Winners of ‘Let’s Read’ story contest awarded

MUSCAT: Winners of the 11th ‘Let’s Read’ children’s writing competition were recently awarded at a ceremony in the Qurum Commercial Centre.

The topic was ‘Stories of our Ancestors’ and saw a number of children taking part from different schools in Oman, who wrote about the struggles and glories faced by their grandparents and other ancestors.

Said Al Saqlawi, President of the Oman Association for Writers and Literati, who was the chief guest at the event encouraged more of such competitions, “This is very important because this is the first step for a dynamic future, because when children have such competitions, full encouragements, in the future they will be something. We all had the same thing in schools, we had competitions which would encourage us to express our ideas and imaginations and be more practical people.

“Our association has done five workshops in Nizwa, Salalah, Muscat, Ibri and Buraimi where we encourage children to read, without reading there is no writing, reading is a first step to feed the writing. I invite people interested in writing to come to our association, and use our facilities and cooperate with us.”

Sana Shakeel, who was one of the writers to be recognised said, “it was a very exciting competition. I got to learn more about my ancestors and my family story, about my great grandfather and his life, how he had to face tragedies and later overcame them and lead a happy life.

Delighted

Her parents were delighted, “Sana has been participating in most of these yearly competitions but this was close to our heart because we and our relatives got involved with a great sense of attachment. They all chipped in, so my aunts in the US contributed, my uncle sent us historical data, passports from 1800s, and we all cherish this. My aunt called and said that she has kept the story by her bedside to read about her father every night,” said Shakeel Narmawala.

The Let’s Read Bookshop is Oman’s first charity bookstore and is located at Al Qurum complex. One of the programmes of Dar Al Atta’a, the bookshop also has two mobile libraries called Maktabati. For more information contact letsreadoman@ gmail.com or call 99314230.