Goodbye to our Writer in Residence Patrice Lawrence and congratulations to her competition winners!

Our outgoing Writer in Residence Patrice Lawrence says goodbye and announces the winners of her competition.  

Six months have passed and my residency has finished. My remit was to champion reading for pleasure for children facing challenging circumstances. At the start of the residency, I wrote that our modern world should meet all children’s basic needs. Every single child in our society should grow up feeling safe, loved and secure in the knowledge that they are valued. Sadly, this isn’t the case. 

Books cannot be eaten or provide a physical refuge or home, but they can be a tool promoting empathy, escapism and reassurance.

As children, books enabled us to envisage different worlds – worlds where children like us, the outsiders, could save the day. Or worlds where we could laugh with characters that shared our challenges. Or simply worlds where we felt seen and understood without judgement. 

These worlds do not exclude adults. The door to children’s books is always open to everyone and the welcome is warm. I’ve loved revisiting some of my favourite books and introducing you to books that may not have crossed your path before. I hope that my recommendations have swelled your to-be-read pile – or even better, your read-it-and-loved-it pile.  

It has also been a pleasure to go out and about with BookTrust – championing reading for pleasure to policy makers, social workers, foster carers, and friends and family members caring for vulnerable children, online and in real life across England and in Wales.

A highlight was hearing Professor Sam Wass, the director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years, talk at the BookTrust Reading Rights Summit in Liverpool. He was explaining the neuroscience behind the positive benefits of adults reading to young children. As a person who always wants to know ‘why’, I finally have some answers to why books mean so much to me!   

The conversations about reading for pleasure are ongoing. I will always want to be part of those conversations. Thank you BookTrust for giving me this platform.  

Competition winners 

Congratulations to the winners of my writing competition! I loved reading all of your creative entries. Thank you for sending them in. In the 5-7 ages category, the winner is Willow Cuthbert, and the two runners up are Zain Siddiqi and Oscar Daniels. In the 8-11 category, the winner is Ava Swain and the runner-up is Eniyan Elango. You will all receive a bundle of books. 

If you want to know more about why reading is so beneficial to children experiencing vulnerability, see BookTrust’s research on this here.