A fantastical tale about a talking turtle found tangled in a net during a beach clean has been crowned as best local entry in a prestigious international youth writing competition.
Year 7 student Olivia Lambotte wrote the tale during her last term at primary school.
She was awarded best local entry in the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay competition for her eco-friendly story – which was judged out of a record-breaking number of entries in last year’s competition.
Just over 100 island students achieved awards across two categories, smashing the previous record of 91 awards in 2021.
St Michael’s Preparatory School pupils won 58 of those awards – the highest number ever gained by a single island school.
The annual competition is the oldest and largest youth writing contest in the world, which aims to elevate young voices and develop skills through creative writing.
The 2024 contest had over 34,000 entries worldwide.
Using the theme ‘Our Common Wealth’, participants were asked to consider how community and culture could be used to better a world with a growing number of global issues.
Olivia was awarded the RCS Jersey Award Cup by Dr Lee Durrell at a ceremony last week.
Her magical story to explores plastic pollution in the ocean, and imagines what sea-life would say about the issue if they could talk to humans.
READ…
You can read Olivia’s award-winning story in full here:
As I arrived at the beautiful, sandy beach, hoping the weather would stay this nice, I spotted a stand, in the distance, with a group of people holding signs and posters saying: ‘Beach cleanup! Take part now!’ I began to think about the poor animals that were suffering from plastic in the ocean, so I decided to put my name down to take part in the beach clean-up.
Their group leader welcomed me, and eagerly said, “Hi! I’m Linda, your group leader, and I’m so excited you can join in our beach clean-up! It’s truly so sad that animals are stuck in plastic, that people have just thrown in the sea!”
“I know! That’s why I decided to join you,” I agreed. “It is so sad that these animals’ lives are risked just because of us humans!”
“Great! It starts in ten minutes, see you then!” I waved to her and left to grab some supplies that I would need.
Ten minutes later I returned to the stand, where a group of other people were standing. The same woman as before instructed us to meet back here in two hours, and to pick up as much rubbish as possible. Then we were sent off.
I was shocked to find how many pieces of rubbish were carelessly left around our beach! I picked up as many pieces as I could with my litter picker, until I saw a sight that left me speechless.
It was a turtle stuck in a net! I rushed over to it, feeling terribly bad, I quickly took it off, and put the net in my bag.
“Thank you so much!” it said.
I paused.
“Wait, did you just…. talk?” I said, still trying to process what was going on.
“Indeed, I did, and boy am I glad I did! I was stuck in that thing for hours! Your kindness and your big heart deserves the gift of talking to me!”
Still in awe, I replied, “Uh…wow! Thank you so much! I cannot believe this is possible, I have so many questions to ask you!”
“So do I… humans aren’t usually this nice to us. My parents are stuck in Plastic Island, as you humans call it. And I simply wonder, why? Why do you have to do this to us?”
I was left speechless. I was beginning to realise how serious this really was! Plastic island was three times the size of France! That is massive, all because of us humans carelessly throwing our rubbish into the sea, instead of a recycling bin.
“Actually, I am at the beach to stop just that! Me, and some other people are helping clean our beaches so that animals don’t have to go through what you went through!” I replied. I could tell that he was not expecting that response.
“Wow, I didn’t know. I thought all humans wanted was to destroy the ocean and destroy all life in the sea…” he said, feeling a bit stupid.
“What? Of course we don’t want that! We are always trying to stop the plastic island from growing! One day, it will completely disappear!” I replied.
“Wow, that will be amazing! I will finally be able to see my family again!” he replied eagerly.
“It has been so nice to meet you, but I’m afraid I must leave. I have to meet up with my group shortly!” I replied, feeling sad that I must say goodbye to my new turtle friend.
“Farewell! It was lovely to meet you! I hope we can meet again soon!”
I waved goodbye and walked off to our meeting point.
Linda saw that we had all arrived, accompanied by a huge bag of collected rubbish, and said “Ah! Here you are! It looks like you have had a successful clean-up! Has anybody had any big discoveries?” she laughed.
Not wanting to reveal what happened to me, I said, “Well, I guess you could say that.”
“Lovely! Well done, everyone. See you soon!” she replied.
“Bye!” we all said in unison.
As I arrived home, I decided to make a blog about plastic island and garbage patches, sharing facts, stories and what we could do to stop them from growing. I told them about all my discoveries, but my story with that turtle will be a secret just between you and
me.