Young Writers Poem books

Dustykitten

DS3 has brought a letter home from school from YoungWriters. It says that his school has entered his poem into a competition and it has been selected to be published and I can order the said book for a special price of £9.99

Thing is everybody in his class has been selected, funny that, and you would never have guessed it from the personal letter we received:rolleyes:

I wonder what cut the school gets from these books. I don't mind fundraising if it is upfront but I'm not keen on it disguised like this.

I'd be interested if any of you have experience of the same competition - My First Acrostic.

irishesman

Yes, we had the same thing home from DD2, she was only about 4 and we had a lovely letter telling us about the wonderful poem she had written. We asked her about it and she couldn't remember writing it. Antway, they sent a proof of it, because of her age, we had to approve the publication and I checked on their website to get more info.

It turned out the the 'poem' was just a fillout the blanks exercise, and every poem from her age group was the same, with just 3 or 4 words different.

I have no idea how much the school gets, but it must be something. Never-the-less, we didn't buy one!!!!

jazzypinkpuppet

Hello,
my daughter got a winning letter about a month ago saying how brilliant her poem was and that she was lucky to have got picked out of 64,000 entries worlwide - however her whole class were lucky too :rolleyes:.
I don't think the schools get anything because we got a letter from the head teacher advising us not to buy the poem book as it was a con and that the school had been led to believe it was a genuine competition .

Pont

I got suckered in once (£14.99!). Thought my DD was brilliant to be 'selected' (as did all of the same year group parents)! Didn't buy the second and third year though - once bitten ........

SailorSam

I saw a programme last week, i think it was bbc2, kids were in a competition for reading poems, not ones that had written themselves. The youngest little lad was only 4 but they were all brilliant.

RoseFairy

yeah we got this too - situations exactly as mentioned above.

i bet its only those parents who buy the books whose child's 'special/unique' poem gets printed!

mountainofdebt

Two words of advice - Don't bother.

Surfbabe

Echo above - don't bother. I bin anything like that that comes into the school office so the parents don;t even see it. School gets very little if anything - its a commerical enterprise like Mothers Day and Fathers Day

Dustykitten

Thanks for all your replies - I had no intention of getting sucked in, just wondered how wide spread it was. Think I'll ask the school what they get out of it and highlight my feelings to them.

To me it falls in the same category as those 'charity' bags you get through your door which are actually enterprises giving the charities associated a small amount, if anything.

Dustykitten

Just reread the letter and I think what annoys me is the way they refer to it as a competition. I wonder if this is against the trading standards laws? I might drop TS an email to see what they think.