The Jamaica Library Service (JLS) says it is looking to attract approximately 4,000 participants for the 2025 National Reading Competition.

This year’s edition, which was launched on April 5 at the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Library, is being held under the theme ‘Keeping Reading Alive in 2025’.

The competition aims to foster a strong culture of reading and support the country’s literacy goals.

Some 3,133 readers across the island, representing the various age group categories: ages 6-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-20 and 21 and older, participated in the 2024 renewal.

Participants this year will, once again, vie for prizes and to be named reading champion for their respective age-group categories at the parish and national levels.

Testing at each stage of the competition includes a mix of oral and written elements, such as letters, book reviews and puzzles.

The competitors’ ability to read, understand and interpret set books or excerpts of books are the main determinants for the selection of winners.

Director of corporate communications and marketing at the JLS, Royane Green, informed that readers will be exposed to Caribbean literature, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and financial literacy material.

He pointed out that one of this year’s exciting features is a televised quiz final, where participants will answer questions based on the books they have read for the competition.

Green maintained that developing a culture of reading is vital to “our personal development, community development and national development”.

“Reading helps your creativity. It helps with language acquisition, expands vocabulary, deepens cultural awareness of self, of nation, of the region, the Caribbean, as we expose our readers to a diverse range of literature,” he said.

Green emphasised that, “if we have more literate and more reading-centred individuals in the population, we will have a lot more creativity in all the sectors of society”.

“So that is the aim. We’re trying to develop critical thinkers, creative people, leaders essentially,” he said.

Green indicated that Jamaica has one of the lower literacy rates in the Caribbean, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“We are currently at 88 per cent, while other countries in the region are in the high 90s. So the library still has significant work to do, in terms of impacting students in the school and community, to engage them and excite them about the importance of reading, even in this digital and technological age,” he said.