Adam Kay, Young V&A and Puffin Books celebrate challenge winner!
Joining forces with author Adam Kay, illustrator Henry Paker, Young V&A, and Puffin Books, we presented a challenge that asked children of all ages to imagine their own amazing inventions.
Using Adam's sensational new book Kay's Incredible Inventions as a springboard for wacky and innovative ideas, young people got to work thinking up all sorts of unique items and contraptions.
In the book, you’ll discover all about the queen who pooed on the first ever toilet, how velcro was invented by a dog and why the Ancient Greeks wiped their bums on dinner plates, as well as 48,762,851,208 other facts (approximately).
With inventions aplenty pouring in, we picked from a very interesting selection. We received everything from a sneeze sweater, to auto plant water-ers, even a rocket sofa!
Ultimately, the winner was unveiled as Emily, age 10 from Braintree's ingenious idea, an automatic pooper scooper.
This is how it works (in Emily's own words): you press a button on the little watch to make it start (so you don't have to touch the Pooper Scooper because it's probably covered in poo) and the sensor camera thingummy finds where the poop is and the rolly thing the diggers have makes the Pooper Scooper move forward to the poo and then the poo gets scooped into a poo bag.
Emily was particularly driven by compassion for Adam having to pick up his dog Pippin's poo and has saved dog owners everywhere the trouble of dealing with all that icky mess. They can simply send in the Pooper Scooper instead!
She said: ‘I was super excited and proud to find out that I had won this competition. I am such a big fan of Adam Kay’s books and have read them all numerous times, so when I saw this competition I was head over heels to take part. I am a huge dog lover (like Adam Kay) and I own a Dalmatian called Winston, so I felt this was a great idea for an invention!’
To celebrate and reveal the idea, the brains, the makers, and the organisers of the project united at the Young V&A in London.
Winner Emily, Adam Kay, Henry Paker, Senior Producer at Young V&A Haidee Drew and Pippin (who is incidentally also the star of Kay’s Incredible Inventions) were all present to witness the unveiling.
Also in attendance was the designer of the real-life prototype William Hardie, Senior Designer at the Florian Dussopt Design Studio, who built Pooper Scooper on our behalf.
Adam Kay said: ‘Unfortunately I wasn’t eligible to enter the Young V&A’s Incredible Young Inventor competition because I fell just outside of the maximum age (by 24 years) but I was thrilled to be asked to be one of the judges. There were hundreds of absolutely brilliant entries and – let’s be honest – a few that were completely terrible. I was a big fan of the automatic sock sorter and the parental anger scanner but there could only be one winner. Emily’s invention is ingenious, practical and – as someone who has spent an ungodly proportion of his life picking up after his dog – something I’d be front of the queue to buy!’
Dominic Wilcox, Chief Inventor at Little Inventors, shared Adam's enthusiasm: ‘It was wonderful to receive so many ingenious, useful and delightfully bonkers invention ideas for this challenge. Yet more proof that children's imaginations and ideas are the best and should be taken seriously. That’s what we do here at Little Inventors; and bringing Emily’s fantastic idea to life as a working prototype hopefully gives all young people out there the confidence to follow their imaginations to come up with new ways to make the world an even better place.’
The invention now also features in Adam Kay’s brand-new paperback version of Kay’s Incredible Inventions - also available at the Young V&A shop!