Like many young boys, Ethan Fermin dreams of one day becoming a pilot.
But for now, the soft-spoken, confident 10-year old from Arima is celebrating his achievement of becoming a first-time published author in the United Kingdom. His first book, Trinidad and Tobago ABC was launched in the UK in February less than two years after flying there with his family in 2020.
The book, aimed at pre-schoolers, celebrates T&T’s heritage by using everyday items, food, places and references from the islands to promote the alphabet. It follows siblings Junior and Ayana who introduce readers to words from A to Z — starting with Arima and ending with “zaboca”.
Ethan’s publisher, Young Lit Stars (YLS), is promoting the book as “a fun and easy way for young ones to learn the alphabet.”
YLS says it is the UK’s first publishing company dedicated to young Black authors and has, to date, published 38 books written by children aged 15 and under.
With time on his hands in the pandemic-driven lockdown, Ethan had already started writing a book when YLS got in touch.
“As much as I like living here in England I felt it was important to remember what it’s like in Trinidad. So I thought of many of the favourite and interesting things that I loved about Trinidad and I started to put them in a book, so I could just look at it and remember.”
Those journal entries started to take shape as a story about the pet dog he had left behind in Trinidad, taking readers on an exploration of T&T and its culture as they roam the country together. Ethan says he was initially afraid of the family pet but as he spent more time with the dog during the pandemic, they became almost inseparable.
Ethan’s mother, Domini Harewood, says he was always an avid reader but she worried that being stuck indoors during the pandemic was going to be tough on him.
“In trying to find an avenue for him to explore his imagination and to not just be stuck on games, I challenged him to write, and he came up with the idea of writing about his dog.” Ethan was also good at writing, she says, but didn’t really see it as an avenue to express himself.
“The relationship with the dog and how that inspired his writing are definitely positives that came out of the pandemic.”
Wanting to promote her son’s burgeoning talent, Harewood reached out to publishers online and, eventually heard back from YLS. But they had put a moratorium on publishing new manuscripts during the pandemic. Instead, they wanted something more specific from Ethan – an offer to write the third book in their Caribbean Delight Series, following other child-authored “ABC” books based on Barbados and Jamaica.
That didn’t faze Ethan, who readily took on the challenge: “It was like the perfect thing as I wanted to write about Trinidad anyway.”
He chose Junior as the name for one of the characters in his book in honour of his late father, who passed away when he was only four years old. “When I was thinking of how to tell the story of T&T, I thought of my dad and the experiences I had with him growing up. For example, he first took me to buy doubles, which I absolutely love (D is for doubles in the book).”
There is also a mention of McKenzie, Ethan’s best friend and classmate during his time at the Specialist Learning Centre in St Augustine. Shelly Osbourne, who remembers them both from her Standard Two class, is proud that her former pupil is now a published author.
“Ethan was always good at creative writing. He would think outside of the box and come up with very imaginative stories, but with this book, I like how he has reflected on the most interesting experiences he had growing up in T&T, on the impact they have had on his life, and that he has taken those with him to a new home abroad.”
Keeping alive the memories of life back home in T&T is something that drives Ethan and he is now keen to finish and publish his second book. But he hasn’t given up on his dream of being a pilot. “That would allow me to see more of the world and perhaps write even more stories about other places.”
Most importantly, he hopes it will also enable him to fly back to his beloved T&T more regularly.
“That will be the best part of the job.”