Leroy Green launches new book
He is a fixture on the Belmopan literary scene but this morning Leroy Green chose Belize City as the venue to launch his latest publication. Patrick Jones was on hand at the Bliss.
Beverly Smith Lopez, Dir., National Arts Council
“She wriggled and giggled and oh how she giggled, and she stand, jump up and ran.” And I think we are going to have fun teachers and students.”
The latest literary work to join the growing collection of Belizean literature has got some people bursting at the seams with excitement.
Flanked by some of his closest friends and supporters, Belize Teachers Training College Lecturer Leroy Green today added his name to the growing list of local authors, with the release of his thirty five page book “Me and You.”
The book is a collection of several limericks, patriotic poems and short stories, written over a three year period.
Ethnelda Paulino, Lecturer, Belmopan Comprehensive Sch.
“Now limericks are catchy and it’s going to help you the students learn new words as well. And it’s going to enhance the education for primary schools because literature is a subject that so far has not been taught in our primary schools. Yes we do reading but literature has never been treated as a subject.
The book “Me And You” is a first step to changing all that and Paulino believes the benefits go beyond giving teachers creative ways of approaching Literature.
Ethnelda Paulino
“What I like about it is when you do that transition, you make a transition from primary school to high school nothing in English classes will be strange. A lot of our students, almost all of them … when they come into first form they get completely frustrated with all this reading and all the new terms.”
Green says the book came about because of the lack of local literature in primary schools and the difficulty that younger children have in identifying with material that are alien to them.
Leroy Green, Author, “Me And You”
“Because walking around the school when I go on supervisions and so many of the books that I see being used for infants are things that the poor little children cannot relate to because we don’t have snow here in Belize. But if they hear things like about Tata Duhendeh and the toucan birds that I have included in the stories and so on they know what I am talking about.”
The author says that while infant and middle division students of the primary school will benefit most from use of his book, teachers likewise will find some very creative ideas of approaching the teaching of literature.
Leroy Green
“The book can help teachers because right now I am writing a teacher guide”
“Where teachers can be very creative, innovative and child centered approaches to teaching and it can help to children to develop their reading ability because the material that will be used, is material that they can identify with”
Things like the popular figure in Belizean folklore Tata Duhendeh, which for the first time is being presented as a hero instead of a villain. Patrick Jones, for News Five.
Green’s project was underwritten by UNESCO to the tune of five thousand dollars.
