Wanted: the best children's writers: If your father is a writer, do you read more or less? Jenny Gilbert talks to Blake Morrison and nine-year-old Aphra

THE HUNT is on for the best new short stories of 1994, stories that no 6- to 9-year-old will want to put down. The reward? A pounds 2,000 prize and publication in the Independent for the winning entry. Two joint runners-up will receive pounds 500 each, and the top 10 entries will be printed in a specially produced anthology by Scholastic Children's Books, making these the top awards in this country for unpublished work for children. The invitation is open to professional writers, but we want especially to encourage new talent.

Many children know perfectly well how to read; the trouble is, they don't want to. They simply don't believe that they are missing out on something more satisfying and stimulating than television, Take That, virtual reality or computer games.

This is what the Story of the Year competition is about: finding writers who can hook this vital age group on the reading habit for life, with plots that twist and turn, characters who convince, and endings that surprise or even shock.

It is not easy. It is arguably harder to write for children than for adults. The writer must not condescend but at the same time show must good judgement of what makes sense to a child. He or she must remember what it was to read at this age - but not be old-fashioned.

The judges include the award-winning writers Anne Fine and Terry Jones, as well as schoolchildren from around the country. They will select a shortlist of 20 funny and sad, magical and exciting stories, to read again and again. Write us such a story.

BLAKE MORRISON, poet and prizewinning author of 'When Did You Last See Your Father?', is a feature writer for the 'Independent on Sunday'. He has also published one book for young children, 'The Yellow House'. He lives in Blackheath, South- east London, with his wife Cathy, a social worker, and their sons Seth, 12, Gabriel, four, and daughter Aphra, 9. Aphra goes to Blackheath High Junior School.

Aphra: The book I'm reading at the moment is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I actually read it a long time ago, but I have to read it again for school because we're doing a show of it in drama next year. It's quite good second time round. Although you know everything that's going to happen, you understand a lot more. I like the Narnia books . . . because of the mystery and fantasy I think. And even though they're quite old books they're not at all old-fashioned.

Nowadays I always read on my own, often before I go to sleep, but also if I wake up in the night. I suppose I stopped having a bedtime story when I was about seven. Often someone would be reading a book to me and I'd finish it by myself because I couldn't wait for the end. That happened with this book called A Zany Collection of Humorous Tales. They were really funny, so I read them all. And they were short, which I used to like. Now I like reading long books.

I used to read horse books and I've got quite a few by Gillian Baxter. I used to do riding but I'm not very good with animals and I fell off at Christmas and got a bit afraid of doing it. But I've still got the books, mostly fact books about horses.

Of my older books I liked What Katy Did, Charlotte's Web and The Borrowers. With that one I liked the idea of them being so small and using things from our world, like they slept in matchbox beds and travelled in a teapot. It was quite scary as well. And I enjoyed Stig of the Dump. I started Tom's Midnight Garden, but I went off it. I've never actually read any book that was awful. I just read a bit, and if I'm not interested I stop.

Last year I read The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. I really enjoyed that, though it goes a bit weird at the end. I've also got The Iron Woman. It's a new one and my dad says it's good, but I haven't read it yet.

I'm not sure whether it's made any difference that my dad's a writer. I did read his book The Yellow House, and one or two of his poems. My mum usually reads them to me when he's out. When they used to read me a story they took it in turns. They always chose different kinds of things to read. My mum always chose this certain book called The Tale of Mucky Mabel. It's all in poetry and it's about this girl who has no manners at the table. My mum used to really enjoy that and I did, too.

Blake Morrison: There has never been a structure to the bedtime story in our house, but because of the age differences they've tended all to be read to individually. I'd never sit in Seth's bed and read to him now, though I slightly regret that. Aphra will be reading Judy Blume by herself but still occasionally wants one of us to read a chapter. It doesn't seem a chore, but by the time you get to the third child your heart does sink a bit at seeing a book for the umpteenth time.

Aphra's never gone in for terribly girly reading. There was a brief phase when she started riding ponies when I thought we might get an obsession with pony literature, but she read a couple then that seemed to pass. No dancing either. So the twee-er things have never, thank God, impinged. Though of course if they were consuming books enthusiastically and wanted to read all 27 . . . well, that's the best moment for a parent, isn't it?

I try not to worry about how much Seth and Aphra read, but it's difficult not to feel concerned. My parents were middle-class professionals but there just weren't very many books. So when I got reading - not until my teens really - I did so without having been pushed. So I thought this was this wonderful thing I'd discovered all by myself. My children are growing up in a completely different kind of house, full of books. I'm conscious that if I push reading too hard it'll be like the father who wants his kid to go into banking. I don't want them to grow up to be writers, but I just feel the enlargement of my life through reading books and it's hard not to wish it on to them. Seth's just gone on holiday to France for a week and I couldn't resist saying: 'Have you packed a book, Seth? Have you packed something to read?', and I hated the sound of my voice when I said that. It'll be what sends him off into accountancy.

As regards poetry, we've had everything from The Faber Book of Children's Verse to Wendy Cope's Finger Rhymes, to larky contemporary stuff. Our children are probably more resistant to poetry because they're conscious of my having written it. Last night, even Gabriel, who's only four, said when I picked up a book and started reading it in this sing-song voice: 'No, no, not poems] Want a story]'. He picked up the fact that it was poetry straight away. There is a problem with poetry in that it's not telling a story and that's what they want. The other form of bookishness in the house is books on tape. On any car journey we fight over whether it's to be adult music tapes or children's story tapes. There are certain tapes all three will gladly listen to. Roald Dahl reading Fanstastic Mr Fox is one, and C S Lewis is another. I don't feel any particular loyalty to the printed page. This is just a way of reaching people aurally. It's the pull of the story again.

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