Child writers focus on feminism and plastic

FEMINISM and the war on plastic increasingly dominate children’s stories, a BBC survey has found.

More than 100,000 stories submitted to a Radio 2 competition showed a significant rise in feminist themes and worries about conservation.

The inclusion of historic women in storylines rose by a third in both boys’ and girls’ stories, with Emily Davison, the suffragette and Ada Lovelace, the mathematician, appearing in tales.

Inclusion of Emmeline Pankhurst rose by 833 per cent and aviator Amelia Earhart by 350 per cent.

A story by a nine-year-old girl was about Larry the Suffra-cat “who started by chaining himself to a statue outside Parliament and yowling so loudly that the MPS couldn’t get on with their work”, prompting the Prime Minister to give cats the vote. The use of the word “plastic” doubled over the previous year as children wrote about sealife being hurt by packaging and pollution.

Researchers said the final episode of the Blue Planet series last December, which drew attention to the impact of plastic on sea creatures, had a “huge impact” on children.

The competition for children aged five to 13, run by The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, received 134,790 short stories of 500 words or fewer.