By Roz Kay

Authors who write for children have such a special place in my heart. I still have a few books from my childhood in the 1960s.

As Stig Abell reveals in this tweet, the stories you loved as a child stay with you forever, even if you no longer have your original copies.

So, I was excited to be part of something that might make a real difference for an unpublished children’s author.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how to sponsor contest entries for writers who can’t afford the entry fees. I’d searched a few contest sites for options but didn’t see anything.

Then Kit de Waal (on Twitter @kitdewaal) sponsored five entries for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, and others followed her tremendous example.

I have too. I’m thrilled to be one of the sponsors providing an option for somebody who might not otherwise have a chance to get their work seen in one of the most prestigious novel contests out there: somebody who might be the next children’s author to stay in a reader’s heart for decades.

If you’re entering, sponsored or otherwise, good luck!

And if you’re a Roald Dahl fan, you might like to read my interview with him from 1981. It’s here.

The photos show my 1968 copy of The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw with a later edition I bought for her to sign when I met her at an SCBWI conference, and my 1966 copy of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien which I read in 1968 (aged eight) after hearing an episode of the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation.