Tes and The Children’s Bookshow are delighted to announce the two winners and four runners-up of the What Makes You Smile drawing competition.

The competition, launched in September, asked pupils from across the UK in key stage 1 and key stage 2 to submit artwork based on what made them smile during this strange year.

There were over 300 entries submitted, all demonstrating creativity, fun, happiness and joy.

Artist, author and illustrator Jessica Souhami, who judged the competition, said that the quality of the entries was wonderful to see and congratulated all who took part.

“Wow! What a response to the competition,” she said. “It was difficult to choose winners. Most children drew what they loved: family, pets, friends, the countryside. Some drew what they liked to do: swimming, walking, playing Minecraft, golf.

“Some wished for special things: two wonderful pictures of cars, being an astronaut, meeting dinosaurs, an amazing picture of flying through the air on the tail of a magnificent bird. One or two offered advice: have a cup of tea, appreciate what you have. There was some wonderful artwork.

“But in the end, I chose pictures where you could actually feel the smile on the artists’ faces.”

Without further ado, the winners and runners-up are as follows:

Key stage 1 category

Winner: Mason Toon, aged 7 at Moira Primary School (picture below)

Runner-up: Sidra Karim, aged 4 at Earlham Primary School (picture below)

Runner-up: Dexter Askwith, aged 6 at St Catherine’s RC Primary School (picture below)

Key stage 2 category

Winner: Aoife Kirk, aged 10 at Wallacestone Primary School

Runner-up: Maxime Serifsoy, aged 9 at L’ecole de Battersea

Runner-up: Lucy Walker, aged 9 at Woodbridge Primary School

The winner of each category will receive £150 of art materials for themselves and £200 worth of books by the illustrators taking part in this project for their school library.

The competition also brought together 10 prize-winning children’s book illustrators to share new artworks on what makes them smile.

• Satoshi Kitamura from Japan
• Ulla Saar from Estonia
• Viviane Schwarz from Germany
• Victoria Semykina from Russia
• Mikel Valverde from Spain
• François Place from France
• Gitte Spee from the Netherlands
• Jun Takabatake from Japan
• Marta Altes from Spain
• Jörg Mühle from Germany

You can see the pictures they submitted for the competition on The Children’s Bookshow website.

Dan Worth is senior editor at Tes