The Leo Bradley Library held its 23rd annual Open day Book Fair this morning, opening its doors to students of all ages, teaching them the value of literacy and learning. Jomarie Lanza stopped by the library today and here's what she saw:

Today's adventure for these students began at the Leo Bradley Library, a gateway to one's imagination, and home to thousands of stories and books. Their Open day Book fair welcomed hundreds of children from a number of city schools. Assistant Librarian Shaunna Vaccaro says that they have a duty to make this experience all about reading and learning.

Shaunna Vaccaro, Assistant Librarian
"This is our 23rd annual open day book fair and this year's theme is adventure begins at your library. We have different competitions as every year we have our coloring competition for preschoolers we have our story reading and our story writing for primary schoolers and we have our hype competition this year, and this is our second year of our mural competition with high schools so the schools that are participating in the mural."

"Competition this year is Belize high school we have St Catherine's and we have Palotti and we have Edward P Yorke and we have ACC."

"We know that our library and reading is very important and we are trying to curve literacy and it begins from the womb so once a mother reads to his or her child that will be instilled in them and we want to have children experience reading in different forms. You can read a book and you can travel while reading that book. Reading is an adventure like we say you can travel to anywhere you imagine so our key focus is reading and I think that is what our biggest promotion today is like every other day."

There's a lot happening not only outside of the library but also within, where the staff made use of the space and transformed their reading corners into adventure zones.

Reporter:
"So what other activities do you have planned for the kids today because I noticed that you transformed the library space into more like an interactive environment."

Shaunna Vaccaro, Assistant Librarian
"Yes it is an interactive environment like we said everything today is about reading so we have here in this, this is the children's area and as you can see we have, we are highlighting our local books if you can see we have books of Belize it's a game where you roll a dice and depending on which number the dice rolls on you would get to pick a book and read from the book whichever page in the book you would look to read from."

The book fair also features booths from the Book center, BRC and Cubola publishers. Library assistant Lavern Maskall says that the annual fair enables them to keep the spirit of reading alive among the children.

Lavern Maskall, Library Assistant
"It's really good to have them here because as you know they don't see the need for a library since we have different search engines and google and all those things but there are so much things that you can find in a book that you can find on google so I am glad to see that the children are here and that we will be able to interact with them on a one and one basis there is so much things for them to do today so it's really nice to have them coming out today."

This year's book fair was sponsored by the Public Utilities Commission, Belize Bank and BWS.