Bringing children and books together

FOR the past three weeks, Kuching was the focus of anything educational: first, the Borneo Post International Education Fair (BPIEF) followed by AusEd–UniUk Group (AUG) and the Bookaroo.

All were about human development through the medium of education; education herein means reading, writing, and thinking.

The first two events catered to the interests of school leavers who want to pursue their studies overseas at institutions of higher learning.

For instance, the BPIEF, for the sixth year, has been helping students and their parents choose local universities and those in Australia and new Zealand. For the first time, I heard about the existence of AUG; this outfit caters for students whose parents can afford to send their children to study in the United Kingdom.

Bookaroo

Enter a third festival with a strange name – Bookaroo. This Charitable Trust created in India eight years ago is committed to bringing children and books together. For the first time, it was celebrated in Malaysia in collaboration with the Sarawak State Library.

Several hundred pupils from a number of primary schools in and around the city took part. Authors, publishers, editors, writers, illustrators, storytellers from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom were brought together in pursuit of common interests: reading books. It was actually books that brought them together.

I was there, and I can testify that the festival was well organised. You’d have thought the children were unruly and noisy. They were not. They behaved very well. Some carried handphones but they were kept on silent mode while the storytelling was going on … mostly.

The organisers

The organisers were as busy as hens. The chief of the library Rashidah Bolhassan and her team of volunteers, and Joe Williams of Bookaroo with the backing of Japri Bujang Masli, had to forego their weekend rest in order to be with the boys and girls at the centre, making sure that they were safe and happy.

When Datin Patinggi Datuk Jamilah Anu, wife of the Chief Minister began reading a story by way of launching the festival on March 28, you could have heard a pin drop. The pupils were all ears and in rapt attention listening to this mother of all hens.

The children were exposed to stories – true, half true, and pure fiction. They heard stories which they had not heard before; they learnt new things.

All these exercises were intended to teach the children how to read books and understand their contents and to discern fact and fiction. That’s the source of pleasure in reading and love for the books generally.

During this festival, the children were learning more than just stories. Books may be written in English or Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesian or Mandarin, but the translations were in the languages understood by the children. You could see in their faces how they reacted to words, phrases or terms translated in their own mother tongues. That was fun for the teachers too – to know that the young ones understood what was going on. There was complete rapport between the storyteller and the listener.

With parents present and keeping an eye on their kids, the festival was fun for the whole family.

So what was Uncle Di doing at a children’s festival? I had been press-ganged into service by my wife to interpret the Iban story ‘Apai Saloi’ and the Orang Ulu story ‘Mousedeer and Tortoise’ from English to Bahasa Malaysia. In the crowd were students from Empila in Samarahan, and when I used the local lingo the Tutur Orang Meran they had a good laugh.

Every story told had a moral lesson. Stories may be funny or serious even spooky, but they all support the art of reading and understanding what you read.

When stories are told by experienced storytellers and even by the authors themselves, the characters in each story come to life. The children learn how to use their power of imagination. And hopefully that may motivate them to find more about each story and thus make them long to read.

The drawings of many faces of a monkey will create in the children the curiosity to draw and appreciate the angles, shades, and perspectives. Simple lessons in rhymes will make the children try writing simple poems.

Stories offered at the festival were also about cunning, broken promises and why cutting an onion makes you cry. I told a story of a husband, Apai Saloi, who takes instructions from his fussy wife Enchelegit and carries them out literally. Apai Saloi was ordered by his wife to get a new cloth kena nampal tanah merekah (to patch cracks in the ground) from Enchelegit’s mother. On the way home, Apai Saloi saw cracks on the ground, the result of a prolonged drought. Happily obliging his wife, he ripped the new cloth into little pieces and with those he plugged the cracks. Whistling, he went home and what did he get? A tongue lashing from his Mrs. The children enjoyed that story, and they loved being invited to tear a sarong into small strips – rip rip rip!

Having obliged my wife by translating her stories, I went around to listen to some too. I really liked the ‘Tale of Two Goats from Two Mountains’, narrated by Rosemarie Somaiah of Singapore.

Each goat owns a mountain. Between the mountains there is a narrow bridge, barely enough for one goat to pass at a time. After grazing their own respective field, they want to cross that bridge at the same time. Each claims to have the right to pass through first. The other refuses to give way.

One goat says, “I am bigger – me first.” The other answers, “No. Me first – I am stronger.”

They push and they shove, and then – splash! – both fall into the river below.

One says, “What a nasty goat that was!”

Replied the other, “What an uncooperative goat that was.”

The next day on that bridge again. Maybe those are the same goats or two other, more intelligent goats; the story doesn’t say. These two goats start to discuss the problem in a sensible manner.

“Why don’t we squeeze past each other? The bridge is quite narrow, but if we walk carefully we should manage.”

They do just that and are successful.

One says to himself, “What a good goat that was.” The other says to himself, “What a cooperative goat that was.”

I was easily the oldest boy at the session that afternoon, and what a good boy I was.

At the next Bookaroo festival, you will hear why monkeys praise their own tails.

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