WRITING FOR  KIDS IS BEST FEELING EVER!

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another presentation on IN THE WHITE. Today, I wish to share a very special feeling through this short article.

It is not about an object, a gift I received, or a meet-up with anyone. It is about a group of individuals who some of us love, enjoy our time playing with, and watch growing up.

Now, given such hints, I am pretty sure my smart readers must have gaged about what which population I am talking about, especially if you are a parent, then at this moment for sure.

So if your thought was about a child or children after reading the above line, then your guess was right. This write-up will be on “CHILDREN,” as I look to share my experience of writing books for children.

As an author of children’s books for the past couple of years, it has been a pleasure and a great learning experience to write books for kids, under The Asia Foundation banner.

Hailing from the Fiji islands, in the South Pacific region, where local writers may not be as many as in the other parts of the world, I am glad to have been allowed to showcase my writing skills by producing two books, each varying on two separate topics.

The first was in September 2021, with the topic being “Oceans and Inclusive Climate Action.” Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic restrictions, the Book lab event had to be conducted virtually, through the zoom platform.

The writing workshop which aimed to produce ten (10) books for primary school children, especially for year 1-3 students was what I see as a great initiative to maintain children’s interest in reading books.

As a writer with no experience in writing children’s books before this, I knew this was a huge responsibility and felt necessary to deliver a good and quality product efficiently.

As far as preparations are concerned, I remember meeting all participants virtually, a couple of weeks before the start of the Book lab. Although this was an introductory meeting, writers were encouraged to start thinking of their storyline and characters.

A part of my preparedness was to write a mock story related to the topic. All thanks to my dad for this idea, which worked well.

When I initially introduced the story at the official Book lab event, the sentences were too long, the storyline was highly complex and some vocabulary could have been difficult for young children to understand.

This forced me to make drastic changes to the story structure and words that were suitable for the younger population.

After numerous drafts, the story was finalized, illustrations completed and an electronic version was released, which could be found here.

In March this year (2022), I got another chance to write a children’s book. This time the theme was “Human Rights and the Inclusion of People with Disabilities”.

I could feel a strong connection to the topic, having been a part of the disability sector for quite some time now.

This also presented me with an opportunity to share my experience in session 2 of the opening day of the Booklab, along with other colleagues from the disability faculty.

Since this was a face-face event, participating in group activities or working in pairs was a lot more fun, than in the breakout room in zoom.

I used the same strategy as used in the first one, where I prepared a mock story to take at the event.  

I had written another story during the Booklab session but chose to go with the first mock story, as the content of the second story contained a lot of characters, making the storyline a little too complex.

Also, this time I tried applying lessons learned from the last Book lab to avoid unnecessary errors. So I tried keeping my sentences shorter, simple, and easy to understand.

Although I had refined my version of the story, there was still a lot of work to do with the editors, especially with the sentence structure and page alignment.

When the deadline for submission of the story neared, I was happy to let it go for illustrations. And now, I am pleased to share the link to the electronic version of the story titled “Jimmy’s New Glasses”.

Overall, booth Book lab events were a great success. It generated a lot of excitement, and a high level of intensity, as well as provided a different learning experience on both occasions.

With those words, thank you for reading, and do not forget to check out the links provided in this article.