On Saturday 7th May 2016, after a tour of parts of Osu and Labone, Kojo and I went to the Association International School located at Airport Residential Area for an event dubbed The Undiscovered Author Book Fair, put in place by The Event Town. Kojo was there because two of the participants were from his school Alpha Beta. I was there because of Akpene.
Akpene Yankson is a 11+ year old pupil of Christ the King International School who wrote the story The Missing Jewels, one of eight stories that was selected for the Tales of the Undiscovered Authors book. I first got to know about Akpene and the competition on 28th April 2016 when his uncle who is a colleague of mine invited us to join in the voting. I headed straight to the website to vote. I didn’t vote based on merit.
I voted for Akpene because she was the one I knew and though the stories were available to be read online, I didn’t have the time to read all of them. At the time of voting, Akpene was leading by a good margin. I visited the site regularly to see how the voting was turning out and Akpene led for many days. However at the time voting ended on 6th May 2016, the duo from Tema International School, Charity Apreku and Jackie Buba, authors of the story Always and Forever had surpassed Akpene by 201 votes.
I went to the bazaar, hoping that although Akpene had lost the lead in the vote count, she could still emerge the ultimate winner. Voting wasn’t the only criteria for scoring. The story content carried a whopping 60 percent of the total marks and was scored over originality, plot, characterization, language and enjoyment.
I would meet Akpene and her mom as well as her well wishers and students from her school. I also met another colleague of mine who requested that I blog about the event. Charity Apreku and Jackie Buba won the ultimate prize with Akpene Yankson coming in second.
The Undiscovered Author is an initiative of the Write from the Heart Book Club which is a organisation with a mission to encourage children to enjoy reading and to have pleasure in writing their own stories. In celebrating the 2016 World Book Day, they went in search of young undiscovered talents who had a story to tell. The search resulted in this collection of eight stories from young curious minds from different schools in the Greater Accra Region. The other young writers were from Brainy Bairn School, Ronsard Ecole, Ghana International School and ESPO Best Child School.
Looking to buy copies of the book for your kids’ or school library? Contact Write From the Heart Book Club on +233 50 540 0668.
