Indonesian / Indonesia
Srinti
Dewayani, Sofie
(text)
Hidayat, Cecillia
(illus.)
[Ngamprah]: Yayasan Litara, 2015. – [28] p.
(Series: Bianglala anak nusantara)
ISBN 978-602-70158-0-7
(1st ed. 2014)
Death | Earthquake | Grief | Picture book | Siblings | Remembrance
Reading age: 4+
White Ravens issue: 2016
Simple pencil drawings and sparse dialogues introduce the situation: We look out from a makeshift shelter onto a ruined, depopulated landscape. A little girl discovers her vanished younger sister’s doll, named Sri, in the debris. The girl next door, however, claims it is Santi, the doll of her elder sister, who also has disappeared. They pull and tug and finally tear off the doll’s head. Their grandparents sew the doll together again, and the girls are forced to deal with each other. After some bickering they agree on a new name for the doll: Sri and Santi merge into Srinti, who becomes a token of remembrance and a means to cope with the traumatic event of the Yogyakarta earthquake of 2006. Sofie Dewayani is a University teacher, a writer and publisher and the head of the Litara Foundation, which aspires to improve the literary standard of Indonesian children’s literature. Since its establishment in 2014, Litara has won several Asian awards for its books. Cecillia Hidayat studied Visual Communication and works as a freelance illustrator.