Contest extended till May 10, 2019 

Welcome to the 2019 edition of Retell, Remix and Rejoice, StoryWeaver’s annual storytelling contest. Every year, on World Storytelling Day, we invite our community to join us and celebrate stories by hosting the Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest. And this year you can let your creative juices flow in 10 languages. More languages. More original stories for everyone to enjoy.

This year our focus remains on Level 1 and Level 2 books for our early readers, with stories that reflect their lives and the world around them. The themes have been handpicked by our editors.

Themes for this year

Family, friends and neighbourhood stories: Stories that explore children’s relationships with family, friends, and even pets as well as their home environments and neighbourhoods.

Funny stories: Themes that use humour to tell a story and promise to make you laugh.  

Sports stories: Football, cricket, gilli danda — stories that involve playing a sport and the community around it. Know of an inspirational sports person who deserves his or her story? We are listening!

School stories: Life in a school, friendships in school, teachers, time spent in school and even lunchtime in school!

Reading levels

For this year’s edition, we’re asking you to be as creative as you can and convey as much as you can – using as few words as possible. Use our reading level guidelines as you create your stories.

Regional languages first

Through the contest our aim is to promote original stories in English, Bengali, French, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish and Urdu. If you have an original story to tell in your language then we are all ears. We want to discover writing talent in the above mentioned languages and you could be one of our stars.

The win-win situation

Three finalists will win a hamper of books plus a one-on-one editorial feedback session with one of our editors. One grand finalist will win the chance to have his or her book re-illustrated!

Guidelines for submission

1. The contest runs from March 20 2019 to April 20, 2019.

2. All stories submitted must be your original work.

3. Stories must be in English, Bengali, French, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish and Urdu.

4. Participants must be over the age of 18 to participate.

5. By submitting your work to Retell, Remix and Rejoice 2019, you are agreeing to a CC-BY 4.0 license being applied to it. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. To know more about CC-BY 4.0, click here.

6. Terms and conditions apply. All final decisions rest with StoryWeaver. For more read here.  

For any queries, do write to us at [email protected]

How to enter

You can submit your story for Retell, Remix and Rejoice 2019 by using illustrations from our image bank here. Here’s also a quick video tutorial on how to create stories on StoryWeaver. 

Note: You will have to sign up or log in first to access the contest page on StoryWeaver. 

You can enter the Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest page, by clicking on the button below.

 

Enter Contest Now

 

All the best!

 

 

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This year, we'll be taking some of our authors and illustrators to classrooms and reading centres around the country. These are authors and illustrators who have contributed to the digital-first, STEM books that have been developed with support from Oracle. We're organizing these mini-events in association with our outreach partners. Pratham Books is eager to create more opportunities for our contributors to interact with young readers from across India, and this seems like a great start!

Neema (aka Bijal, our editor) and Cheekoo (aka Karanjeet Kaur, our author) trudged up to the Tamarind Tree School, Dahanu on a very rainy day for story sessions with the kids. Here is that story...

The Tamarind Tree School is an experiment in trying to bring in much needed equity in the education domain through open-source. The aim is to open up the world for the first generation learners of the tribal communities of Dahanu through a learner driven environment using the pedagogy of activity based learning. The school, in its 7th year of operation, has 150 students (90% belong to tribal villages in the neighbourhood) where technology is used extensively with the educators supplementing conversations around learning. 

The biggest impediment in this endeavour is not a physical one. It is the long history and the weight of oppression borne silently by these tribal communities. This effort to draw them out into the light is an exercise that needs to be handled with utmost empathy. 

Our sessions:

Neema was welcomed with open arms as courses on food, seasonality and bio-diversity are an important part of the syllabus here. The teachers put up a play at the school assembly on the advantages of eating with the seasons. This set the tempo for all the learning conversations to follow. Bijal's story sessions with Grade 3, 5 and 6 students included everyone talking about their favourite and least liked veggies and fruits, the Warli names of what Neema likes to eat, an informal quiz of what grew when & why..and a formal quiz at the end of the session with a video of Sam (an educator at Tamarind Tree) on how he has finally understood why his mother always stressed the need to eat the fruits and vegetables available in the season. The kids plan to make their own Dahanu seasonal calendar with Sam!

