'A Forest of Fables': The Journey
'A Forest of Fables': The Journey
The process we went through in making our book A Forest of Fables was very interesting, but also long and involved. The project was originally designed as a meaningful class activity for my class of Grade 5 students at SD Mentari, South Jakarta, which integrates English, science and geography.
The project's aim was to encourage the students to write creatively about Indonesian animals and to learn about the process authors go through in writing and publishing a book.
The students read a wide variety of fables from around the world, and they began to understand that a fable is a story with animal characters that has a message or a moral to help children learn right from wrong.
They then researched the animals that live here in Indonesia and chose which animal characters they would like to feature in their very own fables. Following this preliminary work, the students wrote their original fables based on a moral of their choice.
Having written the fables, the students illustrated their stories themselves and we went on a visit to Jakarta Books to learn about book-making and to collaborate with them in publishing A Forest of Fables.
The book was published upon the generous donations from parents and our school board, and we agreed that all the proceeds from the book would go to charity for children in Aceh, who have suffered so greatly from the tsunami.
Once we had the go-ahead to publish our book, Jakarta Books and I sent rough drafts of the book back and forth several times, eventually ending up with the version that was printed.
We sent it to the printers in April and started to sell it at the end of April to people in our school community. We are very proud of the book, because it is our way of being able to help children who are much less fortunate than ourselves.
The entire process of producing A Forest of Fables has been a great learning experience for us all, and hopefully, this book will also inspire other children to love reading and want to write stories of their own.
-- Ann Hutchinson Teacher, Grade 5, SD Mentari