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10/10/2022
Kuda Foiy | Exhibitor
Kuda Foiy was created with the sole intention of publishing Dhivehi books for primary school kids. It is the proud publisher of the Dhivehi translations of the famous Billie B Brown series by Australian author Sally Rippin.
In her books, Sally Rippin writes about feelings and challenges a primary school kid faces every day. There are fun illustrations and word art to break up chunks of text that may be daunting to kids when they first attempt to read alone.
17/06/2022
We are at Fun Fair
16/06/2022
The new books are now available for purchase at Mywonderbox
We are supper excited to stock 5 brand new books from Lara Aman Dhivehi Children's books series. Great for kids age 6+.
These are a translation of the bestselling Billie B Brown series by the Australian author Sally Rippen published locally by Kuda Foiy. This series have already been translated to 15 different languages.
Many of our most beloved books from classics to contemporary are translated to so many languages and it's exciting to see some being translated to Dhivehi too.
Do drop by and check it out sometime.
85/- per book
06/06/2022
We are psyched to launch 5 NEW books of the Lara Aman series! Order through our page today! MVR 85 per book.
Arrangements are underway to make these available at bookshops as well - stay tuned for updates!
20/05/2022
We are excited to give you a sneak peak at the 5 new books of series that we are working on to publish soon.
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Story behind the Lara Aman books
I’ve always liked stories that start with “It all started when…”, so let me start like that. It really actually all started when my 7 year old son was given a reading challenge at school. To qualify for the Proficient Reader badge, you have to read 50 Dhivehi books within the school year. These books need to have a minimum of 20 pages, with each page having at least 5 lines of text. I searched high and low for books that matched these criteria. I was able to find some, but there weren’t enough content or variety to choose from. The thing is, there aren’t 50 age appropriate Dhivehi books for them to read!
My son had no complaints when it came to reading English books. There are so many options to choose – from mysteries to fantasy. His all-time favorite series is the Billie B Brown by award winning Australian author, Sally Rippin. Her books are amazing. My son could directly relate to her stories. In this series, Sally Rippin writes about feelings and challenges a primary school kid faces every day. There are fun illustrations and word art to break up chunks of text that may be daunting to kids when they first attempt to read alone.
It pained me that there were so less Dhivehi books for children. I wished there were stories like the Billie B Brown series in Dhivehi. This led me to email their publisher, Hardie Grant Egmont, asking for options for translating the series. To my surprise, they got back to me within a couple of days - turned out that the series has already been translated to 15 different languages. The series has sold over 5 million copies around the world. The staff at Hardie Grant Egmont were really wonderful and patient with an individual newbie like me.
Few weeks after my first email, I had with me, the purchased rights to translate and publish these books. I then registered the “Kuda Foiy” business name. I assigned my good friend Sidhu to translate the books - she runs a little translating business. I edited and did the formatting using the files provided by the publisher. It was a bit tricky at first as I was new to Adobe InDesign and everything needed to be ‘right-to-left’.
I work full time so I only got to work on the books during the night after the kids sleep. My biggest challenge or hardship came from the fact that Dhivehi language doesn't have a proper dictionary. I especially noticed that our dictionary lacks the tenses of verbs. Since the books are being done for kids and for them to learn and love Dhivehi, getting the spelling and grammar right were my top most priorities. I call up and Viber my Dhivehi language guru friends to ask for spellings and tricky word translations. To be honest, it's been a huge learning experience for me.
I was fortunate to get my books checked by Mohamed Waheed (Madulu Waheed) at the Dhivehibahuge Academy. That gave me the confidence in the books from a linguistic point of view.
Throughout this journey, my kids have been cheering me. My daughter’s name is Lara, which the series is named after. My son, Raif is excited to see his favorite series come out in Dhivehi. He was my very first reader – he read the first drafts. And to my delight, I have noticed his Dhivehi reading improving. His aversion towards reading Dhivehi books has been curbed and he doesn’t complain now (as much!). I take this as a huge win!
I am proud to contribute to the much-needed collection of Dhivehi reading material for children.
