Reena Balding is a Tasmanian-born writer and composer. Her recent collection of bilingual children’s songs, called Ayo! Let’s Go! Songs for children in Indonesian and English, is written in both English and Indonesian. After living in Indonesia for seven years, Reena was inspired to introduce Indonesian words and phrases to her young sons through song. She is now based in Canberra, Australia, where she writes picture books, and teaches yoga to adults and children.

Ayo! Let’s Go! was launched at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in October 2016.

There will be a Canberra launch in mid January 2017.

Coming soon

A teachers guide for the CD will be available in 2017. This is a collaboration with an Australian primary school teacher who also spent a number of years in Indonesia.

Contact Reena for more information at reena.balding at gmail.com.

About the blog

I began this blog in 2014 when I was living in Bali. At that time I was very interested in the Indonesian language and the state of Indonesian language teaching in Australian schools. I did quite a lot of research into this, wondering how the songs and books that I was writing could be useful in an education setting. After a while I expanded to write more about children’s books in general. I’ve become more active with SCBWI since returning to Australia and am spending as much time as I can on submitting picture book manuscripts.

Some useful links

• Society for children’s book writers and illustrators – SCBWI
• Beta Lisboa – yoga practitioner and kids yoga teacher
• Songwriting: Writing the lyrics by Pat Pattison, Berklee College of Music – free (or almost) on Coursera
• The ACT Writers Centre
• Ubud Writers & Readers FestivalUbud Writers & Readers Festival
• Ganesha Bookshop Bali
• The Green School Shop
• Asia Bookroom
• Young Yoga Masters
• 12 X 12 Picture Book Writing Challenge
• Australian Society of Indonesian Language Educators