One day, 36 peo
Twelve hours to write, illustrate, edit and design a book? That was the challenge 36 creative people embraced in Grahamstown last Saturday.
With the state-of-the-art brand-new National English Literary Museum as their base, nine teams comprising a writer, illustrator, editor and designer came up with nine ideas for children’s stories, and set about turning them into books.
Book Dash ( www.bookdash. org) is a non-profit organisation that creates, publishes, prints and gives away books for young children. Their vision is for every South African child to own 100 books by the age of five.
“In order to reach this goal, we host 12-hour book-making events across South Africa,” programme director Julia Norrish explained in her invitation to Grahamstown’s creative types.
“All the books created are open licensed which means anyone can print, download, read, adapt, translate and share them. The best part is, they are beautiful,” said Norrish.
The books are then delivered to organisations such as Shine literacy,Word works and Nal'ibali, and are also available on their website, www.bookdash.org/see/books, where anyone can download them for free.
Illustrator Siyasanga Madyibi, from the Nelson Mandela Institute at the University of Fort Hare in East London was draw- ing an elephant for the book, uMshado weNkuku neNtlanzi.
“Different, challenging,” was as many words as she could spare, as she worked flat-out - first with pencil and paper, then pen tablet to complete her part of the 12-page children’s story (plus cover and back page).
Also working on uMshado was Vuyisa Ngqawani, who is doing a B Tech in graphic design at NMMU. Like most of the participants creating the buzz in the NELM building on Saturday, it was his first Book Dash experience - “so far, so good”. Was he feeling the pressure? “Of course!” Madoda Ndlakuse, a story teller from Uitenhage and a literacy mentor for Nalibali, told the story of the marriage of the fish and the hen – one of three books written in isiXhosa last Saturday – a first according to Norrish, who said that up to now books had been translated into indigenous (and foreign) languages but had all started off in English.
“This is wonderful, especially for us as writers,” Ndlakuse said.
“Finally it’s a dream come true, working with a whole team to make something that’s fresh, different and unique. I’m launching my own book in March and this is a great curtain-raiser.
“I like this because of its impact. It’s not easy: I usually write much longer - with this writing, it’s just the lean meat we’re using,” he said, referring to the much more compact format of children’s books.