Over the last couple of years, our team at Pratham Books has been focussing on creating simple and engaging picture books that explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) concepts. There is a dearth of interesting information books for early readers in India - especially across Indian languages – and we have actively been trying to bridge that gap. Within two years, we have created around 300 multilingual STEM books (available for free on www.storyweaver.org.in), and also set up STEM libraries around the country.

Having had such a strong focus on STEM, we were delighted to be invited by The Asia Foundation to participate in their e-book hackathon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which was aimed at creating openly-licensed STEM books in their local language. Like in India, there are very few children’s books in Cambodia that explore STEM topics imaginatively, and the hackathon was a step towards reducing that gap. Over two days (Aug 19-20, 2017), several local writers, illustrators and designers collaborated to make picture books that were centred around STEM topics. The ‘Let’s Read E-book Hackathon’ was also an attempt at identifying young professionals in the publishing sector, and nurturing their skills.

 

My role, as an editor from Pratham Books, was to offer editorial guidance over the 2-day event. I got the opportunity to discuss some of the key observations that we had made at Pratham Books while creating STEM-based picture books. In essence: what are the crucial things to bear in mind while creating STEM books for early readers, and what works. Here's what Melody Zavala (Director, Books for Asia) said about the hackathon, "The Asia Foundation uses 'e-book hackathons' to drastically reduce the time and resources needed to produce beautiful, illustrated children’s books on topics missing from the commercial market. We were thrilled to draw on Pratham Books’ experience with STEM titles. In Cambodia, only 3 percent of university students choose to study STEM subjects, according to the Ministry of Education, Youth & Sport. We hope this can be changed by stimulating interest at a young age through fun storybooks."

It was fascinating to watch writers and illustrators work so closely, constanly exchanging ideas and refining the narrative as they progressed. We watched as illustrators brought characters to life, developed storyboards along with their writers, and sketched eye-catching book covers. While the foundations of the book were being laid out, many fundamental questions were tossed around, which eventually helped each story evolve: Is the the title too revealing? Did the perspective of each illustration make sense? Is the illustration merely reflecting the text, or is there scope for additional detail?

 

Interacting with an enthusiastic group of writers, editors, illustrators and designers gave me plenty of time to reflect on the entire book-creation process, and I returned home feeling rather inspired and rejuvenated. Helping create simple and fun STEM books at Pratham Books has been both challenging and full of discovery, so it was gratifying to be able to share those experiences with others who are also trying to make reading more inclusive. It was also heartening to see some of the Pratham Books titles being distributed at the event and that too, in their local language! The Asia Foundation team had translated several of our titles into Khmer. As a multilingual publisher, nothing gives us more joy!

 

The 8 local-language books that were created during the 2-day Hackathon will soon be available for free on Let’s Read! - a digital platform that empowers underserved communities in Asia to build digital libraries in their own languages.
You can read more about the STEM hackathon here.

This post was written by Yamini, a Consultant Editor at Pratham Books who represented Pratham Books at the 'Let's Read! E-book Hackathon' in Cambodia.

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It’s FINALLY here! The moment you’ve been waiting for… drumroll please… the results of the Pratham Books Retell, Remix and Rejoice content 2016, Children’s Category.

Before we get to the fun bit, a sincere apology for the delay in announcing the results. But with so many amazing entries in two categories (children and adult), we wanted to make sure our internal and external judges had enough time to do full justice to each and every story written.

This year we received a whopping 119 entries. 30 of those entries were by children and we were pleased to see 4 Hindi stories entered by these budding authors! You can see all the entries in the Children's Category here.

CONGRATULATIONS to…

Shristuti Srirapu for 'Night Trouble' and Aviral Sood for ‘An Escapade’!

That’s right, we have two winners! Shristuti and Aviral will each receive a printed copy of their winning story and a hamper of Pratham Books’ latest titles. Read on to find out who our judges were and what they had to say about the winning entries.

