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Traveling With the Turtles

12 September, 2011 10:41:00 Jim Parisi

Don’t ever fool yourself: breaking into the Young Reader market is a tough, highly competitive arena. The story needs to be basic yet compassionate and the illustrations have to be alluring; and you’ve got to sell it to the parents, too. Afterall, they are the ones reading the book to their children, not to mention paying for it in the first place. You also have to find your niche, a hook to present your story like no other before it. For every Dr. Seuss, there are literally thousands of failed attempts by aspiring authors. Enter Benrali, the pen name for the American born Guyanese author/illustrator Aman Waseem Ben Ali. He recently entered the Young Reader scene with two independently published books that both have turtles as their main characters. The author uses prints of his own woodcut blocks and he has developed a form of storytelling that integrates various cultures, including an Indo-Persian rhyme scheme called the ghazal, with a markedly non-Western meter to it, and the folklore tales of Guyana, specifically moongazers from the indigenous Arawak tribe. Needless to say, he doesn’t have a lot of competition with these combined art forms. In fact, it is the first children’s book to use this Indo-Persian style of rhyming couplets. Manni is the title of the first book released by the author, as well as the name of the main character, a young sea turtle that the elusive moongazers help to guide and protect as he enters the sea and unites with his family. The story and art make up a book that children clearly can enjoy and the prints are of an artistic level that adults can appreciate, too. The entire package, in fact, is quite impressive, printed on high grade paper stock. Jupiter, a box turtle, is the main character in The Turtle’s Dream and Keys, Benrali’s second publication and the storyline is possibly more accessible to young readers than his first work. Jupiter awakens from a winter sleep to enjoy the springtime sun, nap under a cluster of ivy and dream of creatures who inhabited the earth millions of years ago and are now extinct. The artwork in this book is very detailed, stunning and the message is a positive one for young minds, a story that encourages the imaginations of the readers’ minds. Benrali graduated with a BFA from Parsons School of Art and Design in New York City. His award winning prints have been exhibited extensively and his poetry has been appeared in several publications, including Cider Press and Poetic Voices. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. I found it interesting that the author used the death of his girlfriend (who had a pet box turtle) as inspiration to write about an animal he admittedly would never have had an interest in if the unfortunate event hadn’t occurred. Benrali also bucked the system by ignoring the advice of several publishers by not including human beings in his stories and for this self-assuredness he is to be commended because his stories really work well without them.