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Workshop ‘The Children Book’, ‘Buku Ana’ Part 1

It’s saturday, jumped out of bed at 7 AM, grabbed a cup of coffee and laid out a stack of children's books. On top was our children's book ‘Tikus-Muis’.  The online Workshop on  Dutch children’s book would start at 9 AM. They were mostly interested in the why and the how of our bilingual children’s book ‘Tikus-Muis’. ‘They’ were in Indonesia, we were in the Netherlands.  

Jan, Bert and I made 'Tikus', but then 'Tikus' took us for a ride. We no longer decided what was going to happen with our booklet.  'Tikus' called the shots. It was laid out in October in the store on Friday and went viral on Saturday via Tik Tok.  The first hundred flew out the door in two weeks. In December 2023, I stuffed my suitcase full with books and left for a promotional tour of the ‘written Ambon Malay’ to the Moluccas. That would be the end of Tikus, we thought. On the contrary, people in the Moluccas were very excited by our booklet too. Journalists and writers claimed it to be exemplary for the Indonesian children's book. 

"Well, well, calm down," I said, "it's just an adaptation of an adaptation, " ... They loved the book anyway and invited me for a radio talkshow  to talk about ‘Tikus’ and ‘Wai Ihu’. And the presenter read the whole book out loud at another time.

Since last January, the writers' circle 'Komunitas Timur Menulis', 'The East Writes', has been   teaching writing and reading in secondary schools, they also used ‘Tikus’. The students were delighted with the illustrations, the design and the used language. The organizer told me that reading the book in Ambong Malay caused a feast of recognition and amazement among the young and the old and asked whether I could give an online workshop twice in April. Scribbling on a whiteboard with some giggling teenagers, I thought, would be no problem.

Then the moderator told me a week in advance that they will make the workshop public. Great, it meant not scrambling something up, but putting a solid PowerPoint together. Because you never know who will join the workshop.  It's nice that they unwittingly put you on a pedestal, but that will make you fall off if you don't come up with some solid information. So I involved Jan Timorason, my partner in crime, in the workshop.

"Jan, this is going to be more serious than I thought, it's about the children's book, where illustrations are just as important, sometimes even more important than the text, so you will have to join the workshop". Jan who has the work ethic of 10 shifts, straightened his glasses and started moving letters, drawings and said: "This is a pdf, not a PowerPoint!" I always learn something from that man.


At 9 o’clock he was in Arnhem and I was in Assen behind our screens, both connected with dozens of participants from not only the Moluccas, but also Papua, Java, Menado and some other islands. I told them about the Dutch children's book, the fun lectures on 'Children's literature' I took came in handy.

Jan, the graphic designer, talked about the form and illustrations of the book and we had a podcast like conversation about how text and illustrations interact with each other. About how the text, the illustrations grew layer upon layer into a whole. The beauty of sound and image, that's what it was all about for us. And the story should be fun, readable Ambon Malay. 

Then we delved deeper into the topic with the questions that came to us: "How do I start writing? Why did you choose Ambon Malay? What should I look for in the children's book? What should we do with Ambon Malay in business or academic texts? What do we think of a moral in the story?"

The novice writer, the experienced writer, the academic, the one interested only in language, they were all there.

Two animated hours flew by on that Saturday morning. The laundry basket could wait a while and the gray sky gave way to swaying palms and squeaky mice. On Saturday 27 April, we will discuss the texts that have been supplied, talk about the work in progress and about the question 'What is the Moluccan children's book?' Sadap.

'Tikus Muis', illustrations by Bert van Ginkel, design by Jan Timorason, text Lise Yian Sui de Fretes, Johnny Tjia, published by Wai Ihu, Assen, 2023.

 

By Lise Yian Sui de Fretes, 20th  April 2024



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