On March 17, there is sure to be plenty of excitement at Emancipation Park in Kingston.

The first joint Do Good Jamaica/Kingston Book Festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The event will offer a large variety of family entertainment and free activities for children. In addition to a strong focus on reading, there will be arts and crafts, puppet making, robotics, educational activities, balloon making, face-painting and lots more. Organizers are especially excited that the event will feature Sesame Street Walk-Around Characters.

Doubling as a 50th anniversary celebration of Jamaica’s independence, the festival will pay tribute to the diversity and broadness of the island’s book industry. More than two dozen of Jamaica’s top publishers and retailers will present their complete range of titles with special discounts. There will also be a full compliment of authors at the festival honoring the greatest and best-known books of the last 50 years, as well as the new batch authors who will bring Jamaica forward through the next few decades.

The festival is also an important event for increasing awareness of Do Good Jamaica’s Project Crayon’s Count!, a campaign to support and promote early childhood education. The project aims to give children the tools they need  to learn and grow by putting a learning kit in every early childhood institution throughout the island.

For those of you who have children this is a not-to-be-missed event. Come along and participate in this exciting festival filled with family entertainment and fun activities for kids throughout the day.