I learned today that both my children, having entered a Young Writers poetry competition at school, are to have their work published. Cue tears of joy at having not one but two mini literary geniuses (genii?!) in the family.
But wait......is that £15.99 per child, per book I need to pay to see their work in print? Only when I have paid for a book will my dcs really be entered into the competition? And what about that sentence in the letter which says that 'all children stand a realistic chance of being selected'. Could it be that my children are not so uniquely talented after all?
This was a competition organised through school (a great school imo, whose judgment I usually trust) I don't wish to denigrate my dc's talents but, having re-read the letters, I smelled a rat and went straight to Mumsnet to see if others here had flushed one out! Reading threads on here, I realise that the Young Writers competition must be a scam or, at the very least, a vanity publishing excercise.
I am going to write a letter of complaint to the school and suggest they enter children into a legitimate writing competition. Anyone have any ideas for suggestions of story/poetry competitions for schools whose main aim is to reward talent rather than squeezing money out of proud parents?
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Young Writers - scam? alternative prizes?
MouseThatRoars · 15/04/2013 12:11
What one of our schools did when they realised they'd been mislead was to immediately send out a letter saying that they would buy two copies for the school library and parents were free to come and have a look at their child's copy in print. They then didn't do it again.
The other thing that I've been a bit 
over is that both times I have had a child in a form that has been entered, is that the organisers seem to select about 1-2 a form who don't get it. I think that's to create the illusion of competition, but as the ones who don't get it seem to be randomly selected (having known the child and seen the work in one case) this is cruel on the child who thinks they're the only child whose poem/story isn't good enough.
Just did a search on this as I've just received one of these letters and am really hacked off. A) with this cynical ploy and B) with the school for getting involved and sharing my details with them.
I actually didn't realise it was a scam until I read the supposedly brilliant poem my DD had written - it's really crap 
. She is good at literacy but lazy and when I read what they proposed to publish, I recognised it as one of her "CBA with this so I'll shove that in and that will do" efforts.
She doesn't know anything about it so I'm hoping it won't be all over the school. Asked around a bit and only one other parent from another year had got one so perhaps they've changed their strategy to make it less obviously a load of old rubbish.
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