Association for school and children’s books in Madagascar

The German association “Madagaskar Schul und Kinderbücher e.V.” / “Association for school and children’s books in Madagascar” is still searching for more supporting members. Even if the association’s head quarter is in Germany you can easily become a member if you live in another country. There are for example three members from Norway in the association. The yearly membership fee on min € 20/ NOK 200/ $ 30.

As a member you support the development of literacy and literature in Madagascar through Vakoka Vakiteny. This is a very important work as literature is a mostly unknown term for most people in Madagascar, and because the children have no books, especially not in their mother tongue. Our books are always in modern Malagasy language, richly illustrated and printed with high quality. They are mostly written by Malagasy authors and deal with stories from a Malagasy everyday life recognizable for children and youth.

As a member you will in return for your membership receive electronic newsletters about the work every three months directly from us in Madagascar, and you will also receive news from the association. You are free to ask for whatever information material you need if you want to do extra publicity for the association, and your work will of course be honored here on the blog.

This is the application form in English:

If you need it in another language (e.g. German or Norvegian) or if you need some more information, please contact the head of the association Dr. Klaus-Christian Küspert on kuspert@smbara.org.

Finally everything is OK with Uncle Tefy

Tojo has been successful in Antananarivo. He managed to transfer a readable version of the manuscript to the printing house. He returned to Toliara with this good news yesterday, and according to the printing house the test print will also come very soon. So now it won’t take long time before we finally can see Uncle Tefy in a real hardcover book!

Tojo is on his way to Antananarivo

We estimated Tojo to go to Antananarivo to meet the printing house in the middle of next week. Fortunately he has already finished the new version of the manuscript which will be readable for the printing house, so he left Toliara a few hours ago. When he comes to Antananarivo tomorrow morning he will meet the printing house at once and look at the files together with their technician.

Have a nice trip, Tojo, and good luck! We really hope that the printing house now can open and use the files, so that we soon will be able to see the test print of Uncle Tefy.

Solutions for Uncle Tefy

Tojo is searching for solutions to make the manuscript of Uncle Tefy readable for the printing house. His own suggestion is to go to Antananarivo himself to talk to the people and try to transfer the file directly from his computer to the printer server. Anyway he will of course make a backup file with an older version of InDesign. He hopes to find the needed software soon, hopefully this afternoon. Then he has to do the layout work once again as he did with the version before. Anyway this will only imply a temporarily suspension of the printing.

Delays for Uncle Tefy

We have had a meeting with the printing house in Antananarivo printing our new book Uncle Tefy and have got the information that they are not able to read the files containing the manuscript on the CD we sent them. The reason is that the printing house has an older version of InDesign not being compatible with the newer one we have used. They are also not able to upgrade their system.

This means that the test print of Uncle Tefy must be delayed and probably that Tojo has to do all the work once again with an older version of InDesign. But we are not giving up, and still hoping to see the test print of the book soon.