By: Staff Writer
August 19, 2022
A young Jamaican author/environmentalist penned her first book of poetry about the environment for children as she tried to awaken the spirt of young people about the importance of expressing themselves about issues that affect them.
Kymara Elliott, told Caribbean Magazine Plus about “Nature & Me,” a book of poetry about the environment and how it is especially for children between three to eight years old because she wants them to understand the joy of reading about the world around them at a young age.
The book has several poems all talking about nature from the sun to the water in Kymara’s attempt to entertain the children and teach them about the importance of their environment. She started off her writing career as young as some of her target audience as she produced her first poem in primary school and won an award for her efforts.
Kymara also said: “Every single child on this green earth can enjoy this book. This is not just for Jamaican children or just for the region, but international for all children of all creeds, it doesn’t matter the class. All of our children are impacted by the environment.”
She also said: “As a Mom I didn’t see much literature about the environment, so I wanted to write something just for my daughter.”
Producing her first book was particularly challenging for this 25 year old self-professed “tree-hugger,” because, “You have to get over the voice telling you that you’re not good enough to write this book and there is nobody in your family that ever wrote a book. Also, people not telling you how to go about writing a book and just leave you in the wind.”
She added: “I had to search Google and YouTube and all of that to get it done. It was a struggle.” But the struggle was not over when she found the information on how to go about completing her task because she had to “rework and re-edit” her script several times before it was able to be brought to the public in the form that it is now.
All together it took Kymara just over two years to put the book together and all of the poems are her own. The book is now on sale for US$16.50 or JD$2,500.
