Giving young readers a wildlife adventure
Fun, educational and uniquely Sri Lankan – ‘Eyesha and The Great Elephant Gathering’ is the latest children’s picturebook to hit the shelves by author and Speech and Drama teacher Nadishka Aloysius. The story follows the journey of Eyesha, a baby elephant, who is setting off on her first journey to Minneriya National Park where new friends and valuable life lessons await.
Nadishka: Exploring facets of Lanka
Though Nadishka Aloysius always liked reading anything that came her way – be it storybooks, plays, non-fiction or fiction – she got into the field of Speech and Drama by chance and found that she liked it enough to stick with it. She has been a teacher ever since, with published works including her masters thesis A Study of Elocution as a Method of English Language Teaching in Sri Lanka.
“As a subject, Speech and Drama is literature-based so it’s very closely linked with storytelling,” Nadishka says. “And when you do drama, you’re exploring texts and bringing it to life, which links with my writing.”
In fact her first two fiction works for children were written for each of her sons – Toran and The Alphabet Fairy, a sticker book that came about when teaching her older son to read, as well as Ronan’s Dinosaur because her second son was “really into dinosaurs at the time!”
Eyesha and The Great Elephant Gathering came about as a result of the documentary film ‘The Great Elephant Gathering of Asia’ by wildlife photographer and filmmaker Dilum Alagiyawanna. Nadishka helped with editing the text, and was struck by the fact that “there is so much about our Sri Lankan elephants that we take for granted or we just don’t know, and how intelligent they are as a species.”
The difference between conventional picture books for kids and what Natasha intends for her book is the real educational value. “You get so many stories where animals are dressed as humans and behave as humans, where you don’t really learn anything other than the basic storyline,” Natasha explains. “I wanted kids to actually learn something about animal behaviour and their habitat.”
As such, the settings, lifestyle and behaviour of the elephants in her book are true to life. The story includes an old elephant who teaches them how to behave on their journey to Minneriya in a school situation, which draws from the real life matriarch figure that leads each jumbo group. Nadishka explains that she also included the different behaviour patterns of adolescents, babies and mother figures to follow real life conventions.
The book also includes extra pages at the back with interesting facts about elephants, as well as meanings of difficult words as Nadishka was careful not to lose the richness of the story by simplifying it too much. “If a child is reading it and comes across a word they don’t know, the glossary at the back helps them to build their language skills as well. The teacher in me just had to do it!” Nadishka explains.
In an age of unprecedented multimedia usage by children, the biggest challenge is “to make sure the illustrations have something that captures their attention.”
Nadishka says she worked closely with illustrator Manoshi De Silva to strike a balance in creating the 32 page colour illustrations, aided by her own research, Manoshi’s knowledge as a wildlife photographer as well as a few photographs from Dilum Alagiyawanna.
Nadishka plans to continue her exploration of Sri Lankan culture and wildlife in children’s literature, with her next book already in the works. It will follow a trishaw, inspired by her kids going through a Thomas the Tank Engine phase, as well as the “unique personalities” of trishaws and their artwork and slogans.
Eyesha and The Great Elephant Gathering is available at all leading local bookstores as well as www.amazon.com and www.daraz.lk