Colouring books keep kids connected to Trinidad and Tobago culture

LIVING in California and separated from her Trinidadian family, Aniesa Gismondi has a strong desire to keep her 15-month-old daughter connected to her culture.

With that in mind, she created her second narrated colouring book called Let’s Colour Carnival, which introduces children to Trinidad and Tobago Carnival by highlighting traditional mas characters and helping them appreciate the country’s history, creativity and resilience.

“The costumes I concentrated on in the book tell stories of our past, our people and our identity. I wanted to ensure the traditional mas characters remain a part of our cultural storytelling for future generations.

“I wanted this book to be interactive and fun for children to learn. That’s why I chose a narrated colouring book, making it fun and immersive for them”

The Marabella native uses the pen name Ila Maharaj as Ila, her daughter, is the inspiration for the book and Maharaj is the maiden name of her mother who has supported her through the years.

Gismondi, 39, said Ila was growing up away from Trinidad and their family members, most of whom lived in New York, so she was concerned Ila would not have an appreciation for the culture or know much about Trinidad and Tobago.

“My goal was to create books that help Caribbean children, both in Trinidad and Tobago and in the diaspora, stay connected to their roots. Trinidad culture is so vibrant and unique that I wanted to ensure they would appreciate and celebrate it the way I do.”

Gismondi explained that she loved reading and read to her daughter at every opportunity. So for her baby shower, she requested books as gifts and got many introducing children to Christmas, St Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day and other holidays.

She and her mother are Hindus, and her father is Muslim. So last year, when she was looking for a book on Divali for Ila, she realised she had none. She searched Amazon but only found books on Divali in India.

She told Newsday she graduated with a bachelor’s in agricultural business from UWI in 2011, and taught principles of business and social studies at Naparima College for two years. Literature, social studies and history were her favourite subjects, and she was always good at creative writing.

Also, when she lived in New York, she was a police administrative aid with the NY Police Department. There, she gathered the information people called in and basically created short stories for the police reports, so writing was always a big part of her life.

As a result, she believed she could come up with the right words and decided to write a children’s book on Divali herself.

She then looked for an illustrator in the US, but they did not feel like the right fit for her. She decided to search for someone from Trinidad and Tobago who understood the culture, and was put on to Shireen Ragoobir.

Her first narrated colouring book, Let’s Colour Divali, was released in October 2024, and she would like to do a series of colouring books based in Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural celebrations and holidays.

Gismondi said she loved Carnival and was looking for a children’s books to introduce her daughter to the festival. Again, she could not find anything for children ages one to three so she made one.

She said she kept her Carnival costumes over years and intended to show Ila when she got older. But she also wanted her to know Carnival was more than pretty mas.

She thought about going more in-depth into the origins of Carnival but realised children would not understand the significance at that age. So she just introduced them to the general idea of traditional mas characters in a rhyming paragraph.

For example, the paragraph on the Jab Jab reads:

The memories of an ancient time,

Create masqueraders of every kind.

The jab jab is my favourite yet,

the prettiest devil you ever met.

With horns on their heads

and stockings neat,

They crack their whip

and stomp their feet.

Let’s Colour Carnival is available at Scribbles and Quills, Molay Marketplace and Café, Craft Creators Limited, Unique Bookstores, Keith Khan’s Books Etc, RIK Services Ltd, Paper Based Bookshop, Valini’s Drug Mart and Amazon.

Visit the author’s Facebook page at Ila Maharaj-Author or @ilamaharajauthor on Instagram.