- A new look at life in our national parks
Tea Time Stories is a comic book series whose mission is to build a love and knowledge of our Sri Lankan jungles, the animals that live in it, and their conservation, together with kids from Sri Lanka and around the world. Tea Time Stories wants to help kids fall in love with the jungle and its creatures, and encourages them to want to help protect it as well as to understand just how much Sri Lanka’s jungles and forests have to offer.
Conceptualised by Minalee Madanayake, the idea for Tea Time Stories found its roots in her head during a visit to Kumana National Park in 2019. “I was in the back of my dad’s jeep thinking of a story he’d told me the night before and wishing more people could hear about it. That was how I came up with the idea,” Minalee shared.
“My initial idea was to do an animated series and children’s book, but then decided to go with a comic book. My long-term goal for Tea Time Stories is to turn the comic book series into an animated series,” she said.
A videographer by day, Minalee is the Head of Pre-production at the video production house Viral Media LK. By night, over the last two years, Minalee has slowly and carefully nurtured the idea of Tea Time Stories, bringing it closer to fruition. Its first edition, The Tale of the White Elephant, which is based on her father’s sighting of the white elephant in 1996 at Yala National Park, will become available for purchase in mid-October. Written by Minalee herself, and illustrated by Akila Weerasinghe, Tea Time Stories is inspired in part by the comic books Minalee used to read as a child, and by the adventures of her father in Sri Lanka’s national parks.
One of the more usual things about Tea Time Stories is its premise. “The comics are set in the future, in 2036,” Minalee explained, adding: “I wanted to show readers a world where going to the jungle isn’t as accessible as it used to be, and, in a way, to show that if we don’t make a change now, this might be the reality of 2036. In the story, my dad and my mom, now grandparents, go back in time when telling their fictional granddaughter stories from when my dad used to visit all the different national parks and used to actually be able to track and look at animals in a way that is very different from now, where you get a call and go to the sighting.”
By alternating between the future and the past, Minalee creates a world that can help kids understand how wildlife parks have changed over the years, as have our attitudes towards wildlife and jungles, while also helping them understand that our wildlife is fragile and needs to be conserved.
Immortalising her parents (and her dog Fergie) as characters in Tea Time Stories, Minalee creates a storytelling format that not only allows her to recount some of her favourite stories of her father’s jungle experiences, but also allows for her to be able to tell other people’s stories as well using her parents’ characters Aji Seeya and Nadi Archchi as storytelling tools.
“I knew I wanted the characters to look and feel Sri Lankan. I want Sri Lankans to be able to relate to Tea Time stories and its characters. For me, growing up, I was introduced to very international comic books like Asterix and TinTin. There was nothing I could relate to and I wanted Tea Time Stories to be different.”
This flexible storytelling format was one of Minalee’s biggest challenges in creating Tea Time Stories. “I knew I wanted to set it in a way where other people could come tell their stories, but for a long time I struggled with how to tell it. Then I thought about starting in the future and going back in time to tell each story. I only got the idea to do this a year after I had the initial idea, but once I started writing, it took me two days to write it all before I was able to send it out to publishing houses, which was probably the scariest part because it was my first time writing, but I got good feedback,” she said.
One of Minalee’s favourite parts of the Tea Time Stories journey was the people she met along the way, particularly Akila, the illustrator behind Tea Time Stories. She shared: “I had done research on artists for Tea Time Stories, and I knew I wanted the artist who worked with me to be Sri Lankan. I wanted everything to do with Tea Time Stories to be Sri Lankan, from the characters to the artist to the publishing house to everything. I found so many amazing talented artists in Sri Lanka. I had no idea, there were that many.
“From my top three choices, Akila was my favourite and I was really hoping he would agree to come on board and he did. Working with him has been such an amazing experience. He’s really easy to work with and his work is amazing.”
Tea Time Stories is being published by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications, with its first print run expected to take place in mid-October. Based on how it is received, Minalee shared that she will begin working on subsequent issues, adding that she has already had about six issues planned out based on her father’s personal experiences and welcomes others sharing their own personal stories with her to potentially be included in an edition of Tea Time Stories.
By sharing true experiences around the jungles of Sri Lanka, Minalee hopes Tea Time Stories will bring inspiration to our country when we need it most. “The future is not yet written, so let’s make sure it’s ours.”
To keep up to date on Tea Time Stories and to place pre-orders, visit the Tea Time Stories Instagram page (@teatimestorieslk).