Fantastic read

The cartoonist Posy Simmonds once told me how intensely suspicious children were about the role of the writer. "They're very literal-minded about the idea of the imagination," she said. "I can't tell you the number of times a parent has opened a copy of one of my books and said, 'There! Posy wrote that!' and the child will peer at the page as though indulging a two-year-old, and say, 'And which bit did you do?', as if I'd just coloured in one corner."

As far as children are concerned, books have always been there, like parents and houses. The idea of books as being part of a process of constant invention, a process in which they themselves could join, arrives with delicious slowness in their heads. That is why watching it arrive is such a delight.

For the non-literate child, independent reading is a con, designed so that their mean and slothful parents will be spared the bother of reading to them at bedtime. For them, Papa is a kind of ringmaster and the book a silent talisman of revels, to be yielded up by the vocalising of words.

As they connect the shapes on the page with sounds, then words, then rhythmic sentences, children do not magically break free into the wondrous carnival of make-believe. They are far too afraid of failure for that; hence the importance of repetition in books for just-starting five-year- olds. When, in Janet and Allen Ahlberg's Burglar Bill, you learn that Bill sleeps in a stolen bed and drinks cups of stolen tea, you can feel the amateur bibliophile beside you chasing the word "stolen" all over the page and silently congratulating herself.

School presses books of all kinds on the hapless child, whose pleasure may derive more from them finishing than understanding or enjoying. Parents can do nothing but wait for the revelation that awaits. For me, it was when Sophie (at five-and-a-half) suddenly fell about laughing at a passage in a silly story about inept bank robbers, among whom was a character called Jimmy-the-flipping-crow. She read out passages of dialogue in kinks of amazed laughter. Discovering humour - more importantly, discovering that books are about being silly, or slangy, or demotically true-to-life - is the key to a happy reader. The defining moment is learning that books are, as TS Eliot said about poetry, merely a higher form of entertainment.

And where does the true writer get status? Writing about what you like, what you find funny or what you utterly loathe, and taking the chance that the echoes of your taste will sound in the minds of other readers, is perhaps the biggest lesson to learn. Learning not to be afraid of your imagination, no matter what stupendous mazes and creepy alleys it leads you down, is the starting point.

And what better incentive than our Story of the Year competition, now in its fourth year? Write a new short story for six- to nine-year-olds and you could not only win pounds 2,000, but see your masterpiece in print in The Independent Magazine in June. The two runners-up win pounds 500 each, and the top ten stories are all published in an anthology by Scholastic Children's Books. The judges this year include the writer Blake Morrison, and a panel of children who will read the 20 shortlisted entries. So write them a story they can't put down. John Walsh

See overleaf for how to enter our competition

Isabel Hilton is a presenter of Radio 4's current affairs programme 'The World Tonight'. Her daughter Iona, seven, goes to Dallington School, in north London. They talk about the stories they enjoy together

Isabel When it comes to choosing what to read, I tend to try things I enjoyed, though I don't always get it right. Winnie the Pooh was a great favourite, but for some reason it didn't take with Iona. I've tried Alice - not crazy about Alice. Orlando the Cat - not so good either.

She has some favourites which I can't abide and simply refuse to read. There's a ghastly one about vampires - it's not a story, more a series of vignettes, and I do like books to have a proper narrative. Some of the Roald Dahl I don't like. We have a tape of James and the Giant Peach which I can hardly bear to hear. Luckily there's a middle ground of things we both like, such as Kipling's Just So Stories. They're so precisely written.

We had great success recently with The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynne Reid Banks. It's about a boy who is given a little cupboard, and when he puts his toys into it they come to life. It sounds saccharine but isn't at all. It's full of complex observations of character. The Indian, for instance, is very definitely an adult male Indian and extremely difficult. And when the toy cowboy comes to life they don't hit it off at all. It's a marvellous book.

I try not to miss a bedtime although sometimes it's inevitable. Often I'm not there to see the children just after school and by the time I do see them the how-was-your-day question is past. So concentrating on a book together is a very warm moment. I hate that phrase "quality time" but I suppose that's what it is.

