I'm not sure how to best describe this book.
It looks and feels like a children's book. It reads and smells like a children's book. But it's not really a children's book. It's a picture book for new and not-so-new parents.
Still, I think children will still like it if only because June Digan's artworks are simply fantastic.
It won the Book Development Association of the Philippines’ Gintong Aklat (“Golden Book”) Award for Inspiration in 2024.
Artist Renato "Jojo" Barja, Jr. comes across many children in his daily commutes to his studio and other places. He draws the strangest, quirkiest, weirdest and most compelling of them, taking inspiration to create portraits, all the while imagining what their stories might be.
This book is a retelling of those imagined tales, as told to myself and Daniel Tayona.
My legal and policy practice centers around information technology and competition issues.
Globe Telecoms and Google reached out to me one day, asking if I could write a children’s book around data privacy, and fake news on the internet, respectively. It was a great opportunity to merge my two main passions: children’s literacy and information technology policy.
Both children’s books that came out of these collaborations won the National Children’s Book Award in 2022.
For this book, I read dozens of affidavits by survivors of atrocities committed by the Marcos regime, and then distilled ten of them into three-sentence “horror” stories.
I believe it is important to tell these stories, even if the effect can be traumatizing and jarring. We trust that parents and teachers can help to provide context and guidance. We also hope they can use these stories as starting points for meaningful conversations over what is a very sensitive topic, as well as tools for imparting empathy and a deeper appreciation of history.
We remember and learn from the past, because we want our children to lead better lives than us.
I wrote Ode to a Young Reader in celebration of CANVAS’ 20th anniversary. The artworks featured in this book were carefully chosen from pieces I acquired over two decades through CANVAS’ many creative and community-centered projects, and they were then showcased at CANVAS’ major retrospective at the National Museum of the Philippines.
This book is both a personal offering and a tribute: to the power of stories, to the artists who make them come alive, and most of all, to the children who carry them forward.