How do you teach young children to treat everyone equally? Renske Keijzer (20) and three fellow students set to work with this question when they have to set up their own company for their education. What they come up with is a special children’s book. “We want to make children aware that every child is different, but should always be treated equally.”
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The book that Renske devised with her fellow students is called Klas Van Sas. Sas is the class mascot of a group of school children. This cuddly toy, in the shape of a green monster, goes home with the children to see how they celebrate their birthday. There Sas discovers the differences between the children and their families. A child has two mothers and another family is not so well off and gets food from the food bank.
“With this story we show the differences between the children, but we also turn it around,” says Renske. “Every child also has a strong point and the differences that exist do not make one less than the other.”
Assignment
The Klas Van Sas and the company that sells the book originated from a school assignment for the Commercial Economics course at the Hogeschool Leiden. “In the first block, we were divided into groups based on our interests,” says Renske. “What I share with my fellow students Merel, Rosalie and Tom is that all four of us think equality is very important. From there, the idea arose to make this children’s book.”
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“We first looked for a writer for the story, but we still thought it was nice to make the text and the drawings ourselves,” Renske continues. “The four of us came up with the ideas and Merel is the one who really wrote the stories. She also made the drawings with a friend. Rosalie had a children’s book author in her network who helped us. It took us about twelve weeks to write. In the meantime, we also had other tasks. Tom, for example, did the finances and I did the social media and looked for a printer.”
Educational
“I especially learned that there is more to making a book than you think,” says Renske later. “We had a bit of a hassle with a printer. Every delivery was accompanied by books with ink stains or even with a blank inside. Then I had to go back to fix it. That takes a lot of energy, but that way you learn that not everything goes without saying.”
“We also discovered how important good communication is within your company. In the beginning things sometimes went wrong, but now the four of us are a really nice group. I have also discovered that the challenge of entrepreneurship suits me well. I wouldn’t be making another children’s book in a hurry, but I’d like to have my own company.”
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Sales and comments
Since March, Klas Van Sas has been for sale in your own webshop† Of the hundred copies printed, about 65 have now been sold. Mainly due to warm contacts, but there are also customers who know how to find the book via social media. “The reactions we get are very positive,” says Renske. “For example, my neighbor reads a story from the book to her children every evening. The girls next door sometimes come over to tell me about it. They are still too young to articulate what they think, but judging by their faces, they really like Sas.”