Children’s Literature in Indonesia is generally associated with oral story-telling and folklore. With the establishment of the state-owned publisher Balai Pustaka in 1917 traditional stories started to be circulated in print, giving birth to the publication of children’s books. However, as a part of Dutch colonial policies, Balai Pustaka was instructed to favour the colonial  perspective over the style and voice of the original stories. In order to circumvent this restriction and open the stage more for silenced local literature, some policy changes were eventually deemed necessary, and traditional stories were treated with more respect  In the next stage, even translations of Western fairy tales were adapted to the local target language and culture.  This paper aims to investigate the early stage of Indonesian published children’s literature in general and the compromise made through translation / textual transformations to give voice to local cultural expressions and values. The text focused in this study is Koetjing Setiwelan, a Javanese translation of Puss in Boots published by Balai Pustaka in 1922. A comparative analysis of this translation (text and illustrations) will be conducted in order to shed light on the development of colonial Indonesia’s children’s literature, and the compromises made due to Dutch colonial publishing policies.