Children’s Library Card Competition

Bradford Libraries was 150 years old (1872 to 2022) on the 15^th June 2022. To help us celebrate we’d asked Bradford children to enter our library competition to design a new children’s library card. The children could draw designs that reflected what libraries meant to them – books; reading; going to the library as a child; family visits; seeing authors; story times; using the PC’s; class visits; summer reading challenge; special moments …

We asked that the picture was A5 and landscape to reflect the shape of a library card. It had to be colourful using felt tips; paints or pencils and have limited use of text.

The competition was open to Bradford children from 4 to 11 years old (Reception to Y6).

We were delighted to receive an astounding 454 entries from children across the Bradford district representing 47 different Bradford primary schools; as well as from children who live in Bradford and attend Leeds schools or are home-educated. The standard of entry was exceptional with a wealth of creativity and imagination reflecting the importance of libraries and reading to many children. The judging of so many entries was a huge responsibility. We were grateful to have Richard Briscoe from the Council Design Team who agreed to do the first phase of judging – looking at how the picture would meet the criteria to be produced as a library card. This was a long and difficult process as so many of the pictures had potential. Eventually, we short listed down to 32. For the second phase we were fortunate to welcome twice-nominated Kate Greenaway Medal and award winning children’s illustrator Martin Impey, who was visiting Bradford Libraries as part of our Reading Pictures Seeing Stories Festival. He was absolutely chuffed to be asked to judge the competition and spent a whole afternoon looking at the pictures in detail. After much deliberation he decided on 5 highly-commended pictures and one overall winner.

The children who were highly- commended were:

Stevie Shaw Age 6

Isabelle Exley Age 10

Ben Grech Age 10

Mayundo Jumatano Age 11

Adam Zoubir Age 8

The winner was:

Craig Sumner Age 11

All six children were invited to the 150^th Anniversary Celebration event on Thurs 16^th June at City Library. Each were presented with a certificate by the Lord Mayor of Bradford Cllr. Martin Love, and in addition a bag of books which included signed copies by Martin Impey of his award-winning book “Where the Poppies Now Grow” and a very special illustration drawn and signed by Martin Impey inside the winner’s copy of the book. In addition, Martin donated and signed a limited edition copy of “Where Once We Stood” which the winner also received.

The new children’s library card will go into circulation very soon and pictures of the winning design and all the highly commended pictures will be available to view on our webpages.

Unfortunately, we are unable to add all 454 pictures to our web pages but we have kept them all and will have them archived as part of our 150^th anniversary and stored with our Local History department.

However, we are having a touring summer exhibition of the six pictures selected by Martin Impey. These have been made enlarged into A2 boards and will be available to view at Wyke Library from Monday 18^th July. They will then move onto to other libraries in the Bradford district. Please look out for announcements on our social media as well as checking here.

Thank you to all the children who participated; we loved seeing your pictures and finding out how much libraries and reading means to you.

christinea.donnelly@bradford.gov.uk Development Officer for Children and Young People

The Winning Library Card Design