Karl Schembri
I wrote the very first draft of ‘It-Tifel li Salva d-Dinja’ in one go on a little notebook in Cairo, in a cafe in Tahrir Square, in January 2013. I wrote it as a short story in English. The original idea was built around the image of a little boy with no friends, a loner, perhaps bullied or just picked on, who could change the world because of an intense, unlikely friendship with the sun, against all odds and breaking all laws. I also wanted that friendship, or love, to be as undefined as possible, refusing to be pigeon-holed, staying unique and extraordinary.
I didn’t think much of writing for children, although it’s something I love to do and experiment with.
I was mostly concerned with a pretty simple story to be told in its purest form. The placing, the categorisation, the marketing, all come much later. In fact, when I first approached Chris Gruppetta of Merlin a few years ago with the English original, he politely turned it down although he admitted liking the story. So he added that if I were to rewrite it into Maltese and expand it, he would be interested. I took it as a challenge to be disciplined and take this on as a serious project, which also included expanding the story into six chapters. Chris put me in touch with Clare Azzopardi and Rachel Portelli, who are the editors behind the Tikka Qari series, and from then on it was a back and forth of ideas and literary pruning.
Throughout this process, Clare and Rachel helped me immensely to make sure that the story was speaking to children. For example, I love using long sentences with never ending brackets and deviations, digressions of quirks and distractions, as a way of being playful with language and teasing the reader. But that doesn’t work all that well with children who need to focus on the essence of the story. So in our back and forth I think we managed to find the right balance that still introduces children to the playfulness of language – that a story is not just a story, but it’s also about the little seemingly inconsequential details that colour it. Like life.
I didn’t think much of writing for children, although it’s something I love to do and experiment with.
I was mostly concerned with a pretty simple story to be told in its purest form. The placing, the categorisation, the marketing, all come much later. In fact, when I first approached Chris Gruppetta of Merlin a few years ago with the English original, he politely turned it down although he admitted liking the story. So he added that if I were to rewrite it into Maltese and expand it, he would be interested. I took it as a challenge to be disciplined and take this on as a serious project, which also included expanding the story into six chapters. Chris put me in touch with Clare Azzopardi and Rachel Portelli, who are the editors behind the Tikka Qari series, and from then on it was a back and forth of ideas and literary pruning.
Throughout this process, Clare and Rachel helped me immensely to make sure that the story was speaking to children. For example, I love using long sentences with never ending brackets and deviations, digressions of quirks and distractions, as a way of being playful with language and teasing the reader. But that doesn’t work all that well with children who need to focus on the essence of the story. So in our back and forth I think we managed to find the right balance that still introduces children to the playfulness of language – that a story is not just a story, but it’s also about the little seemingly inconsequential details that colour it. Like life.
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