Michelle Loubon

Ac­tor Pene­lope Spencer told a grip­ping sto­ry about a man who took a ba­by home from be­neath a silk cot­ton tree. Sad­ly, he failed to no­tice the ba­by had no pupils. That man would learn the harsh way that "you are not to in­ter­fere with any­thing that does not be­long to you."Come­di­enne Nik­ki Cros­by paint­ed a pic­ture of an­i­mals in a for­est where every­one was afraid of Tiger's growl in an Anan­si sto­ry. She got some of the chil­dren on hand to play the char­ac­ters like spi­der Anan­si.

Chil­dren en­joyed the melange of sto­ry­telling, dra­ma, hu­mour, Japan­ese an­i­mae, mu­sic and art at a spe­cial event host­ed by Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing and the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest on Thurs­day.The lit­er­ary event, themed Imag­ine New Worlds, took place at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.Among those present were Lit Fest founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown and KFC di­rec­tor Danielle De­lon.

Dur­ing his ad­dress, Lee Sing, a fa­ther of three, said lit­er­a­cy meant in­de­pen­dence."Un­less and un­til we em­brace read­ing, we will nev­er be tru­ly free," Lee Sing said."Read­ing and writ­ing are the tools that give you ul­ti­mate in­de­pen­dence. If you want to be tru­ly free, read­ing is­the ul­ti­mate act of in­de­pen­dence. Read­ing is a joy­ful ex­er­cise."

Lee Sing ad­vised the chil­dren to in­vest "the first 27 years of their life in­to read­ing and re­search."Al­though the chil­dren were drawn from pri­ma­ry schools in­clud­ing Moul­ton Hall Methodist and Guayagua­yare RC, Lee Sing set them think­ing about ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion."Get a Phd and then you could have a full life ahead. Watch less tele­vi­sion and read more. Em­brace read­ing. Read­ing and writ­ing are im­por­tant el­e­ments of per­son­al de­vel­op­ment. Read­ing will help you to see things dif­fer­ent­ly."

He paid ku­dos to Bo­cas Fest for keep­ing alive the oral tra­di­tions. "It is im­por­tant to keep these tra­di­tions alive. We must cel­e­brate ca­lyp­so and Anan­si. It is a good de­ci­sion to cel­e­brate sto­ries." He urged the chil­dren to use their imag­i­na­tion to write books, tell sto­ries, write po­et­ry and com­pose ca­lyp­soes.

Sa­landy-Brown had a word for chil­dren ad­dict­ed to their so­cial me­dia like cell phones."You can­not send text mes­sages un­less you learn to read and write. Tell sto­ries. Use your imag­i­na­tion. Draw pic­tures," she said. Asked about Bo­cas' ben­e­fits, Mar­cia Cham­bers, a teacher at San Fer­nan­do Girls' Gov­ern­ment School, said, "It is ex­cel­lent. It is go­ing to yield tremen­dous re­sults. Our prin­ci­pal (Lor­na Ram­sey) loves to sup­port lit­er­ary ac­tiv­i­ties."

Teacher Burt Weis­man added, "Once you could get chil­dren in­ter­est­ed in read­ing at this age, they would de­vel­op an ap­pre­ci­a­tion. The stick men were good. They showed any­one can cre­ate, write and tell a sto­ry."

More in­fo

The NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest runs from April 25 to 28 at Nalis Li­brary, Port-of-Spain, and in­cludes the chil­dren's fes­ti­val. The KFC Bo­cas Chil­dren's Sto­ry­telling car­a­van is on its April week­end tour of the coun­try. Vis­it: kfc-tt.com to reg­is­ter.NGC is the ti­tle spon­sor of the lit fest, OCM and KFC are lead spon­sors.The Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, First Cit­i­zens, Courts and Flow are sup­port­ing spon­sors. The spe­cial event is sup­port­ed by var­i­ous NGOs.

For more in­for­ma­tion go to: www.bo­caslit­fest.com