RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With a copy of The Gruffa­lo in hand, Oropouche East MP and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal brought the mag­ic of sto­ry­telling to stu­dents at the Debe Pub­lic Li­brary, us­ing the tale of a clever mouse to mark In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day 2025.

Dr Mooni­lal joined Stan­dard Two stu­dents of St Do­minic’s Pe­nal Ro­man Catholic School on Wednes­day, as part of cel­e­bra­tions host­ed by the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) un­der the theme “Pro­mot­ing Lit­er­a­cy in the Dig­i­tal Era.” The chil­dren lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly as he read the sto­ry of a crafty mouse that re­lied on in­tel­li­gence to over­come chal­lenges.

At the end of the read­ing, Dr Mooni­lal en­cour­aged the chil­dren to see them­selves in the mouse’s ex­am­ple. “Al­though you are small and not as strong or pow­er­ful as an­oth­er per­son or crea­ture, you still have in­tel­li­gence. You can de­fend your­self with your knowl­edge. That is why you must read a lot and, at this time, use your de­vices so that you will be knowl­edge­able about the dig­i­tal era. Lit­er­a­cy is the bedrock of all ed­u­ca­tion,” he said.

He al­so shared how read­ing shaped his own life. “Lit­er­a­cy is a fun­da­men­tal build­ing block for pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, job op­por­tu­ni­ties, and un­der­stand­ing each oth­er in so­ci­ety. It helps to re­duce con­flict in the class­room, in the home and in the wider com­mu­ni­ty,” he said. 

He added: “In­creas­ing­ly, kids are ex­posed to IT-dri­ven de­vices, but we need to re­turn to the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of all sci­ence, which are nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy. What­ev­er you do with de­vices, pick up a book and read. Get in­to the habit of read­ing books, whether ac­tion, ad­ven­ture, fash­ion, mu­sic or en­ter­tain­ment. Read­ing is an im­por­tant dis­ci­pline be­cause it as­sists with stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, at­ti­tude, per­son­al­i­ty, char­ac­ter and val­ues.”

Af­ter the ses­sion, the chil­dren ex­plored the li­brary’s com­put­er sec­tion and ac­cessed “NALIS Over­drive,” the li­brary’s cat­a­logue of dig­i­tal books. The col­lec­tion fea­tures e-books and au­dio­books across gen­res, in­clud­ing ti­tles such as Dog­man by Dav Pilkey, The Babysit­ters Club by Ann Mar­tin, and Wings of Fire by Tui Suther­land.

The event end­ed with stu­dent Se­le­na Eve­lyn pre­sent­ing Dr Mooni­lal with his own li­brary card. He pledged con­tin­ued sup­port for the Debe Pub­lic Li­brary, in­clud­ing book do­na­tions and as­sis­tance to strength­en re­sources for his con­stituen­cy.