.png)
In May 2025, Atom Learning launched the fourth annual Young Author Award to celebrate the UK’s newest young writers.
Children aged 7–11 were challenged to write a creative response to the prompt “I turned the page, and the room disappeared. Now I'm inside the story...”
For the last couple of weeks, a team of education specialists at Atom Learning have been carefully reading and judging over 870+ entries. Our judges were looking for entries that demonstrated:
- Quality of writing and story structure
- Creativity, clever ideas and imagination
- Use of language
- The writer’s ability to engage the reader
Entries were judged on the first 500 words only. While submissions may exceed this length, judges were instructed to consider only the first 500 words.
Winner of the Young Author Award 2025: Aadhya
We are delighted to announce that Aadhya (aged 10) has won the Atom Learning Young Author Award 2025 with her vivid tale of friendship, courage and kindness, told through the eyes of a child swept into a magical seven-day survival challenge deep in an enchanted forest.
The judging team said that this year's winning entry was imaginative, cinematic, and totally transportive. “I could see every scene play out like a movie,” said one judge, “from the glowing leaves to the tiny lions and giant ants!” The world-building really stood out to the judges, especially the playful logic behind fruit like blue strawberries and watermelons shaped like stars.
Aadhya’s entry
I couldn't get to sleep last night, so I went into my Dad’s study to find a book. It always smells like old paper in there. I was looking through the shelves when I found an old, dusty book I’d never seen before. I blew all the dust off the dark green cover and saw shiny silver words: Survival in the Forest.
I thought it looked cool, so I sat down and opened it. But it was empty! Every single page was blank. I kept flicking through, confused, when suddenly the pages started turning all by themselves, super fast. A weird green light started glowing from the cover. The room started spinning like a rollercoaster, and I felt like I was floating up to the ceiling. Then, everything went completely white!
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the ground in a forest. Two girls were looking down at me. “Are you okay?” one of them asked. They said their names were Maya and Lucy. I jumped up. “Where are we?” I asked. I was totally freaking out.
This forest was not normal. The trees had branches that looked like long arms, and the leaves glowed. There were birds that were every colour you could imagine. Then the ground started to shake: a creature that looked like a giraffe trotted past, but it was built like a sturdy draft horse! Moments later, a pair of lions, no bigger than house cats, stalked a beetle through the plants. Their tiny roars were like kittens' mews. As the earth shook further, a rhino as big as a dinosaur stomped past us. I was so scared I couldn't even move.
Maya told me not to worry. She said she had been here before. The book had pulled us into a seven-day survival challenge. If we made it, we could go home. But she said it wouldn't be easy, because new animals appeared every night. We had to find food and build a shelter.
Luckily, we found a box under a rock with tools like an axe and a rope. We spent all afternoon building a shelter out of branches and leaves. It was hard work! By the time we finished, it was getting dark. We decided it was safer to stay inside, even though we were really hungry.
That night was the scariest part. We heard all these weird noises outside. I peeked through a crack in our wall and saw giant spiders and ants the size of a car walking right past our shelter! I wanted to scream but I covered my mouth. We stayed as still as statues until they were gone.
The next day, we were starving. We found some awesome fruit, like orange grapes, blue strawberries, and watermelons shaped like stars. They were the most delicious things I've ever eaten. Maya knew which ones were safe. After we ate, we found a beautiful lake where the water actually glowed.
This excerpt has been shortened to reflect the judging criteria (first 500 words).