Being read to also means that they hear books that are more difficult than they could manage themselves. It extends their range and their vocabulary, and imparts - you hope - that sense of narrative style that's at the heart of all good writing. If a child meets too many difficult words in a book, or too many pages of text without a picture, they turn off. But if you're reading it can be an advantage. There's a leap of comprehension.

Iona Sometimes Mum, sometimes Dad reads to me. If they're both out our nanny reads, but I always have a story. I like The Secret Garden because there are lots of secrets in it. We've only just finished that. I like the bit where she first opens the door after ten years. But there are silly bits, like when Mary meets Colin and he says, Are you a ghost? That's a bit obvious - of course she's not a ghost. But the end was good. Mr Craven's dream of being in the garden, that was good, that was realistic.

After someone's read to me I read to myself. I have a big shelf of books and I gather up a pile of them, but they always include two which I look at every night. One of them is Frederick the Great. It's a little read-aloud book - a bit babyish, it gives me nice dreams. The other is The Mirrorstone. That's quite scary because there are these silver mirror-pictures and you can see different pictures if you tilt the book - mysterious pictures like an old man's eyes. The story is about a boy who could swim three lengths of a swimming pool without coming up for air. One day he looks in the swimming bath mirror and sees a different face. Next time he sees the face he gets sucked up into this different land and he meets this old man who's a kind of wizard.

We've also had a book about the ancient things that happened in Scotland. Like Macbeth, and Alexander the Third - how the king rode home with a dark stranger and fell off the cliff and died. Some of them are quite mysterious. They're written for children and grown-ups but I think children like them more.

John Harle is a saxophonist. His latest album, 'Terror and Magnificence', recorded with Elvis Costello, comes out in September. His son Matthew, ten, goes to King Alfred's School in Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London

John Matthew made it pretty clear to us a few years ago that he didn't want us to read to him. He's happier reading on his own. The most grown- up books we got to share were things like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and My Naughty Little Sister. Now he'll sometimes eavesdrop when we're reading to Dan, his six-year-old brother, but he won't get involved. He's ploughing through things that are more like novels.

It stems from the fact that he's always read at an incredible pace. When he was eight or nine, the school told us he had a reading age of 13-and- a-half, now he's off the scale. He laps up classics like The Silver Sword (by Ian Seraillier), things that I was pushed to read because they were "good", and read rather unwillingly. But for Matthew, books seem to have been associated with enjoyment rather than work. He enjoys reading at least as much as telly, and when, as happens from time to time, he's watched too much, a book will calm him down. He'll sit in bed laughing out loud at the William books.

We don't have much of a routine. But if I've been away on tour I'll make a special effort to read to Dan and talk to Matthew every night when I get back, often about the book he's reading at the moment. He and I both have a fairly active interest in history. We've been through the Crusades together, and the Tudors. It often ends up with both of us thumbing through Hutchinson's Encyclopedia which, I find, explains things amazingly well.

Matthew I read most nights in bed. Only sometimes I'm too tired and I fall asleep reading. I was reading my new book - A Rat's Tale - the other night. I don't know who the author is but it's really good and I read and I read until about 11. Then I fell asleep with the light shining in my face and dad said I was snoring.

I have a lot of favourite books. I like the Redwell series by Brian Jacques which are kind of like history fantasies. It's about this abbey and there are these mice and rats and moles and they have swords and they go out on adventures. It's a cross between medieval and sci-fi. There are quite a few of them in the series and they're quite thick - about 400 pages in each book.

Another of my favourite books is The Magician's Quartet - it's a set by William Corlett. In the first one these three kids go to their aunt's house and find these steps up the chimney and find this ghost of a magician who helps them, and he's got an apprentice. They have to stop his apprentice from taking over and killing him and learning all the magic secrets. I really like that.

I'm not really bothered if my parents read to me or not. But I do like it sometimes at school when our teacher reads to us. At the moment he's reading Superfudge by Judy Blume which is very funny. Our teacher does all funny voices, which is really good.

