teeth. But he decided to be lazy and he never ever brushed them.

His teeth changed from white to yellow, then orange, then brown. Bits of leftover food were in between his teeth and plaque was growing in his mouth. Monsters with spiky heads were eating the stale food and his breath smelt really bad.

He tried to speak to his sister but she ran away.

He tried to speak to his best friend but he said "your breath stinks!"

He tried to speak to his mum and she said "are you ill Alex?"

Then one day a dirty, smelly brown tooth dropped out of his mouth.

Alex was excited because now he could expect a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

So he put the dirty, smelly brown tooth under his pillow and fell asleep.

As he was dreaming about getting one hundred pennies for his precious tooth he was tapped on his shoulder.

"Alex, wake up!" said a lady with blue eyes, pink wings and a big purple dress with a matching wand.

"Who are you?" asked Alex.

"I am the Tooth Fairy and I woke you up because I am not taking that tooth," she said.

"Why not?" asked Alex.

"Because you have not looked after it. The tooth is dirty and smelly and brown,' said the Tooth Fairy.

"I don't want to brush my teeth," moaned Alex.

"Well I can't make a tooth into money if it's dirty," explained the Tooth Fairy.

"Why not?" asked Alex.

"That's just how it is! If you keep your teeth fresh and clean then it's worth something."

"So what about the rest of my teeth?" asked Alex.

"Let me see. Open your mouth," said the Tooth Fairy.

Alex opened his mouth and showed his brown smile.

"Urrgh!' said the Tooth Fairy. "Well I can't do anything with those teeth."

"Oh no! What can I do?" asked Alex.

"Firstly, you're going to have to go to the dentist and sort your teeth out. Then you have to brush them every morning and every night before you go to bed," said the Tooth Fairy.

"Okay," said Alex, then he went back to sleep.

The next day Alex asked his mum to take him to the dentist.

When he sat in the dentist's chair the dentist said, "open wide!"

Alex opened his mouth.

"Urrgh!' said the dentist.

So, the dentist scraped away the spiky monsters. He picked out the stale food caught in between Alex's teeth and he brushed away the plaque. Then the dentist gave Alex a special orange liquid.

"Give you mouth a rinse," said the dentist. He gave Alex a mirror.

"Oh! My teeth are as good as new," said Alex, as he looked at his white smile.

When he got home, just before he went to bed he brushed his teeth.

Alex brushed his teeth every morning and every night.

Then one day, as Alex was eating an apple for breakfast another tooth fell out.

Alex rushed upstairs to put his shiny white tooth under his pillow.

That night when Alex went to sleep the Tooth Fairy came. She didn't make a sound. She just crept into Alex's bedroom, gently lifted his pillow and saw Alex's shiny white tooth. The Tooth Fairy smiled. There was no need to wake Alex because the tooth was perfect! So she took the tooth with her and flew away.

The next day Alex woke up and immediately looked under his pillow. Guess what was underneath Alex's pillow?

One hundred shiny one pennies! Wow!

8-10 Winner: Josie Reynolds, age 10, Gwent
Inky, Pinky and Pong

The parents of Ian, Penelope and Peter otherwise known as Inky, Pinky and Pong decided to go on a trip to Barry on the train. The families took a picnic to eat on the beach. They all met on Newbridge train station and of course Inky, Pinky and Pong were fired up to get up to some mischief as usual, as well as enjoying their time at Barry. Pinky started straight away by smearing bright pink lipstick all over the ticket machine. And unknowingly the people using it got their hands covered in bright pink lipstick. Everything the people handled got covered in this pink lipstick. Their faces, clothes and hand luggage they were not very pleased, there was some raving and ranting on the station. While Inky, Pinky and Pong giggled in the shelter.

Everyone got on board the train to Cardiff were they were able to get another train to Barry. It passed a few minutes before Pinky needed the loo, while in there she painted stripes of lipstick around the toilet seat and on the tap handles we wonder what will happen now.

It was hot and stuffy on the train. Everyone was glad to get off at Barry to get some fresh air. It was a sunny day and all were ready to make their way to the beach to enjoy themselves.

Inky , Pinky and Pong, and their parents settled themselves down on the sand. The three children went running down to the sea swimming and splashing about. They were having a great time. After a while Inky got a bit bored and decided to get his bottle of ink and have some so called FUN!

