Kaputu Kaak
A free, illustrated book about protest and civic education for children, which provides information in an accessible manner, about the current crisis in Sri Lanka -- how we got here, why people are protesting and what children can do.
Written by Amal de Chickera — dear friend, solid fellow, and Co-director of The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. Illustrated by me. I went back to meddling with absurdist digital collage, but this time, I did not use my powers for evil (see ‘Wait Non Anon’ in the Comics section).
‘Kaputu Kaak’ is one of the most nerve-wracking books I’ve worked on.
Partly, because I’m not a trained illustrator — I usually write the books.
Partly, because we built it from scratch in seven weeks, leaning on friends and colleagues, while we were in the middle of the people’s uprising of 2022.
Mainly, I was nervous because of the readers we had in mind: kids living through the Sri Lankan crisis, trying to process the collapse.
The link below is to the English, Sinhala, and Tamil editions. For a teacher/librarian-friendly summary of the book, have a look at Amal’s Tweet-thread.
Love, hope, and strength, from us to you,
Deshan and Amal
A NOTE ON PRINTING YOUR OWN COPY: The book is 92-pages but you can use half the paper: the printable PDF lets you do two pages on a single side of A4 paper (46 sheets). If your printer can do double-sided prints, you can print the whole book on 23 sheets of A4.
