Gloriana Roebeck from Letava is a captivating author and one of the creatives behind Samoa’s First 10 Book Series for children launching on 28 September.  

This initiative is called Tatou Faitau or Let’s Read by Asia Foundation in partnership with Samoa Early Learning Foundation, a local charitable organisation dedicated to enhancing children's learning, especially literacy and reading.  Tatou Faitau or Let's Read, aims to foster a love for reading among young children while preserving and promoting Samoa’s rich culture.

Samoa’s first book series is part of a 10,000-book electronic library from across Asia and the Pacific, translated into 60 languages.  This collaborative effort brings together the talents of twelve local authors and illustrators. Each book in the series is designed to resonate with Samoan children, featuring stories that reflect their everyday lives, cultural practices and unique environment.

As a child she wanted to be several things and writing stories was just one of them.  She started writing in Year 9, when she was introduced to tools like similes, metaphors and personifications.  “I had access to books of course but I always read them faster than my parents could supply them so I started writing to keep myself and my friends entertained at school during lunch”.

The inspiration behind her writing isn’t anyone or something.  “For as long as career paths have been on my mind, pushing typewriter buttons has been top of the list because I like the clicking sound it makes. I knew from maybe 9 years old that I could write better than I could draw, so, one day, when the class was tasked with making Mother’s Day cards for their mums and I was feeling pretty down about my inability to draw, I wrote her a poem instead”.

The Ouchy, Roebeck’s book is inspired by her niece Esther and memories of preparing for a cyclone.   “I was really missing my niece Esther, she was born in the middle of the Covid lockdowns, and I was getting ready to meet her only for the second time at this point. We were also in the middle of battening down the hatches for a big cyclone that was heading our way. And I wanted to find a bonding activity she and I could do - so I wrote a story about a little girl with the same name as her so she could relate to it”.

“The most challenging part of working on the book series was evolving it from a piece that was ‘words only’ to ‘words and illustrations’ without losing the integrity of the story”. Her work has been published before consisting of two pieces that were printed as part of the Tofā Sasa’a publication, a compilation of short stories. She hopes to work on other projects, myths and legends in Samoa and how to make these accessible to others.  

Gloriana advises you to trust your instincts always, stick to your guns sometimes and know when to let go. It’s called editing for a reason.

The official launch of the Samoa 10-book series will take place on 28 September, with events scheduled at various schools, early learning centres and community reading programs across the country. More than 2000 copies of the book series will be donated to schools, organisations and groups in Samoa.