Oxford University Press’ analysis of 46,500 stories written by children for BBC 500 Words 2025 revealed LEGO bricks to be the most-referenced toy — that’s alongside libraries and books seeing a big bump up, too.
BBC 500 Words is a writing competition for children aged 5 – 11 that asks participants to submit stories of no more than 500 words, welcoming children of all abilities and backgrounds. Spelling and grammar aren’t considered, with creativity taking centre stage. Oxford University Press then analysed the stories to find out what children are thinking about, and LEGO bricks were towards the top of the list. Not that Blocks is surprised.
LEGO has been a top-mentioned toy for some time now; one of the real surprises of the 2025 competition was the sharp increase in references to libraries and books. Since 2015, mentions of books are up 25% and mentions of libraries are up over 100% (librarians saw an 80% increase). Those who get snobby about good old fashioned paper books being better than e-readers are sure to be doubly happy — references to Kindle have dropped more than 70% in the same timeframe. This Blocks writer won’t confirm nor deny his own opinion but will plug the print and digital editions of Blocks magazine to avoid any backlash. There are perks to both.
The same Blocks writer will also say, on behalf of the whole team at Blocks, that we are proud (and being a bit biased, not surprised) to see mentions of LEGO bricks continue to pop up, as well as the resurgence in stories about books and libraries — even ‘novel’ is up 15% in just one year.
That same Blocks writer (who will now stop referring to himself in the third person for all our sanities) would also like to say I am personally very happy with the results of OUP’s analysis of the stories and proud of the children who wrote them.
I’ve been writing my own stories since I could hold a pencil (well, before really, but that’s a story for my future memoir) and have been reading Blocks since Issue 3 (we’re on 137 now — don’t make me think about how many years that is). My stories were never about LEGO bricks, but as I grew up, I kept writing, kept building and kept reading Blocks. And now I’m writing for Blocks.
Which, dare I say, is a great example of how important it is to encourage children to read and get creative, to follow and grow their passions, and to one day share that passion with the world. That’s what I ended up doing. It’s quite fun.
It’s what the whole Blocks team is doing. Some have even written books about it: Blocks Editor Graham E. Hancock is the author of LEGO Star Wars: The Force of Creativity and Blocks Build Expert and Historian Daniel Konstanski wrote The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks (both are a bit longer than 500 words). And the rest of the Blocks team is just as passionate and having just as much fun, writing up features, reviews and more every month for Blocks magazine. Check out our ‘meet the team’ page to, well, meet them. They’re pretty cool people.
So while a seven-year-old’s story called “The Library that Ate my Homework” might sound like nothing more than goofy nonsense, it’s worth a second thought and a moment to realise just how important stories like that can be. Who knows, they might end up writing for Blocks one day.
Winning stories will be announced this coming week, and the 50 finalists will be published on the BBC Bitesize for Teachers website.
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