Move Over Quentin Blake: Students Illustrate New Children’s Book

A new book written for Cambodian primary school children has been illustrated by Year 13 students Erika Makino and Disha Shetty. The book called “Don’t Be Late for School” tells the story of a girl’s trip to school.

The concept for the book started in 2015 when Erika was volunteering with charity Cambodian Care. Erika and her fellow volunteers were teaching English in a rural school. When sorting through, books one day, they noticed that children might find it difficult to relate to Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood. So they decided to create a book specifically for the class they were teaching.

Erika an Disha’s drawings in the book are renderings of photos taken during a recent trip to the Cambodian province of Kratie. Disha and Erika then used Photoshop and a drawing tablet to create the digital images. 500 copies of the book were printed in Phnom Penh and 400 were given to school children, the remaining 100 are being sold to raise funds for the school.

Erika said: “This was an important project for me, I learnt a lot and enjoyed every aspect. Disha is an incredible artist and helped me when I was learning to use Photoshop and the drawing tablet.”
“I am really pleased with the result and the children really like the book, they now know about transport modes and the English names for them.”

The author of the book, Elaine Crebo is a fellow volunteer and English teacher from Canada.