Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

Cap­ti­vat­ing, Brave, En­gag­ing…

These are just few words that come to mind on meet­ing sev­en- year-old Coryn, whose first book was pub­lished at age 4. How­ev­er, she is more than just an au­thor, she wins hearts with her voice, her huge smile and loves fash­ion. She adores bright colours and sparkles, as they tru­ly com­ple­ment her vi­va­cious per­son­al­i­ty.

Watch out world, as Coryn is here to make her mark! She dreams of turn­ing her books in­to a TV se­ries and one day, hav­ing a restau­rant. Her book se­ries is en­ti­tled, “Chron­i­cles of Coryn”, and stay­ing con­sis­tent with her brand­ing, she en­vi­sions her restau­rant to be “Coryn’s Cre­ative Cui­sine”.

Trib­ute to Car­ni­val Char­ac­ters

Recog­nis­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, Coryn launched a spe­cial book ded­i­cat­ed to this part of our his­to­ry. Coryn shared, “Car­ni­val is a cel­e­bra­tion of where we’ve come from and this helps us pre­serve our lega­cy. I think it’s im­por­tant for all chil­dren to learn as much as they can about it. I re­al­ly love my coun­try, and Car­ni­val is im­por­tant to us, so I think every child should know this his­to­ry. The Pier­rot Grenade is one of my favourite tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters. She’s the supreme jester of Car­ni­val, but she’s al­so a bril­liant schol­ar. Peo­ple un­der­es­ti­mate her and think she’s just a clown. Peo­ple un­der­es­ti­mate me too, it’s frus­trat­ing some­times, but I’ll keep show­ing them that chil­dren could do re­al­ly great things too.”

Her Mas­quer­ade De­but

On Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, she ea­ger­ly shared to her fans, that this year, 2023 she will be play­ing Car­ni­val for the first time! Her ex­u­ber­ance was pal­pa­ble as she de­scribes her cos­tume from Ros­alind Gabriel, “Na­tion­al Trea­sures” and then the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Coryn moves to her ren­di­tion of one her favourite so­ca songs, Com­ing Home by Nailah Black­man and Skin­ny Fab­u­lous. This nat­ur­al per­former even en­ter­tained at­ten­dees at the Car­ni­val vil­lage this year.

Coryn shares, one of her mem­o­rable mo­ments was meet­ing La­dy Mon­tano, hold­ing her ad­vice dear to her heart. La­dy shared on the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween Coryn and Machel at that age. “She told me I’m spe­cial and to keep do­ing what I’m do­ing and she’s proud of me. She’s the Mon­tano ma­tri­arch, that means she’s the lead­ing la­dy of that fam­i­ly. It felt re­al­ly good to have her tell me all those nice things. I al­so got a book about Machel’s his­to­ry, pret­ty in­ter­est­ing stuff.”

Start­ed at the age 4

“When I held my first pub­lished book, it was an awestruck mo­ment. I had writ­ten it in my copy book so to fi­nal­ly hold the re­al thing and see the bright colours next to my words re­al­ly felt amaz­ing! I did that! I re­al­ly did it and I was just four years old. I want­ed to do it, so I did it !” Coryn’s par­ents de­scribe her as hav­ing a ‘laser-fo­cus’ ap­proach to every book she en­vi­sions.

“I wrote my first book when I was four years old, then I wrote an­oth­er one and an­oth­er one. As my 7th birth­day was get­ting clos­er I thought it would be a good idea to have sev­en books by my 7th birth­day, so that’s how the #7by7 came about."

Coryn is on a mis­sion to en­cour­age and mo­ti­vate oth­er chil­dren to read more and even in­spir­ing them to write books of their own. “I am pas­sion­ate about books and learn­ing new things. I am pas­sion­ate about my writ­ing. I love cre­at­ing sto­ries on some of the fun things I learn. I al­so had my first in-per­son book launch last year, it felt re­al­ly good to see so many peo­ple ex­cit­ed about my books.”

Pay­ing at­ten­tion to her as­pi­ra­tions

Coryn’s par­ents, Ron Clarke and Dionne Bap­tiste-Clarke are tasked with a mighty chal­lenge, ho­n­our­ing their child’s imag­i­na­tion, and equip­ping her with the tools to bring her vi­sion to fruition. “Coryn showed us from a re­al­ly young age just who she is and what she’s about.”

Dionne chuck­les as she re­calls, “she nev­er lets me for­get that I didn’t pay at­ten­tion when she first spoke of writ­ing a book of her own. I didn’t tell her don’t do it, but I didn’t re­al­ly ac­knowl­edge, and I did noth­ing to help. Thank­ful­ly, she did it any­way. That ex­pe­ri­ence has taught us the im­por­tance of lis­ten­ing to her and giv­ing her the free­dom to just be. We al­ways joke (my hus­band and I) that we’d like to get an ounce each of her au­dac­i­ty.”

“In Coryn’s mind, there’s noth­ing she can’t do if she re­al­ly wants to and she’s al­ready proven time and time again that she’s will­ing to put in the work. She’s self-mo­ti­vat­ed and oh so dis­ci­plined. As par­ents, our in­tent is to con­tin­ue to fos­ter her de­vel­op­ment and sup­port her big dreams as much as pos­si­ble, with­in rea­son. She has of­ten caused us to re-eval­u­ate what ‘with­in rea­son’ means for many as­pects of life and we have pur­pose­ly to tried our best to avoid lim­it­ing the goals she sets for her­self!”

What’s next for Coryn?

With­out even paus­ing, Coryn en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly blurt­ed out “Well, more books of course!”

“I al­ready have sev­er­al Chron­i­cles of Coryn and I’m work­ing on Chron­i­cles of Coryn: Ad­ven­tures in Space. I have a web­site and a YouTube chan­nel but I re­al­ly want to have a show on tele­vi­sion so even more chil­dren could learn from the con­tent. I want to trav­el across the Caribbean and the world telling chil­dren how im­por­tant it is for them to read and in­spir­ing them to go af­ter their dreams like I’m go­ing af­ter mine.”

WE wish Coryn the very best on her awe-in­spir­ing jour­ney and WE com­mend her par­ents for sup­port­ing her re­mark­able ad­ven­tures. WE can’t wait to see what’s her next mile­stone, but WE know she will con­tin­ue to mo­ti­vate and en­thuse all she en­coun­ters, chil­dren and adults alike.

Web­site: https://www.chron­i­cle­sof­co­ryn.com/

Face­book: https://www.face­book.com/cory­naclarke/