National Literary Prize Winners Prizes!

Cast your minds back to the end of last year and you may remember Lorenzo and I announcing the winners of a very special competition run by the National Literacy Trust and Renaissance Learning. Primary and Secondary Schools all over the country had been given the chance to enter their own cartoon creations in two categories:


(1) The Primary School challenge was to create a sidekick for our character Dorko.
(2) The Secondary School challenge was to finish a Dorko comic strip story of which we had drawn the first panel.


After some TOUGH judging we finally selected Max Roulstone from Horsendale Primary school in Nottingham and Niamh Sinclair from Sweyne Secondary in Essex. Their prizes were to be two-fold. Firstly, Lorenzo would render their drawings in his own style, for two framed pictures. Then we would travel to the two winning schools and present the students with a special comic workshop. 


Needless to say, we had fun!  I was surprised to discover that Max was taller than me!

Both Sweyne and Horsendale had gone to great lengths ahead of our appearance.  Brilliant displays and a great sense of humour filled the halls of each school.

As usual our focus was on the children's own creations.  In prize winners Max and Niamh, we realised we'd stumbled upon two rare talents.  Here we both are, lost in the pages of Niamh's comics - which were, quite frankly, incredible!  Trust us when we say that this girl is going to be an artist to watch in the future.

Once again, many congratulations to both winners, all the runners up and everyone who entered the competition.  A special thanks to Susie Musgrove from the National Literacy Trust and Gareth Andrews from Renaissance Learning for organising the competition, and to Helen Banks at Sweyne and Heidi Stoneley at Horsendale, for making us feel so welcome.