IBBY-Yamada 2011: Indonesia

The third IBBY-Yamada workshop in Indonesia was a continuation of the 2009 workshop on picture books. These events have several goals: enhancing the quality of picture books in Indonesia; raising publishers’, illustrators’, and writers’ knowledge about international trends in children’s book publishing; and improving the capability of young illustrators, writers and editors.

The event, a seminar and a workshop, with the theme “Go International through Picture Books” was created by IBBY Indonesia with the Society for the Advancement of Children’s Literature (SACL) in cooperation with the publishing house, Grasindo.

The main international speaker was Patsy Aldana, the founder of Groundwood Publishing House in Canada. Her presentation, “International picture books: nationality, subject matter, identity, theme, format, and voice. What picture books can be", included examples of picture books from countries such as India, Japan, Mongolia, Egypt, Spain, Iran, Tanzania, Mali, Senegal, Argentina, Nicaragua and Mexico. These books have various formats, themes and different types of illustration.

Other speakers were Murti Bunanta and three renowned Indonesian illustrators: Suyadi, Isnaeni and Hardiyono. There were approximately 90 participants for the seminar and 100 for the workshop: students from universities, lecturers, writers, illustrators, editors, researchers, and others who are interested in writing for children. Participants came from Jakarta, as well as Bandung (West Java), Malang (East Java) and Bali.

On the second day the participants were divided into 20 groups comprising four to six persons from different backgrounds. In each group there was an illustrator, a writer, an editor, as well as regular participants. They were asked to discuss a script that had been given to them previously. Writers had to make an adaptation and the illustrators prepared storyboards to discuss with the editors.