Jamaican Kereen Getten defeated 20 other authors to win the first-ever Bocas Lit Fest Children’s Book Prize, 2021 with her book, When Life Gives You Mangoes.

A press release by Bocas Lit Fest (BLF) explained When Life Give You Mangoes is a story about 11-year-old Clara who loves mangoes. She is affected with a bout of memory loss after a hurricane strikes her island.

It was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Prize along with Carol Mitchell’s Chaos in Castries, and Janet Morrison’s A Different Me, A Better You.

It has also appeared in Oprah Magazine, Buzzfeed and Time Kids.

Getten lives in the UK and has written short stories for multiple publications including Notts Review and Adhoc Fiction, and was nominated for Bocas’ Best Short Fiction in 2018.

She is to receive a cash prize of US$1,000 from the Unit Trust Corporation (UTC)

[caption id="attachment_927964" align="alignnone" width="602"] When Life Give You Mangoes by Jamaican Kereen Getten, Bocas Lit Fest's first Children’s Book Prize winner. -[/caption]

Joan Osborne, head judge, storyteller and former executive director of NALIS said, “The story takes you through a wide range of emotions – joy, excitement, sadness apprehension, surprise and happiness. The book explores a range of contemporary, complex life situations such as the multi-layered elements of friendships among children, family and community relationships, disability, religion, even the supernatural. All the themes are skillfully woven into a balanced, fast paced, elegantly written story which will certainly hold the interest of all readers.”

The inaugural BLF Children’s Book Prize received twenty-one submissions from around the Caribbean which was cut down to six by judges Johnny Temple of Akashic Books, Jamaica Poet Laureate Olive Senior, and Osborne. Clarisse Lee Sing, 14, joined the judges to add her youthful insight and helped to select the top three books.

The aim of The Children's Book Prize is to help stimulate the creation of more culturally relevant reading material for Caribbean children aged seven to 12.

The hope is to award excellence in books aimed at children at an independent reading stage, those who can understand narrative and are expanding their own imaginations and storytelling capabilities.

As such, many submissions were ineligible as they were picture-led books which were not appropriate for children preparing for the next stage of their life and education.

Bocas Lit Fest founder, Marina Salandy-Brown said, “Like so much else of what the Bocas Lit Fest has undertaken, this project came out of the observation of the reading environment in TT. In this case, a shortage of suitable reading material for children at a critical stage of their development of reading skills, that is, when they move from learning to read, to reading to learn. It took us a while to find a sponsor for this important prize that encourages writers to focus on those young readers, and I do hope that the UTC will contin