Arefa Tehsin spent her childhood treading the Aravali jungles with her naturalist father. As a child, she was often found trying to catch a snake or spin a yarn. She grew up to be a traveller, storyteller and was appointed the Hon. Wildlife Warden of Udaipur for a term. She is the author of several fiction and non-fiction books including The Elephant Bird. Her latest book is Wild in the Backyard published by Penguin. She writes columns and articles for various national dailies and magazines like The Hindu, Outlook Money, Deccan Herald, TerraGreen etc. A dreamer and rationalist, she is a serial traveller who wants to go on an endless journey starting with planet earth.

BAM! Books is an Instagram-led project which talks about children's and Young Adult books, curated by Bangalore-based writers Bijal Vachharajani and Maegan Dobson Sippy. Focusing largely on books with a South Asian context, BAM! aims to help parents, educators and young readers find books they can meaningfully connect to. Find out more at: https://www.instagram.com/BAM_Books/

What the judges had to say

BAM!Books

On ‘Night Trouble’ A wonderful story about animal behaviour and the illustrations work wonderfully with the text. The idea of the dog asking advice from other animals on how to sleep is also sweet, and well-executed.  We also loved the effective rhyming refrain which gives a rhythm to the dialogue.

On ‘An Escapade’ An imaginative and original interpretation of the images, which nonetheless manages to make good sense of the art. The repetition of 'or so his mother would have said' gives a good rhythm to the story, as well as giving credibility to the direction which the story took in the end!

Arefa Tehsin

On ‘Night Trouble’ Night Trouble has a lovely humourous angle to it, especially coming from a 9-year-old!

On ‘An Escapade’

An interesting tale of a pup running away from home in search of better lands. What for? Due to his nagging mum, obviously. Good story, dialogues, similes and a connect with most of the illustrations.

A big thank you to our amazing judges for taking the time to read each entry and share their feedback and marking. Also, thanks to everyone who took part in the contest, your stories are now on StoryWeaver for you to share with friends and family!

You can read the results for the Adult's Category here.

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Earlier this year, StoryWeaver conducted a Bengali Translation Hackathon with a group of enthusiastic teachers and language students. The hackathon saw over 70 level 1 and 2 stories translated to Bengali and reviewed.

The participants were excited by the possibilities the StoryWeaver platform afforded and left the hackathon with many ideas on how they could use it in their work with children.

Participants, Anupam Dam and Suman Das, was particularly excited by StoryWeaver, and wanted to introduce it to students and also to teachers. He wrote back to us soon after the hackathon with the idea of conducting a StoryWeaver workshop for some of the teachers in his school.

Anupam is a a government aided school teacher and is keen to provide his students with the best possible facilities and resources.  Suman Das is a Head Master Of Chalitatali Prathamik Vidyalaya of Nadia District.

“I wanted to arrange the workshop to spread awareness among teachers like me about the vast scope of using StoryWeaver in the classroom” Anupam shared. “All the participants chosen to attend the workshop were equally dedicated towards education.”

 

Team StoryWeaver had shared a suggested schedule for the workshop. “This helped the workshop go as planned, from the introduction stage to final publishing of stories.” recalls Suman.

The workshop facilitators were pleased to notice that participants willingly involved themselves in the workshop and performed the tasks asked of them flawlessly. They had very few queries, and the most frequently asked question was "Is it possible to edit already published stories?"

“My colleagues were engaged throughout the workshop and enjoyed it the most when the saw their stories published on the  StoryWeaver platform, ” added Suman.

Sudeshna Moitra, our Bengali Consultant Language Editor, was an observer at the workshop and  had this to say about the experience: “Yesterday’s workshop was very enriching for me. All the fellow teachers were quick to grasp the concept and participated equally and intelligently. Their enthusiasm to learn and know more made the workshop quite fulfilling. Had a great experience from my side as well. I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with a group of interesting minds and hope to do similar workshops more. It feels great to conduct such workshops and the feedback from them was wonderful. Hope I have managed to contribute something meaningful to them through the workshop.

The workshop ended with teachers discussing ways in which they could use StoryWeaver in the classroom environment and sharing their takeaways from the session. Some of them  were happy to have learned a new way to share stories with students and planned to ‘create stories based on school syllabus’ while others were happy to have the opportunity to create and translate stories in their mother tongue.

We look forward to seeing more teachers conducting StoryWeaver workshops in their schools. If you’re interested in introducing StoryWeaver to your peers and in your classrooms, write to us at [email protected] today.
 

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