The future story-tellers
This is the story eight-year-old Oishik Rahman wrote for the Nido-Shaptahik 2000 story writing competition and won the special prize in Group A. With a juvenile smile Oishik said, 'I like ice-cream too but doctor has forbidden it. Ice cream is full of artificial colour, flavour and preservatives, he says.'
The prize distribution programme of the competition, tagged Galpo Lekho Galpo Jeto (write story, win story), took place at the Shishu Academy auditorium on October 14. It was a cheerful gathering of children literally from all social milieus: schools and madrassas of different districts across the country; a few ethnic children were also there from the hilly areas. The children were jovial and very disciplined and well mannered.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The organisers were anxious that due to natural calamity they would get fewer stories than expected. The enthusiasm of children, however, was even more than that of the previous years: 4463 children from all over the country had sent stories for the competition jointly organised by Nestle and Shaptahik 2000 for the fourth time.
Sanjana Sanam Mormi and Atashi Amin Anannya got the first prizes in group A and B. The 20 winners from the two groups were awarded books, crest, certificate, DVD player, binocular, digital dictionary, Discman etc. Another 100 children received special prizes like books and certificates. The twenty stories that won the first ten places from each group will be published in the Eid-ul-Fitr special issue of the Shaptahik 2000 this year.
Among the judges of the competition, editor of the weekly, Shahadat Chowdhury, Poet Abu Kaiser, children's author Amirul Islam and writer Sujan Barua handed over the prizes to the children. Representatives of Nestle Bangladesh Ltd. Ashraf Bin Taz, Aftabuzzaman, Zulfikar Hossain, Naquib Khan and Nuzhat Yusuf were also present on the occasion.