Bocas Lit Fest donates 325 books to schools

Education Ministry curriculum director Anna Singh, from left,  Bocas Lit Fest founder and festival director Marina Salandy-Brown and Roxane De Freitas, chairperson, Scotiabank Foundation, review some of the 325 young adult books donated for secondary school students at the Writers Centre, Alcazar Street, St Clair on Friday. PHOTO BY SUREASH CHOLAI -
Education Ministry curriculum director Anna Singh, from left, Bocas Lit Fest founder and festival director Marina Salandy-Brown and Roxane De Freitas, chairperson, Scotiabank Foundation, review some of the 325 young adult books donated for secondary school students at the Writers Centre, Alcazar Street, St Clair on Friday. PHOTO BY SUREASH CHOLAI -

The Bocas Lit Fest, sponsored by the Scotiabank Foundation, has donated 325 Caribbean young adult books to nine government secondary schools around the country.

The handing over ceremony took place on Friday at the Writer’s Centre on Alcazar Street, St Clair.

Each school will get a set of 12 copies of Gone to Drift by Diana McCaulay, The Unlocked Girl by Jeanelle Frontin and The Protector’s Pledge by Danielle McClean.

The schools are Belmont Secondary, St James Secondary, San Juan North Secondary, Arima Central, Fyzabad Secondary, Waterloo Secondary, Malabar Government Secondary and Tableland Secondary.

Bocas also got permission from the authors to distribute the e-book version to the students, since they are all at home and not able to access their school libraries.

The book donations are a continuous, annual project to get students to read more locally written young adult fiction.

Anna Lucie-Smith, Bocas festival and publishing manager, said the books are all Bocas award-winning books.

This collection of contemporary Caribbean young adult fiction, she said, represented "the best literature written for our teens. The students read books with characters who look like and talk like them, from our Caribbean authors.

"It is engaging, and it’s important for them to read works that come from home.”

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