Looking around Inky notices a lot of children and families playing in the rocks pools. Soooo over he goes with his bottle of ink, sneakily pulls it out of his pocket and without anyone noticing drops the blue liquid into many rock pools, screws the top back on and runs do to the water's edge calling to Pinky and Pong. They came splashing through the water wondering what had happened. Inky told them what he had just done, they all ran back up to their Mums and Dads saying how hungry they were, giggling to themselves. Inky, Pinky and Pong sat down on the sand to eat their picnic. Inky's mother said' what's all the fuss about'. The three of the trouble makers looked up to see lots of people running to the first aid shelter. There were Mothers screaming Fathers shouting their children and themselves had blue blotches all over them. There was a terrible panic on the beach. People thinking they had got stung by jellyfish. There were some people with pink blotches on their and pink blotches on the backs of their legs, of course Pinky was smiling because she knew she had something to do with it.

The police and lifeguards were called in all the emergency people were on standby, everyone was asked to leave the beach, all that were not affected by the pink or blue blotches made their way to Nessa's slots and cafe bars. The three mischief makers Inky, Pinky and Pong went to Nessa's slots this is where Pongs horns came out. 'Ha what can I get up to now' said Pong.

He had a few goes on the two pence slots, the driving games were quite fun, but it wasn't making him laugh. He decided to visit every bar and arcade dropping stink bombs in each one. 'Good grief' said the man in the first bar where he'd dropped the first bomb, 'drink your tea and let's get out of here' he said to his wife. Everyone was rushing out from the arcade and bingo hall. There was mayhem across Barry Island. No one could go on the beach so the only place left to go was home, back to the railway station they went. On reflection Pongs Mum said to the other Mums 'It wasn't a bad day all round, the kids enjoyed themselves'. Pinky looked at the two boys with a wicked look, and said 'you bet we did'. 'Lets get home to bed, see you all again soon' said Inky's Mum. 'Bye' replied the others wickedly, until their next escapade.

11-13 Winner: Louisa Cowell, age 13, Cheshunt

I'm in the park when it happens, rocking backwards and forwards on a swing, doing nothing. I'm there because my mother's late home from work and I dislike being in the house alone - it feels lonely and quiet.

It's nothing big, really. A little boy finding a ladybird. He holds it almost reverently until it spreads its wings and flies away. He runs after it desperately until he stumbles and falls. He sits in shock for a couple of seconds, then brings his knee up to his face and sees a trickle of blood. He begins to cry. Everyone looks around, expecting a mother or father to help him up, give him a plaster and take him off for an ice cream, but no one does. He just sits on the ground and cries.

It takes me back, right back, to when I was little – younger even than the boy. I was sitting on the ground in a park too. Someone else was there. My father. We were having a wonderful time. It was one of those perfect days, with just the two of you, when nothing much happens but you come out of it knowing that the memory will always be special. I remember it was like that, even though I was so young.

He was making a daisy chain with me. It was long, very long, long enough for me to have it draped around my neck and spread over my knees. I can remember everything, the way his hair fell over his forehead, the threads of grey woven through its darkness. There was a little speck of something above his right eyebrow. I can picture his face exactly as he pushed his thumbnail into the stalks of the daisies and helped me to thread the next one through the hole he'd made. The sun was setting and I knew he would soon tell me that we had to go home. The park was already deserted – except, of course, for us.

Then he looked up, like he'd heard something. He kissed me on the cheek, got to his feet and walked away. Just like that, with no goodbye, no explanation. He left me sitting there, too young to do anything, and went.

I watched him go, our daisy chain still on my lap. I watched him until I couldn't see him any more. Only then did I start to cry. And nobody came, for hours and hours. They found me when my mother began to panic at our disappearance and called the police. I was still sitting there, in the dusky park, tears running down my face. He never came back. That was the last time I saw my father.

The police men took me home, and sat me down. They gave me a biscuit and a drink, and asked me, quietly, kindly, what had happened. But I wouldn't tell them. I sat with my lips pressed together, shaking my head whenever they asked me a question. They gave up in the end, and left, telling my mother to call them if my father showed up. He didn't, of course.

After that, people tried to make sure I really was all right. Even four or five years later, the pastoral care woman at school treated me although I was sickening for smallpox, asking me very quietly how I was feeling at every possible opportunity. It was a relief when I moved up to secondary school and got away from her.

