Indonesia
Three IWEC Students Release Books
Clara Angelina Pratama showed up with shining face, Friday afternoon on August 8th, 2014. The girl came to Grand City Mall with mom and dad, right after school from Katolik Santa Clara Surabaya Elementary School, still in her outfit. This sixth grade student headed to the main atrium, where IWEC was having “Menembus Dunia dengan Menulis” (“To Pierce the World with Writing”). “Wow, this is so cool,” Angel hissed when her eyes laid upon the book “My Sister and Me” displayed on the table.
That was the first encounter of Angel and her first book. Several weeks before, she submitted the collection of writing, poem and her manga picture to Maylia Erna Sutarto, the Founder of IWEC. Angel knew those will turn into a book. But She never imagined it will be that good of a book. “She was so happy. The book was awesome, both quality and cover and design,” her mom praised her.
“My Sister and Me” comprised three short stories in which the title was taken after one of them. According to Angel, the title was adopted because the content was the longest and also the favorite of her mom, the biggest supporter in her writing career. While the short story inside was adapted to “My Sister’s Heart and Mine”.
Other little writers, the Razak siblings Fairuza Hanun Razak and Ashalina Ghina Razak, had different story about their work. Seven years old Asha wrote an English story “The Bubble Dolphins”. The idea came from the dolphin picture on her pencil box. “I wrote the story on papers,” Asha, who had a dream of having a farm with the size of Grand City Mall, recalled. She also created some images which were later retouch by the designer into book cover and illustration.
Her sister Hanun released a nonfiction English cat encyclopedia, “Domestic Cats.” The reason was simple, she was a cat girl. “But mom doesn’t allow me to have and pet one until now,” the fifth grade student of homeschooling, shared.
Learn how to make writing out of stories was very important for these three girls. Angel who started writing since the third grade claimed that her writing was getting better. “Back then i wrote in scrambled, from the front, on the back, move to front again. In IWEC, we are taught to put them in order,” she said.
IWEC had Little Writer program for children of 8-12 years old. With four meetings per month every weekend, the program was completed in three months. On the Basic level, children will be introduced to basic writing technique, various activities and writing practice. “Quite different with other writing school, the learning process in IWEC is not limited to indoor classes. We invite children to have outdoor activities, visiting hospital and even joining a cooking class. After that, students will have to write down their experience. Or we would play a movie to watch for the class,” Maylia explained.
On the Advanced level, children started to practice to write fiction and nonfiction. In Majoring level, students can choose whether to focus on learning techniques of writing fiction or nonfiction. The tuition for each level was only IDR 500.
Later on the graduation, we will publish their works in anthology book, which is one book that is written by several writers. Our first three books were launched today and produced independently by IWEC. The distribution was collaborated with Asamediamu,” Maylia explained.
HAFIDA INDRAWATI
PHOTOS: HAFIDA INDRAWATI
