VANIA ANDANI PURIDA (30802300005)
'"I've often heard ghost haunted voice," said Brian. Qonita asked about the sound of the ghost. "Kuuu...Kuu!" said Brian mimicked the ghost voice.' A good children literature must have a lively, engaging story that doesn't underestimate them by balancing grounded fun and unique learning. While it may not break new ground, Qonita in the Old House does a solid in the children’s adventure story book style. You can feel the dramatically children feel of the quote above too.
Qonita in the Old House as a title is a part of a book series titled Qonita’s Adventures and was published by Bestari Kids. This specific story book is written by Setiawan G. Sasongko and illustrated by Yudha Benny. Most of the series has the genre referring to children's premise of adventure, though this one has a smidge of light mystery to it. And of course, being a children's book, this story is most fitting for a kids audience, specifically 9-12 range. It's because of the 16 paragraph, not including the Indonesian and English text with seemingly hard sentences.
Summarizing it, it’s a story of Qonita and her friend Brian finding out and investigating an old house that seems haunted. Qonita was the brave girl, while Brian was portrayed as the scaredy-cat one. It's drip feed through the narrative that the haunting comes from something else. But whatever those are, they're being hinted at it through all the pages. The noise "Kuu...Kuu..." was emphasized through the both kids' ongoing exploration. They're accidentally greeted by a bunch of small animals that lived there to come out. Before meeting with the culprit of the sounds, the story book provided a section catered to explaining highlighted animals of the story. It's filled with facts and trivia's that's great for children. Of course, most attentive readers might've pierce together how the haunting came to be.
I bought this book a long-ass time during my time as a child, I wasn't privy to the series but I thought the illustrations looked nice and my parents liked that it has an English translations. Though as I grew up with more knowledge, the added English text despite being most parents’ choice of picking it up, I find that they’re a bit wonky, possibly unchecked machine-translated wonky; still, they were a nice bonus.
While I don't know if the book is still being printed, from a reader consumption standpoint, I'd say it's still a pretty great snatch. The price for this was 28k rupiahs (Though granted, this was 2014) and it’s made out of seemingly similar kind of paper of buffalos so it’s not hard to flip nor easy to rip. Perfect for my old messy and grabby hands.
Now, I could tell that the Qonita's Adventure tale embarks the character, Qonita, on adventures in various settings. Kid me already liked her just from this entry alone due to her being a curious and courageous child, it makes her a positive role-model without being overly didactic, despite being placed next to the overly cowardice Brian. However, I was surprised to learn of their consistent strength in making the book a fun learning experience. Each entry always had informational content about animals or nature.
These content have a tangent-worth of text explaining animals of the book for those interested in more of them that is being shown in the narrative. However, it doesn’t disrupt the progression of the story. To top it off in the educational section, this book also contains a minigame of a maze relating to a plot point of the story at the end, as well as having a vocabulary section at the end for those that read the English text.
As this was an old book I bought, I actually tried to pass this onto my 8-year-old sister for her school stuff, but when I asked if she liked reading this book, she said that it’s reminisce of books she had to read at school and that turned her off from enjoying it earnestly (and since her impression of English is hearing me speak with it during her class hours, it doesn’t help the stigma). I suppose despite the fun cliché plot of haunted house and the childish banter between Qonita and Brian, this storybook really is more suited to ages where they can appreciate long section of words of a simple story.
While I don't believe I've heard of Mr. Sasongko getting awards for this title in the series specifically, I could still appreciate what the author's and his team's purpose in creating the story book's narrative. This children's adventure story book wants to spark curiosity in kids for any situations, making the reader feel like they’re exploring alongside Qonita's curiosity, and leave them feeling empowered. With a design that is stylish and recognizable for the series, including the illustrations are aren’t busy or distracting while still being colorful and cheerful, as well as an added English translations for its section on animal trivias, maze game, and vocabulary section, it's a great pick if you don't want the children's readers to feel make fun of. At its core, it’s a children narrative story book aimed at 9-12 years old, which means that it has plot, characters, and settings that are moral, connected, and educational; I believe that this book achieves this pretty well.
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