Once upon a time in Thailand

The reality, however, is quite different.

Janice Santikarn, an Australian national married to a Thai, has been writing children’s books for the last seven years and says it takes up to six months to carefully craft her stories.

Her latest effort, The Brave Little Tuk-Tuk, is the story of a blue three-wheeled taxi and his escapades as he struggles to haul his adopted family from Bangkok to Chiang Mai over the Songkran period. On his way, he gets bounced off the highway by an evil smoke-fuming lorry and kidnapped whilst his family goes sightseeing in Ayutthaya. Strong stuff. But you’ll be pleased to know that it all works out well in the end. There’s even a burgeoning romance with a pink tuk-tuk but you’ll have to read the book to find out how that one plays out.

Santikarn had planned to become a science teacher in her native Australia but soon decided that research was more enticing and eventually found a job in America. After spending a while moving around the United States, her Thai boyfriend, whom she had met whilst studying in Melbourne, suddenly announced that he wanted to return home to Thailand and asked her to marry him there. Within a few months, she was in Bangkok and the centre of attention at a Thai wedding ceremony with about 500 people in attendance, most of whom she didn’t know.

“I guess I came thinking that we’d work hard for a few years then decide to have children,” she recalls. “But here it was such a different lifestyle, so we decided there was no reason to wait and had kids straight away.”

Shortly after her first child was born, Santikarn began working as an English instructor at Sathit Prasanmitr Elementary School. It was here that the idea of writing children’s books began to emerge.

“I had to develop some way of teaching speaking and listening along with their reading and writing programme,” she explains. “Because there was a lack of resources, I started to go through the local bookstores, but when I still couldn't find what I needed I decided to write my own stories. That was the catalyst.”

Her first project was an ABC book in English for Thai kids. Having brought in traditional ABC books from abroad to help teach her students, she soon realised that most of these books held little relevance for children not brought up in Western culture.

“The problem was that the books would have things like V for Violin,” she says. “Many of the children had never seen a violin and didn’t know what it was. It was the same with B for bat. They knew what a bat was but not a cricket bat like the one that was pictured. It didn’t seem to relate to the lifestyles that these kids were leading. So I thought I’d write an ABC but all the pictures would be of things you’d find in Thailand.”

With teaching taking up more and more of her time and writing now becoming something of a passion, Santikarn decided that some kind of lifestyle change was in order.

“I now had a daughter in primary school as well as a newborn son and wanted to spend more time with them,” she says. “So I stopped working but with the idea that I would carry on writing and do that instead of the teaching.”

At around this time, a friend informed Santikarn that Thai Watana Panich Press were looking for stories to publish in English. This seemed like the perfect opportunity and two stories were soon commissioned – Nawin Saves The Elephants and The Little Blue Tuk-tuk (the precursor to The Brave Little Tuk-tuk).

Both books were distributed directly into local schools and proved to be immediately popular. Soon, friends were asking where they could buy them. But as the books weren’t available in the shops, they had to get them from the author herself.

Buoyed by this interest, she started to market the books at sales held by local women’s groups and stocks depleted fast.

The next book to be published, this time by Sirivatana Interprint who print local versions of Thomas the Tank Engine amongst other things, was Koko the Monkey: Lost in Bangkok.

The book, intended to act as a kind of tourist guide for kids, is a story about a baby monkey who falls out of his tree onto a passing train and winds up in the metropolis.

When Santikarn visited schools to read her story, she found the reaction of the students, particularly the international ones, to be quite entertaining – as Koko visited the Grand Palace or the Temple of Dawn, kids would shout with glee in recognition of places they themselves had been to.

However, there tended to be a more muted response amongst Thai children. “One school had quite a high percentage of Thai children and as I was reading it I noticed that the response was different,” she recalls. “One of the teachers also noticed that that they weren‘t really being responsive, so at the end she said ‘I think that your parents have never taken you to any of these places, we really need to go on a field trip’. So they decided it would be a good idea to go on a river trip to see the sites in the book.”

Despite the relative success of her work, Janice Santikarn says that the market she is writing for is very much a niche. Most of her audience are young Thais learning English as well as expatriate children whose ages are around 5 to 8.

What makes the market doubly difficult to crack, though, is the fact that even children’s books written in Thai are usually slow to sell. This, she suggests, might have something to do with the culture.

“It’s rapidly changing but Thai kids don’t have this culture of reading from an early age,” she says.

“We have always read to our kids regularly, ever since they were babies, and this instilled in them a love of books. When we go shopping with our children, we always meet up in the bookshop and browse. Unfortunately, Thai kids don’t have that culture yet but I think a lot of people are trying to change that.”

She did think of having her books written in both Thai and English but research suggests that if a Thai child picks up a book that is partly written in English, he or she will only read the bits written in Thai.

“It would be nice to have the Thai kids reading the stories in Thai but my whole purpose is to get Thai kids reading in English,” she notes. “It’s quite heartening that some of the bookshops that usually sell only Thai books are now selling my English-language books too and more Thai children are buying them and reading them.”

Santikarn believes that writing stories about things close to home can often be just as entertaining as something fanciful like Harry Potter.

But, as Thomas Edison once said, inspiration is only ten percent of the work. The other ninety percent, the perspiration, begins with some thorough planning.

“I’ve got to think what I want to write about, what message I want to convey, what age group I’m writing for and how I want to say it,” she explains. “After that – do I want a story book, do I want just a picture book, do I want rhyming form?

“Before you start writing, you have to know the ending. I heard that JK Rowling knew the ending to her series before she started writing, so if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me! But it’s important to have a road map to work your way from the beginning to the end.”

Perhaps as significant as the plot is the invention of the characters. Santikarn feels it is important that the main characters in her stories are sympathetic and good role models for kids. The little tuk-tuk in the latest book, for example, has to surmount various obstacles but never resorts to violence or nastiness. At the same time, she says, you cannot underestimate kids so it’s no use patronising them with over-simplistic ideas.

Children’s books, of course, are as much designed to be looked at as they are to be read which is why the choice of illustrator is as important as getting the words right. “Illustrations are an important element,” she says. “The style has to give a sense of fun to the kids. As much as I like to think people are buying my book for my writing, it’s the front cover that grabs the eye – if someone likes the illustrations, they’ll dig into the book.”

Another indispensable asset, according to Santikarn, are children themselves. “I think the inspiration comes through my children,” she notes. “The big thing for me is observation and I’ve been able to observe my own children. Just by looking at the things they do or the things they say, I can think about what will be a good idea for a book.”

Santikarn not only writes her books but has to market and distribute them too. It’s hard work and, for the time being at least, brings only scant reward financially. Nonetheless, the most important reward, she says, comes from the enjoyment of writing the books and the knowledge that children are reading and enjoying them.

“It has become a full-time job,” she notes. “I usually write a few hours a day. I’ve read that you should always try to put something on paper everyday and I’ve found that it works. I’ll always carry a notebook so that when I’m out shopping or in traffic I can always write something down. It may not be more than a book ticket size but I’m writing. It’s a lot of work but it’s a lot of fun too.”