As part of the Belize National Library Service's seventy-fifth anniversary celebrated last year, part of the activities was a story writing competition where today the winners were awarded in a two part ceremony held at the Leo Bradley Library.
Joy Ysaguirre - Chief Librarian, BNLS
"We are hoping that emerging from that, the winners stories will be ready across the country in another activity we call Mama will you read? Papa will you read?Mr. Reporter will you read? And hopefully as we move from location to location we hope to identify persons in the society that are exemplary readers and who are not reluctant to share what they have learnt from reading and what they can give to it. so that is what the second part of the project will be like."
Winners of the competition gave us their thoughts on the importance of reading and the central theme of their stories.
Valentina Polanco - 3rd place winner in storytelling
"It is a tribute to the keel-billed toucan, and how she is honored as the National bird of Belize. Reading is a whole world, when you get into reading you imagine so many things and it brings all things to life so I would encourage all parents, teachers to read to their children, everybody to just read."
Kenisha Hoare - 1st place winner in storytelling
"The story was about realizing that as misunderstood as you may feel at times you may feel like people around you; you cannot relate to them, they are not there for you. In the end its your family and your friends and they will always be there for you and you can always come back home. I saw it as an opportunity to challenge myself in this children's story category and also I thought it was a beautiful initiative to promote children literacy in Belize and I wanted to be a part of that."
Ysaguirre says the relevance of technology shouldn't deter people from the tradition of picking up a book and reading to their children.
Joy Ysaguirre - Chief Librarian, BNLS
"I have to respond to that saying that even with technology we must read and so technology is not going to eliminate reading or the need for reading. What has to happen I believe is that from a very early age is to encourage our kids to read and that's why the emphasis and our reason for targeting that particular age group is so that encourage parents to look at it from a very young age to read that story with the parents to encourage that kind of connect both with the parent and child and that's where we are mainly focusing our attention."
First place winner was Kenisha Hoare.
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