They only clue that the experience might have damaged me in any way is the fact that, since that day, I have never made another daisy chain. If I even saw someone making one, it felt like cold fingers had closed around my throat, stopping my breath coming normally, so that I had to rush into the nearest toilet and sit with my head in my hands for five minutes, until I felt normal again. That was a few years ago, though. All that happens now is that my heart quickens slightly.

I remember all of this, and still the little boy cries, and still nobody comes.

14-16 Co-winner: Lauren Palmer, age 16, Falkirk
Teenage Stuff

"I don't like it when you cry." Josh Williams said quietly, a frown on his pretty, cherubic face as he entered his older sister's room.

The small boy crossed the room and climbed onto double bed, and crawled across it until he was behind his sister, who was curled into a tight ball in the middle of the bed, her fingers gripping her knees as if they were a lifejacket and she was in the middle of an ocean.

"I know sweetie, I'm sorry." croaked Edith Williams, her voice dry and raw.

The older sister struggled into a sitting position, sniffing and dragging her thumb swiftly beneath her eyes to clear away her tears. After twelve deep breaths, Edith tilted her head down to her brother who was staring at her patiently with his wide, green eyes.

Edith took a shuddery breathe. Trying to keep calm for Josh, she gave him a small smile and ruffled his hair until it stood upwards in various directions. Glowering at his sister, he lifted his hands and stroked them across his head in hope to flatten his hair; it did little good.

"He's made you sad again, hasn't he?" Josh asked, staring at his sister whose eyes were rimmed red.

In reply, Edith gave a small nod while pressing her lips together as she tried to hold back another avalanche of emotions. She hated that her little brother was so aware of her problems. The biggest problem he should have to deal with was whether to watch Ben 10 or Generator Rex, not if his sister needed more tissues.

"Why don't you just not speak to him again? Then he won't make you sad. When Mickey Adams called me an idiot I just didn't play with him again, and now I don't get called an idiot." rattled the small boy, nodding his head as he spoke.

Edith smiled sadly at her brother, lifting her hand to his face and stroking his cheek with her thumb as she answered him, "It's not as simple as that. I wish it was, but it's not."

"Teenage stuff is more complicated than kid stuff." Josh said, quoting his sister from a past conversation.

"Yeah. Teenage stuff."

Josh frowned, then stood up on the bed and moved behind his sister. He started to carefully pull his fingers through her hair, while she sat still and let him do what he pleased with her long hair. After a few minutes she felt him start to separate her hair into sections. Edith couldn't help but grin; he had liked a girl called Kameko at nursery who liked to play with her hair. To impress Kameko, she had taught her younger brother to plait hair so that he could do the little girl's hair for her. Kameko had been impressed and became Josh's first girlfriend. They lasted five months until Kameko had to move; long distance would have been too difficult they decided.

"You know," said Josh, interrupting Edith from reminiscing further, "when I'm older and bigger, I'm gonna go up to Craig and give him a good speaking to. Maybe even kick him. Yeah, I'll kick him really hard."

"No little brother of mine is going to be kicking anyone." laughed Edith, her face feeling tight from the tears that had dried on her cheeks.

Josh stated in a defiant tone, "Fine. I'm still going to have a few words with him though. Do you have a bobble?"

Edith handed a bobble back to her brother as he spoke again, "I really don't like Craig."

"Neither do I sweetie, neither do I." as he tied the end on his sister's plait, inspecting it one final time to make sure it was perfect; he didn't want to give his sister a sloppy hairstyle.

"Why is he your boyfriend then if you don't like him?" asked Josh, his eyebrows almost meeting as he frowned deeply in confusion as he moved around her sister and plopped down on the bed again.

"Because I like him too." she said gently, the soft light of the room highlighting her eyes as they shone with unshed tears.

"That doesn't make any sense." said the young boy, the frown deepening even further.

"You're completely right, it makes absolutely no sense."

"Teenage stuff is more complicated than kid stuff." Josh said again, as his sister nodded in agreement before pulling him towards her for a hug.

14-16 Co-winner: Tariq Williams, age 14, London
Tired All Day

Tiredness is an old person,
He goes around saying "I am going to die"
and he's always slurping soup.
He bites the spoon.

Tiredness is a crafty bastard.
His second name is 'Yawn.'
He lives in a bungalow.

