It amazes me at times that while we share a cultural and social history with several nations in Asia, one would never guess it going by the popular culture and social media that form a large part of our lives. Our bookstores, for instance, display tons of European, American as well as African books, but almost nothing from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam or China.
On a recent trip to Malaysia, therefore, I was on the lookout for children's books by local authors. It wasn't easy, for most bookstores (like the ones in India) displayed American and British children's titles or some Malaysian titles in Bahasa. After some questioning and prodding of the staff at the stores, I was delighted to find children's books by Malaysian and Chinese authors. I bought six and began reading them on returning home.
Lat published his first book for children, Kampung Boy, in 1979. It's an autobiographical narrative in which he attempts to recreate the days of his childhood living in a traditional Malay house called a kampung while growing up on a rubber plantation.
Two years later, he followed it up with Town Boy, which describes the years he spent in Ipoh where he went to live when he was eleven. A decade later, he published Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today juxtaposing contemporary and earlier Malay childhood using the same format of brilliantly illustrated pages, largely in black and white, and accompanying text.
Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today by Lat - whose real name is Mohammed Nor - is an absolute delight to read. Lat takes us down memory lane, through homes that were full of love and inventiveness, and playgrounds where every toy had to be created by the children and their parents. The games they played included equal participation by ants, pangolins, cows, angry honeybees and sleepy pythons. Rural life is presented as exciting rather than bucolic, full of adventure and, at times, danger.
Of course, there's a lot of nostalgia and a lot of idealisation of childhood. But there's also a subtle plea to parents to cease being over-protective, helicoptering, competitive mums and dads.
The artwork of Kampung Boy - a mixture of caricature and evocative detailing - is wonderfully expressive, enabling the author-illustrator to say a lot without using too many words. Lat doesn't follow the graphic novel format favoured by a number of contemporary writers, or the manga style that originated in Japan. Instead, moving as he does from being a newspaper cartoonist-columnist to one attempting an autobiographical narrative, he uses the page as a canvas and fills it up with a single scene that captures the essence of the tale he wants to tell.
I introduced the book to a group of students who have learning differences and built a reading and writing activity around it. It was heartening to see that they liked the book a great deal, and would either stay back and try and read a few more pages or come in early the next day to continue with the story. The illustrations helped them make sense of the story and the minimal text and unusual fonts used by the author made it easier for them to read the narration.
The one thing I did not like about Lat's work was that I detected a certain internalisation of colonial attitudes, though. As the children - depicted with 'non-human' expressions - leave their 'nature-phase' behind them and enter the world of schools and academia, their faces take on more human orientations. I shall probably have to examine the whole of the Kampung series before making very definitive statements.
All in all, a great addition to your library!
On a recent trip to Malaysia, therefore, I was on the lookout for children's books by local authors. It wasn't easy, for most bookstores (like the ones in India) displayed American and British children's titles or some Malaysian titles in Bahasa. After some questioning and prodding of the staff at the stores, I was delighted to find children's books by Malaysian and Chinese authors. I bought six and began reading them on returning home.
Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today by Lat - whose real name is Mohammed Nor - is an absolute delight to read. Lat takes us down memory lane, through homes that were full of love and inventiveness, and playgrounds where every toy had to be created by the children and their parents. The games they played included equal participation by ants, pangolins, cows, angry honeybees and sleepy pythons. Rural life is presented as exciting rather than bucolic, full of adventure and, at times, danger.
The artwork of Kampung Boy - a mixture of caricature and evocative detailing - is wonderfully expressive, enabling the author-illustrator to say a lot without using too many words. Lat doesn't follow the graphic novel format favoured by a number of contemporary writers, or the manga style that originated in Japan. Instead, moving as he does from being a newspaper cartoonist-columnist to one attempting an autobiographical narrative, he uses the page as a canvas and fills it up with a single scene that captures the essence of the tale he wants to tell. I introduced the book to a group of students who have learning differences and built a reading and writing activity around it. It was heartening to see that they liked the book a great deal, and would either stay back and try and read a few more pages or come in early the next day to continue with the story. The illustrations helped them make sense of the story and the minimal text and unusual fonts used by the author made it easier for them to read the narration.
The one thing I did not like about Lat's work was that I detected a certain internalisation of colonial attitudes, though. As the children - depicted with 'non-human' expressions - leave their 'nature-phase' behind them and enter the world of schools and academia, their faces take on more human orientations. I shall probably have to examine the whole of the Kampung series before making very definitive statements.
All in all, a great addition to your library!
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