The cutest, warmest, furriest and squishiest photos of kids are the ones in which they are cuddling up with a loving animal. Well now, we can't send an animal your way but  what we CAN give you is a list of books that you can cuddle up with, along with excited little humans. Books about animals - funny, unpredictable, generous, strange, friendly, loud and just adorable.

Good Night, Tinku By Preethi Nambiar, Sonal Goyal and Sumit Sakhuja

Afraid of the dark? We all are sometimes. Here comes Tinku the dog, who explored the dark and found…. friends! Tag along where he wags on, and meet some new animals that are wide awake when you are deep asleep. From Hindi to Sanskrit, from French to Italian, we have all these translations available for you, and more!

 

Anaya's Thumb by Natasha Sharma and Ruchi Shah

Anaya has a bad habit. She keeps sucking her thumb! Know anyone like that? But then one day she went to the zoo and quit. Read about the human and animal behavior she witnesses before making this decision. Apart from a number of Indian languages, this book is also available in German and Portuguese.

 

Sniffles, the Crocodile and Punch, the Butterfly by Herminder Ohri

A big, strong animal that cries and a light as feather one that likes to punch! Let's go beyond the deceptive waters of someone's cover and read about this amazing friendship that… saved lives! Do you know Sniffles, the crocodile also speaks in Kiswahili and IsiXhosa?

 

Clean Cat by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

It doesn't matter how long you've been living somewhere, you will never know your neighborhood as well as a cat. This Clean Cat is up to all kinds of fun and antics. Read in 6 languages including Urdu, Marathi and two bilingual versions too.

 

Samira's Awful Lunch by Bharati Jagannathan and Preeti Krishnamurthy

How many of you have heard of kids complaining about what they got for lunch? *raises hand* You too? That's what we thought. Well, we have some very kind animals in this book who are willing to share ideas for food alternatives. Do read and find out what Samira finally chooses!

 

ಕಾಗೆ ಬಳಗವ ಕರೆಯಿತು (The Generous Crow) by Venkatramana Gowda and Padmanabh

It's hard to be in a classroom full of students and  feel 'different' or smaller than the others. It's probably like being a small crow in a huge forest full of animals that seem better than you. This is a story in Assamese, Telegu and Tamil in which a crow 'Caws Caws' his way through a journey of self-identity and self-esteem.

 

Noisy Crows by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

Here's another story about crows and this one is just plain NOISY! Available in Hindi, Marathi and Kannada along with English as bilingual books, find out which animal likes this crow's singing.

 

The Jungle Book by Madhav Chavan, Meera Tendolkar and Ketan Raut

Available in Punjabi, Odia and three African languages, this book follows a few animal friends who hear about an exciting new development in the forest. Their jungle has a school! So they go in search of it and wait for the teacher. Guess who turns up?

 

Busy Ants by Kanchan Bannerjee and Deepa Balsavar

Have you ever seen ants just loitering about or sitting in the shade passing their time? No, they are always busy, and they have some unique traits and skills too! You can read all about them in Malayalam and Tamil, along with other languages.

 

भीमा गधा (Bheema, the Sleepyhead) by Kiran Kasturia and Shweta Mohapatra

Translated in 14 languages, this book tries to answer a fundamental question of our existence: how does a person (in this case, a donkey) wake up early in the morning? Bheema likes to sleep like a log, and it doesn't matter who tries to wake him up. See what finally works for him. Maybe it will work for you too?

 

Do you have a favourite animal story? Tell us what it is in the comments, or on Twitter and Facebook!

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Hello teachers!

We recently concluded our illustration campaign #Spotathon on StoryWeaver. We asked illustrators to create one spotting illustrations for us to help crowdsource a FREE spotting book for children. We've had the most  wonderful time looking at all the incoming entries and illustrators really expanded their imagination creating spotting illustrations set in a music room, markets, gardens, kitchens and even staff rooms :)

Spotting books can be a wonderful way to engage children, develop pre-reading skills and most important of all, they're just SO MUCH FUN! Our Outreach Manager, Payoshni Saraf put together a chotu list of spotting books for all those lovely teachers out there to use in you classroom!  

Nature Trail Rajiv Eipe brings his love for birding (or bird watching) to his entry. In 'A Nature Trail' a photographer takes pictures of birds, animals and isects that she sees on a nature walk. Can you spot them all?

An Evening at the Spice Market Megha Vishwanathan brings to life the smells and sounds of an evening market place in this beautifully detailed illustration. 

Space Station Booyakasha Are you ready for zero gravity? Blast off through stratosphere in Greystroke's fun and zany outerspace adventure!   

A Class Photo Hair oiled and combed? Ribbons in place? No funny faces or rabbit ears please! Let's line up and look for all the wonderful quirks Vidya Gopal wants us to find in her creation 'A Class Photo'. 

The Marketplace To market! To market! Shopping has never been as colourful and vibrant as it is in Niloufer Wadia's Spotathon entry 'The Marketplace'. What will you spot and buy? 

Messy Miss Mita Oh ho! Look's like Miss Mita has NOT tidied up her room. Help her tidy up won't you? But only AFTER you've spotted everything. 

and a special one for our dear teachers-  Paper Boat goes to the Staff Room Team Paper Boat has really captured the nuances of the Staff Room. Can you see yourself in this illustration dear teacher? Or perhaps one of your colleagues? 

 

We hope you and your students have lots of fun in the classroom with these Spotathon entries! Do write to us and tell us how YOU used them in the classroom and what your children thought at [email protected] 

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Reading is one of the most essential components of a child's learning & development journey. At Pratham Books and StoryWeaver, we understand this and StoryWeaver came about with the exact purpose of increasing access to books for children in languages and context that they enjoy - in a boundary-less digital way.

StoryWeaver (http://www.storyweaver.org.in/) is an open source, digital repository of multilingual children’s stories. StoryWeaver is an especially useful tool for organisations and individuals working in Education, allowing them to:

• Browse, read and curate a reading list from over 9700 stories across 122 languages

• Download stories for offline reading

• Create a new story or a set of flashcards from an image bank of over 13000 illustrations

• Re-level or remix a story to suit your child's needs

• Translate stories to a language of your choice

And best of all, ALL of this is absolutely FREE

We invite educators, librarians and resource people to attend the StoryWeaver workshop to be held in Hyderabad. To celebrate the diversity of languages we have, we are planning to conduct the workshop session in English on the 29th of November and in Telugu on the 30th of November. You are requested to give your preference for the date/language while signing up and we will confirm the final date and the venue of the workshop to you at a later stage. However, just in case we have lesser number of participants for the Telugu workshop, we will be looking at doing a bilingual one on 29th itself. Please do make a note of this.

(Image from 'A Book for Puchku' by Deepanjana Pal and Rajiv Eipe.)

The workshop would cover the following:-

1. A detailed Demo of StoryWeaver – how to navigate and use the platform

2. Examples of how educators are using StoryWeaver effectively in their classrooms

3. Dedicated work time for participants to try their hands on StoryWeaver

4. An opportunity to meet other educators and make interesting conversations

If this excites you, REGISTER HERE   to book your place in the workshop, latest by 22nd November, Thursday.  

Please note that the seats are limited and we might not be able to accommodate more than 2-3 people per organization.  Confirmed participants will get a separate email confirming their participation and other logistical details. 

The workshop will be held between 9.30 a.m to 4.30 p.m and there is no fee to attend the workshop.

Feel free to reach out with any questions to Khyati at [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you there!

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