He's too old, tired and lazy
to care for a pet. He can barely care for himself.
When Tiredness was young, he looked like a dinosaur.
Now he looks like a Pterodactyl.

He used to sell frogs in a pet shop,
Then he quit that job
Because of boredom and became a drug addict
and an old man.

He had a heart attack.
The hospital tried to save him
But he was already gone.

17-25 Winner: Naomi Lever, age 25, Newcastle Captain James Hook's Most Estimable Treatise In Defence Of Prospective Infanticide

My hypothesis could not be more straightforward: one simply cannot help but feel that Never-Never-Land would be a wonderful place, were it not for the children.

Consider: lagoons as dazzling as sapphires, shores bright with flamingos, skies that do not know rain. Evergreen woods, white-tipped mountains, amber sunsets: the paradigm of peace, the pinnacle of perfection!

Peace, however, is a forgotten concept: one cannot recall the last occasion upon which birdsong and lapping waves were the only melodies to be heard. Cacophonies of shrill, over-excited shrieks and pseudo-war-cries and stubbed-toe-induced wails shatter the air. Perfection, too, is lost. Abandoned coracles serrate the lagoon shores, like rotting skeletons with driftwood for bones. The flamingos have learnt to be afraid of hurled twigs and makeshift slingshots: hence, the shores are dulled. One cannot move through the woods without concussing oneself on half-finished tree houses or being strangled by rope ladders that lead to nowhere. Needless to say, the blame for all this haphazard devastation must be solely apportioned to children.

Brats. Squirts. Urchins. Enfants terribles: is it merely coincidental that one cannot conceive of a single positive description of children? We encountered a sea-urchin once: a hideous thing, spiky as a hedgehog and the colour of a bruise. Smee cooked it; the taste was foul and the stench remarkably persistent. One cannot help but draw comparisons between the one type of urchin and the other: they share a certain degree of repulsiveness and perennial dampness. On which note, one must pose the question: why are children always so wet? There is the environmental wetness, which is easily explicable – the water, the mud, etcetera. But then there is what must be described as the anatomical wetness: snot, tears, drool, spit, phlegm – to say nothing of the effluvia from the other end. One feels bilious at the mere thought; the sight of one such child, gormlessly dripping, is enough to send one dashing for the ship's rail. Those poor mermaids.

One also notes that the lack of education and good Christian breeding renders these brats even more revolting. Their language remains mired in Anglo-Saxon derivatives rather than Latinate lexis, while their overall vocabulary seems restricted to the abusive, 'codfish' being the most printable of insults that have been flung at one. Whence comes this hideous rudeness of children? One has yet to encounter a child of genuine humility, who was actually cognizant of his own inferiority when confronted with an adult; they all seem to be possessed of a bizarre, unfounded arrogance and conviction of their own genius. One has actually overheard a particularly egocentric example term himself a 'wonderful boy' despite the palpable surplus of evidence to the contrary.

It is worth remembering, however, that the specimens to be observed in Never-Never-Land are particularly repugnant. For one thing, they are all boys, and a little boy is invariably more disgusting than a prim and proper little girl: slugs and snails versus sugar and spice – the contest has a foregone conclusion. Moreover (and this is a fact of which one delights in reminding the aforementioned urchins) not even the parents wanted this rabble. Even my parents wanted me, albeit as rather more of a status symbol and a means of keeping the family name in the annals of Eton than as a beloved son. Surely this must be testament to their inherently disgusting natures.

Furthermore, these children are not merely nauseatingly filthy and uncultured, they are dangerous. One should never allow a pre-pubescent boy within a mile radius of sharp objects, especially cutlasses. One should also never communicate to them the gastronomic preferences of certain reptilian residents of the island: children are far too stupid and sceptical to believe the testimony of a respectable, educated adult, and, in their ludicrously misplaced arrogance, they simply will insist on testing any and all overheard hypotheses. Even if the consequences may be severely debilitating to such intelligent, well-brought-up civilians as previously mentioned.

Therefore, it is one's fervent belief, having considered arguments emotional (one despises them), physical (they are vile), spiritual (they are heathens), social (they are a threat to all civilised persons) and logical (the danger posed, the consequent peace if the children are purged from the island), that infanticide is, far from being a crime, a service to humanity and, not least of all, to one's own sanity.

One might suggest that the most poetic means of execution would be death by crocodile.

Children's books weekly archives

Dec 2011

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