Proceedings of the URECA@NTU 2012-13 Children’s Books for Marginalised Communities in Indonesia Ong Han Yu School of Art, Design and Media Asst Prof František Kratochvíl School of Humanities and Social Sciences Asst Prof Joan Marie Kelly School of Art, Design and Media Abstract - With the rapid pace of globalization, cultures are constantly reinterpreted and reconstructed with the onslaught of mass communication bought about by technology. Marginalized communities like the Abui community in Indonesia have potentially received a substantial dilution of their own culture with the introduction of new cultural influences. As such, the project seeks to provide children of the targeted community, Abui, with illustrative books derived from their local folk tales. The paper will focus on addressing the community targeted, the methodology explored in detail, especially in regards to the development of children’s literacy material, and the initial results of the project. In total three children books will be produced, with the focus on one of the three, Pigeon Padalehi for this paper. The results can not only serve as a reestablishment of literacy skills for the younger generation, but provide a step forward in cultivating a sense of identity to the communities’ own native culture. Keywords - endangered languages, literacy material, Abui community, illustrative book, and literacy development 1 INTRODUCTION The main objective of this project is to provide learning materials for vanishing languages. Working closely with the native community in order to obtain folktales that are prevalent in the heart of the community, the project seeks to combine the art of storytelling, using traditional and digital media, with ‘bedtime stories’ children in the community are familiar with. This includes detailed reference research, style studies and recognized freedom of expression for the illustrator to present the story in the best way possibly visually. Close observation to the native background and people using photography will also be vital in this project. Students work closely with the professors through the entire storyboard process to the completion of the children books. In the remainder of this paper the background of the Abui community will be first outlined, followed by methodology, results, discussion, and. conclusion. 2 AIMS Through literacy materials presented to the younger generation in the form of illustrative books, we hope to cultivate a sense of recognition for the children of Abui in their own language and culture. 3 BACKGROUND The Abui community is found at Alor, an island located at the eastern Sunda Islands that spread through south- eastern Indonesia. Abui literally means ‘mountains’; henceforth those that speak in the Abui language usually refer to themselves as Abui loku “the mountain people”. [6] There are at least 20 different languages spoken on Alor, with a number of dialects in the Northern Southern and Western areas. Many of the native languages are endangered and no longer passed on to the younger generation in the community. [1] There are however on going researches for the Abui community in order to preserve the native language, for instance the publication of a tri-lingual Abui-Indonesian-English dictionary in Indonesia. [3] One such collection of research there would Abui stories that are used for the visual narration of the children’s book, [4] notably Pigeon Padalehi, a local folktale that tells of a child who gets transformed into a pigeon. Significant research has been done on the creation of the picture book, where cultures, generes, styles from southeast asia art are examined, and visual literacy like text layout, choice of colors, and visual hierachy for the specific age group was considered. Stylistic references were also researched in this project in order to enable the idealization and development of a children’s illustration book. These references include illustrator Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day and Javier Zabala, where highly composed yet simplistic visual approaches to their works were observed and researched. 4 METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL APPROACH The text selected for the children’s book was Pigeon Padalehi by Amalia Lanma. Professor Joan Marie Kelly did further interpretation and text elaboration in order to facilitate better visual narration to the story.