Cover to Cover: Editor’s note

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It is now 10 years since the inception of the Cover to Cover essay competition.

It is now 10 years since the inception of the Cover to Cover essay competition.

TANGAI CHIPANGURA

The Standard takes pride in the success story of the competition which has seen thousands of excited young brains throw in their imaginative skills and a good number of them proving exceptional literary prowess.

Tangai Chipangura — Magazine Editor
Tangai Chipangura — Magazine Editor

Given the talent that has been exhibited in this competition over the years, I have no doubt in my mind that we now have literary gurus and writers of note out there — products of The Standard Cover to Cover Competition.

My overall view and assessment of this year’s competition is that Cover to Cover has managed to fulfill the main purpose of its existence, which is to provide an exciting platform for children to express their divergent views of the world around them — to give them an opportunity to explore and reflect their thoughts and ideas and to let their imagination run free and their creativity run wild.

Alpha Media Holdings, thro-ugh one of its publications, The Standard, remains focused on this one of its objectives, to contribute to the process of learning and mastering the art of writing among children at primary and secondary school level.

This country is renowned for producing some of the best academic brains in the world and The Standard, through the Cover to Cover competition, finds it has a role to play in nurturing, developing and exposing our children’s literary potential for the benefit of the country and its young people.

Contributors to this edition of the competition have once again showed amazing literary talent — a high level of creativity and literary expression. I feel obliged though to mention that there were instances where originality raised questions.

You will notice that we have introduced the Rural Category to cater for pupils from our schools in the rural areas that have over the years appeared to be shut out of the competition by their urban counterparts.

We made special effort to take the competition to these schools and what we found is that there is great talent out there which, presented with equal opportunity, can easily challenge the urban scholar “phrase by phrase”.

Cover to Cover has over the years enjoyed the support of various partners whom we can never be able to thank enough for their invaluable contribution to the development of our country’s young minds.

These friends of Cover to Cover include our traditional “mother”,  World Vision, Eversharp, Tika Shoes, Dairiboard Zimbabwe, Gateway High School and Tachis Engravers, to mention a few.

But the story of Cover to Cover would not be complete without special mention of our teachers, who play the invaluable role of mentoring these great minds and developing them into such impressive story-tellers.

I must acknowledge too the good work that was done by our judges in this year’s competition. Like I have said already, the task of choosing a few out of hundreds of brilliant scripts could not have been a stroll in the park and our judges did a great and commendable job.

I wish to congratulate those pupils whose essays have been chosen to appear in this magazine this year. Well-done to you all. We are proud of you.