In the assembly, the teachers introduced three new words to the kids - ‘trash, biodegradable and recycle’ through a play. And then Karanjeet went on to narrate the story of naughty Cheekoo learning a lesson in cleanliness and social responsibility. The key conversation to emerge from these sessions was one where the Grade 7 students of Tamarind Tree School have now decided to embark on a 4 day clean-up drive of their neighbouring pada within Sogve village. The recce and pre-planning for this initiative are on as we type this up:)

And some other stuff we just have to share:

It was a wet week in Mumbai and Dahanu was green, silent and gorgeous. Brown chikkos hung low outside our classroom window as we sat chatting about our Cheekoo and her story:)

The cafeteria is a very important learning space. The students read-aloud the lunch menu, make a note of the displayed array of raw materials for cooking the day’s fare, comment (preferably in long sentences) on what they thought of the meal and then help with the clean-up.

The food was yum. And we were CHOMP! CHOMP!ing, MMM…MMMing just like Neema.

Signing off with one of our favourite pics...

You can read What's Neema Eating Today and A Cloud of Trash in 5 languages on StoryWeaver. 

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Saturday morning 9 am. In a narrow lane in Banaswadi, Bengaluru. A school. Vibrant, bursting with energy! Hundreds of children, chattering away  in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu. It's a full house. You can almost smell the excitement in the air. Akkas and Annas have come. New faces with new stories. This was the Storytelling Saturday!

One fine day in March, just before the exams started, we decided to give the tiny-tots a break and let them spend a Saturday listening to stories, thanks to volunteers from Oracle Banaglore. A school that our dear friends at Akshara Foundation do commendable work with, was the chosen destination. We gathered children from standard 4 to 8 and set the ball rolling. Our Pratham Books colleague Shruthi, opened the session by introducing the volunteers, the session and playing a little game with the children to wake them up completely!  Once the entire hall was bubbling with excitement, volunteers from Oracle started with Gayathri Tirthapura and Kabini Amin’s 'Dum Dum-a-Dum Biryani' - story about a sibling team, their love for cooking and the power of Maths! The children listened in rapt attention, joining in every now and then to do mental calculations as Basha and Sainabi went about measuring the ingredients.

Once the story finished, we slipped into the activity mode with children dividing themselves in groups and playing a game based on maths and numbers. This was followed up with another lovely tale, 'Up World, Down World' by Padmaparna Ghosh and Sunaina Coelho which took children through the canopy forests and introduced them to its various inhabitants. The session ended with a prize distribution for the winners in the activities and lot of cookies going around.

 

Pranjala P, one of the Oracle Volunteers had this to say about the session-

"Walking into a land of fantasy is always an exciting experience. When you have a room full of enthusiastic kids with you, it is even more fascinating. Such was my experience as I got the opportunity to be a part of the storytelling initiative at the Government Kannada Higher Primary School. One can never match the children’s level of enthusiasm. As all the volunteers from Oracle, introduced themselves to these adorable children, they were more than happy to greet us and often paid us a compliment with 'Nice name!'.

As Bhanu started with our first story, 'Dum Dum-a-Dum Biryani', and Pramodh helped with the translations to Kannada, children got into the mood and we were all transported into the world of Basha and Sainabi as they cooked the world's best Biryani. I know I was drooling with the details of the Biryani! Once the story was done, we engaged the kids with mathematical activities related to the story. They were all divided into groups and each of us took on responsibility for one group. Of course, we had all the support from the teachers & staff of the school.

Manini took over the next story, 'Up World, Down World', and the children seemed engrossed in the story and the vivid pictures of the little girl, Fatima and her animal friends.

The children were playful and naughty and adorable throughout. There was no hint of inhibitions as they surrounded us, asked questions & shook hands. The cookies and the toffees were a hit with them. Their joyous spirit was beautifully captured by Pradeep.

I would like to thank all the volunteers who came with family or by themselves and made the event a success. Vivek & Pradeep came with their families, Manini brought her mom along,  Bhanu's son was present, Pramodh and Shashank, Mohammed Saleemuddin, Prathik and Devey came too. I know I speak on behalf of all of us, when I say that we had the most wonderful time and I can't express enough gratitude to Payoshni and her team from Pratham Books, for giving us this opportunity. Finally, we walked away with happiness and memories of those million dollar smiles filling our hearts & brightening up our day!"

By the time the session ended, the sun was beating down on us with all its might but everyone in the school had a smile on their face, a smile that expressed a day well spent! We thank Oracle volunteers for their time and enthusiasm and the Akshara Foundation and Government Kannada Tamil Higher Primary School for opening up their classrooms for the session.

Click here to see more pictures from the session!  

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