Children’s Workshop! Jungle Theme!
As part of the “Finnish-Swedish Culture Week,” the Finnish Institute will host a children’s workshop at Zou-No-Hana Terrace (Yokohama)!
We will welcome Finnish-Swedish picture book author Annika Sandelin and illustrator Linda Bondestam from Finland. There will be a reading session of their picture book Silkmonkey’s Laughter. Later the authors will hold a craft workshop designed to inspire children’s creativity and imagination. The theme of the workshop is the Jungle! The workshop is aimed at children aged 7–8, and participants will make paper flowers that they can take home with them.
Advance registration is required to participate. Tickets for accompanying parents are not necessary.
📅 Date: Monday, November 3, 2025
📌 Venue: Zou-No-Hana Terrace (1 Kaigan-dori, Naka-ku, Yokohama 231-0002)
⏰ Time: Group 1: 13:00–14:15 | Group 2: 14:15–15:30
🌐 Language: English (with Japanese interpretation)
🎟 Participation Fee: Free (register via Peatix)
Linda Bondestam (1977) is a Finnish illustrator who has collaborated with numerous authors in Finland and abroad. Overlapping themes in the books are diversity and tolerance, often pictured in a warm and humorous way. Her wish is to contribute to a more understanding and tolerant world by giving a voice and shape to characters who differ from the average, to creatures that deserve to be understood and loved and who make this world a much more interesting and magical place.
She loves using a wide range of materials: paint, pencil, collage, crayons but finishes her work using photoshop as it allows her to stay playful true the whole process.
Linda has been nominated for a number of prizes for her colourful, vivid and playful illustrations. Most recently she won the Nordic Council prize in 2017 (Animals that no one has seen except for us). As the world is a very hectic place today Linda strives to create books that make people slow down and spend a moment together, books that really engage children and adults alike.
Annika Sandelin is an award-winning Finland-Swedish children’s book author who worked as a librarian for many years. She has written around twenty books in various genres and for different age groups. These include the popular Yokos nattbok series for young readers and several poetry books for children.
She has created five picture books together with illustrator Linda Bondestam, of which Säg hej! (Say Hello!) and Silkesapans skratt (The Silken Monkey’s Laughter) have been made into animated films. Annika is also a writing course leader and translator and one of the founding members of the theatre group Teater Tapir.
Humour is an important ingredient in Annika’s books, which always strive to inspire empathy for different kinds of people and animals. She wants to highlight what is universal in humanity and allow readers to recognise something of themselves in the characters in her books, even when they seem different on the surface. Her rhyming poems have a contagious joy of words that awakens the reader’s own creativity and desire to play with words.
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