'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