Features
Kick Up Some Moon Dust!Vol 1 for early teenagers
Volume 1 of this series targets 12 to 14 year olds while still to be published Volumes 2 and 3 will be for readers above 14 years and 16 respectively. However, I assure you that even adults can enjoy the excellently written stories as I did when gifted a copy of Volume I.
This 123-paged book features 16 stories from four writers who were participants of a writing workshop conducted in 2020 and 2021 by the Sri Lanka Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). The mentors were Ken Spillman and Ranjit Lal. Spillman who lives in Perth Australia, is the author of 85 books, most for children, and translated to many languages. Lal, the author of 45 books, fiction and non-fiction for adults and children, lives in Delhi and writes a column in the Indian Express Eye.
The participants whose stories are published in the book reviewed are M T L Ebell, Nadishka Aloysius, Deepthi Horagoda and Nidesh Kulatunge, all distinguished in their particular areas of interest. The first mentioned is the author of several published books, many for children, and won the State Literary Award for Best English Short Stories in 2008 and for best novel in 2014 for Thus She Grew. She is the Chairperson of the English Writers Collective.
Nadishka is a teacher, stage actress and award winning author whose That Easter Sunday won the State Literary Award for Best Children’s Literature Category in 2021. Deepthi is author, translator, graphic designer and illustrator. A nature lover, her storybooks for children are about animals, illustrated by her. She is joint secretary of IBBY – Sri Lanka and thus is involved in popularizing reading among the youth of the country.
Nidesh is a fiction author who filled his childhood with writing screen scripts and acting in theatre and street dramas. In his story in the book: School is for … he concentrates on trying to help young teenagers understand the deeper realities of life.
It is important to introduce the International Board on Books for young People – IBBY. It is a worldwide non-profit organization dedicated to bringing books and young people together. It was founded by Jella Lepman in 1953. Based in Basel, Switzerland, the organization counts 84 national sections with Sri Lanka IBBY the 78th; involved in developing high quality children’s literature and prompting the reading habit in young ones.
Founder
Jella Lehman was born in Stuttgart in 1891 to a family in manufacturing. At age 17 in 1908, she organized an international reading room for children of foreign workers at a tobacco factory. In 1913 she married Gustav Horace Lepman, German-American co-owner of a factory in Stuttgart and had two children. Lepman served in WWI and due to war injuries, died in 1922, leaving Jella widowed at 31.
She took to journalism, one of the first women in Germany to do so and published her first children’s book in 1927, which was also performed on stage. With the rise of the Nazis regime she was in danger as a Jew and emigrated with her children to England via Italy. She continued her journalism and then joined the BBC. After WWII she returned to Germany and undertook consultations. In 1948 she organized the first international exhibition of 2,000 books from 14 countries, which became the founding collection for the International Youth Library. She went on to inaugurate IBBY in 1953 and initiated the awarding of the Hans Christian Anderson Award for writers and illustrators of children’s literature.
She authored much fiction for children and young adults. Jella died in Zurich at age 79 in 1970. To mark her 100th birthday in 1991, the Jella Lepman Medal was inaugurated in Munich and is awarded annually to individuals and institutions that make lasting contributions to children’s literature.
Contents of Vol 1
Coming back to the book I comment on, the 16 stories which target young ones of 12 to 14 aim at reaching the psyche of that age – growing up, first crushes, nature, animal welfare and include ingredients that make for interested reading such as mystery, adventure, strange creatures, the supernatural. Additionally, insidiously convey messages.
The titles of some of the 16 stories I mention indicate the inclusion of the necessary ingredients to catch the interest of the targeted age range: Weird Sisters, The Trap Expert, Burrrp! The Special Assignment, Ogre at the Feast, Homework, Pest Control, The Monster Under My Bed. Some held me spellbound, and all were very ingeniously constructed and flawlessly written. I do not analyze any as I preferred to write about IBBY and its founder, informative and interesting. The stories can be critiqued by those who read them. They will all agree they made for good reading.
One interesting fact about the workshop mentioned to me was that Ranjit Lal gave the participants the first paragraph of a story which they had to develop on and continue as they felt inclined. The results and endings would surely have been stunningly diverse.
Priced Rs 540/- this first volume is available at Barefoot Bookshop, to name but one sales point. It would make an excellent Christmas present since we parents and grandparents need to encourage kids to read among the competitive recreations that crowd their lives – TV, computer games, all purpose smart phones. Reading is an essential necessity in life and needs must be made a habit in children, more so English reading.
Nanda Pethiyagoda