Rafil's Guidelines for Children's Book Award

In line with the spirit of the NEP, there must be a minimum 51% bumiputera ownership of the works, and involvement in the creation of the works at all stages, i.e.: conception of idea, authorship and typing. If you are an individual, non-bumiputera writer, you MUST partner 2 (two) bumiputera individuals or companies, incorporate a writing body and register with Melayu.

In the creation process of the work, at least 51% of the woolgathering/writing/typing MUST be done by your bumiputera partners. At the end of the writing project, you must submit a report describing how many words were typed by each author. At least 30% of the complex/big words need to be attributed to the bumiputera writers. e.g., somnambulist, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, etc.

In addition to that, at least 51% of the characters in the work MUST be bumiputera. Special consideration shall be given to stories with bumiputera protagonists.

I was in the midst of sending out the publicity for new Saturday's Readings@Seksan and happened to google Rafil Elyas' name. Totally hilarious piece Melayu's Guidelines for Children's Book Award published last November in The Nut Graph popped up. It wouldn't be satire if there weren't more than a grain of truth sprinkled into it.

If you need more appetite whetting to entice you along next Saturday, here's a song from Rafil's band Panda Head Curry.