There is a child’s book next. This time, I could not chat with the author; because this book is a translated book. Its name is: “Do You Want To Be My Friend?”. It is a book by Susie Morgenstern, published by Fom Publishing House, and translated into Turkish by Zehra Canfesci. Susie Morgenstern is an author who’s American but living in France. Her books are among the most published, read and awarded books in Europe in the field of children and youth literature.
After my son Arda Ege was born, I have had a chance to know the new generation of children’s books. Obviously I also saw children’s books, which I find very meaningless, are promoted as if they were incredibly inspiring, creative stories. In Turkey, there’s a rapidly growing market in publishing child’s books. Still, I think it is an area that should be recognized and investigated precisely.
I will tell you why I decided to write this book after I share a brief information about the book first.
The book tells the story of Hedwige, a little girl who moved from Paris to a small town in France with her family who wants to build a quieter life. Having left all her friends in Paris, Hedwige is lonely. She learns that when her parents moved to a new location, they were tested and evaluated by Human Resources to find a job. She also begins to try finding new friends with HR systems and tests by inspiration.
It’s a cute story. I think the book will be more suitable for 2nd year students in the age range of 7-8. I suggest it to readers looking for an alternative in children’s books.
The one who introduced me to this publishing house and the book is an acquaintance and a pleasant conversation that follows in a meeting. We coincided with the Fom Publishing owner Fuat Ömer Altay in a recepcion. He’s also a young, relaxed and fun profile. The conversation deepened when he learned that in a writer’s meeting, I’m from business world, Human Resources department in particular, because he has a short HR history too. Then he said that these things are not for him, and after 3 years of internship in Can Publications, he decides to set up his own publishing house and opens the FOM Publishing. Coordinator of the FOM Publishing House Neslihan Erol has worked as a human resources specialist in a large company in the private sector for several years. Dynamic, creative, a young woman who pursues her dreams. She decides to do his favorite job, leaves her job in the private sector and goes on publishing as well.
I cannot do it without saying this again; there really is so much to be inspired by the Y line of our generation. Above all, their courage, self-confidence, self-belief, desire for doing things for oneself and representing values and principles in life are clearer and more determined than ours. At least, they are not afraid to try. We had a pleasant short conversation with Mr. Altay and then Mrs. Erol. They publish beautiful examples of children’s and youth’s literature from world in this publishing house they opened 6 years ago. I think it’s a wise choice to choose only children’s and youth’s books. I have to say that I also liked them in term of the paper quality and graphic design of books.
Of course, when they learned that my field was Human Resources, it came to the topic of human selection. Are HR specs consist of human tricks? Do assessment centers and tests provide people with the opportunity to evaluate and understand their capability? What are we looking at when recruiting and evaluating potential? Things like these are revolving around. The tools that are used suggest that the new evaluation systems give serious clues to the candidate and important output to evaluators in HR. As I said,communicating individually with the candidate, spending time to get to know them, listening to the inner voice and evaluating it with all senses are required to become a leader and an expert in Human Resources, they suggested this book to me. I was very pleased when they told me the story of the book. Then they are surprised and they sent the book to my office. That’s how we became acquainted with the book “Do you want to be a friend?”
Hedwige benefited from the human resources systems to make friends. What are you doing to get to know people?