THE EDITOR Sir:
I AM writing to commend a thoughtful corporate citizen, Novelty Trading Company Ltd. This year, like last, the company has ensured that close to 200 books by Calabash Literary Festival authors are available in Jamaican libraries as well as bookstores islandwide. Works include those by St. Lucian Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, noted American feminist cultural critic Bell Hooks and Jamaica's own Rachel Manley, among some 70 other authors.
The Calabash International Literary Festival is produced annually by the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust. Calabash Festival books are easily recognisable by their heart-shaped Calabash insignias. As a Professor of Education and Director of Chichibud Ltd, an educational NGO that works closely with the Jamaica Library Service (JLS), I know how important it is for a library's collection to continue to be revitalised.
I also know how difficult it can be given the present state of the Jamaican economy for NGOs and community-based organisations to secure donations and raise funds. Yet, this donation, was an easy one to arrange. I simply approached Novelty's Director Suzzanne Lee with the idea of ensuring that Jamaica's own literary festival's books should be available to readers islandwide through the library system and Suzzanne immediately agreed.
We're all encouraged by the partnership that seems to have developed. Novelty has been nothing but gracious in all of their dealings with my organisation, Chichibud Ltd., often providing us with comics for monthly children's story hours held by the Friends of the Kingston and St. Andrew Parish Library at the Tom Redcam Library and for Chichibud's summer camps and other literacy enhancing programmes. I was not at all surprised to see them extend their generosity to the JLS.
Novelty Trading deserves to be commended for doing their part to increase access by readers of all ages to elements of Caribbean culture through the stories told by Caribbean authors.
I am, etc.,
DR. R. TORTELLO
Millsborough Ave.
Kingston 6
For more information on the festival, see www.calabash festival.org. For more information on Chichibud Ltd., see www.chichibud.org.