Michael Berkeley is, like his father, Lennox Berkeley, a composer. His daughter Jessica, nine, goes to Hallfield Junior School, in west London

Michael I believe the whole thing of storytelling, of being read to, is very important. The child's mind doesn't have to take in the image of the words, leaving the imagination free. If you're reading from the page, especially if there are illustrations, it's very closely defined. But listening with eyes shut - as Jessica usually does - you imagine a much more exotic world.

At the moment Jessica's favourite is What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge, but she's enjoyed lots of modern classics. Her half-uncle is Michael Bond, who created Paddington Bear, so we've done all those. I tend to favour books by innovative, contemporary writers like Peter Carey and Ian McEwan. Their children's books tend to be more demanding. Otherwise you can get the literary equivalent of second-rate Viennese waltzes.

At Jessica's age, both the ear and the eye are very innocent. Children can actually take in contemporary music more easily than adults, whose ears are conditioned to expect certain things. And the same is true in the literary world. Children have fantastic imaginations and they're able to take on board much more provocative ideas than we give them credit for.

We've had great success with some old-fashioned books from the Forties, mostly out of print and non-PC and class-ridden, but they're full of then-contemporary realities such as poverty and cruelty and drunken fathers. It's said that children who are brought up on farms are much less sentimental about animals. I think reading about difficulty in stories can have a similar effect on a child. It's an imaginative preparation, if you like.

Jessica In our family reading isn't just at night-time, it can be in bed in the morning as well. In the holidays we read as much as we possibly can. I get in my parents' bed or they get in mine. Mine's small so it's a squash.

I like a lot of old-fashioned books, like the Katy books. I get really excited when Mummy gets to the end of a chapter and says, you have to go to bed now, because I want to know what happens next. Sometimes I say "pleeeeeese", and promise to get up early, to get her to carry on. And Daddy too. Sometimes they give in.

I like Ameliaranne books, which are really old. The ones I've got used to be Mummy's when she was a girl so they're falling apart. My favourite is Ameliaranne the Bridesmaid. I read those books to myself. There are some words I find difficult but otherwise they're fine.

I also love poems. My daddy found a book which he'd had as a boy and he's read me quite a few of them. It's called Poetry of the World and it has chapters called things like Spring Poems, Love Poems, Hunting Poems. Sometimes he reads me What Katy Did, when Mummy's too tired, but he doesn't do such good voices.

How to enter Our competition is for adults to write a short story for six- to nine-year-olds. It has a pounds 2,000 prize for the winner and pounds 500 each for two runners-up. You are invited to submit stories of 1,500 to 2,500 words which must arrive before 13 April at: Story of the Year Competition, PO Box 10715, London WC1A 1NA. You may enter once only, and the entry must be made by the writer, not on his or her behalf. Entries must be typewritten, double-spaced and on one side of the paper only. Stories cannot be returned, so please keep a photocopy. Stories submitted must be unpublished, but the competition is open to published writers. We will not accept stories with illustrations. The first page of the entry must consist only of your name, address and telephone number. The story should start on a separate sheet, with no name on any of the pages, so that it can be judged anonymously. The winning story will be published in The Independent in June. The top three stories and up to ten other entries will be published in the autumn by Scholastic Children's Books in a Story of the Year 4 anthology (a list of stories chosen will be published in The Independent at the same time). Any story chosen for publication in the anthology that does not win one of the top three cash prizes will receive a fee of pounds 200.

Rules This competition is not open to employees of, or relatives of employees of, Scholastic Ltd or Newspaper Publishing plc or anyone connected with the competition. Proof of posting cannot be accepted as proof of delivery. No responsibility can be accepted for entries which are delayed, damaged, mislaid or wrongly delivered. The judges' decision will be final and no correspondence can be entered into. Entry grants to Scholastic Ltd the exclusive right to publish an entrant's story in all formats throughout the world for the full legal term of copyright. A copy of the form of contract may be obtained on application to Scholastic Ltd. By submitting a story an entrant agrees to be bound by the terms of this agreement, and to sign it if called upon to do so. Any entry not submitted in the form specified will be deemed invalid. If your story is not published in the anthology or the newspaper by the end of 1996, these rights revert to you. Entry into the competition implies acceptance of these rules.