Kali­fa Clyne

Pri­ma­ry school pupils shined yes­ter­day, dur­ing the fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry School Sto­ry­telling com­pe­ti­tion. The bi-an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion, host­ed by the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems (Nalis) was held at the au­dio/vi­su­al room of the li­brary in Port-of-Spain. A fi­nal­ist group of nine pupils had emerged in two age cat­e­gories from a to­tal of 140 par­tic­i­pants. In her ad­dress, the li­brary's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, An­nette Wal­lace, stressed the im­por­tance of read­ing to stu­dents, par­ents and sup­port­ers. "Peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful usu­al­ly share one thing in com­mon and that is the love of read­ing," she said. Wal­lace gave ex­am­ples of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Unit­ed States pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, as two suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als who had ad­mit­ted to be­ing avid read­ers.

She chal­lenged pupils and par­ents to share their pas­sion for read­ing with oth­ers. Wal­lace said it had be­come more de­mand­ing to en­gage young peo­ple in de­vel­op­ing a read­ing habit when com­pet­ing with new tech­nol­o­gy and so­cial me­dia. How­ev­er, she stressed Nalis' com­mit­ment to pro­mote read­ing habits. The com­pe­ti­tion was di­vid­ed in­to two age cat­e­gories of six to nine years old and ten to 13 years old.

The win­ner of the younger cat­e­go­ry was sev­en-year-old Vish­ni Ma­haraj of San-Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry school, who dra­mat­i­cal­ly told the sto­ry No Din­ner. Ma­haraj's an­tics and voice on stage caught the au­di­ence by sur­prise. Al­so in that cat­e­go­ry was sec­ond place win­ner Stephanie McKen­zie, third place win­ner Omega Fran­cis and Ami­rah Sali­va­do, who placed fourth.

In the 10-13 age group, ten-year-old Chi­ane Primus, of Low­er Mor­vant Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, tri­umphed over her com­peti­tors with her en­ter­tain­ing and comedic tale Wolf Wolf. The oth­er com­peti­tors in that cat­e­go­ry were sec­ond place win­ner Aaliyah De Vlught, third place Nekeal Lewis, and Daniel­la Fos­ter and Arindra Per­sad-Ma­haraj. The com­peti­tors vied for prizes such as MP4 play­ers, book vouch­ers, books, games and tro­phies.