Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India. In 13 years, we have published over 3000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards.

Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, which is a digital platform that hosts stories in languages from India and beyond, so that every child can have an endless stream of stories in her mother tongue to read and enjoy. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free. All stories on the platform are openly licensed.

StoryWeaver is looking for a digital intern to help create fun, striking content for its YouTube Channel! 

We launched our YouTube channel in 2016 to share book trailers, stories from the field and even tips for aspiring authors from Senior editors at Pratham Books. 

We're looking for a  fresh pair of eyes and ears to help us digitise some of the multilingual, openly licensed content from StoryWeaver for our YouTube channel.

Project Details

We have a library of amazing audio books recorded using some of Pratham Books' best loved titles with the help of our good friends at Radio Mirchi. The ideal intern will be able to create digital storybooks using this audio content, and the openly licensed images from the stories they are based on from StoryWeaver.

Are you the intern we're looking for?

This is the perfect project if you're a high school or college student looking to add some work experience to your resume. 

The ideal candidate will

1. Have good proficiency of English and any one (or more) of the following  languages: Hindi, Kannada, Marathi and Telugu.

2. Have a good grasp of using a video editing software like iMovies, Windows Film Editor or VCN. 

3. Have an eye of editing and an ear for storytelling to help create engaging video content for children.

4. Basic animation skills are a definite advantage.

While it would be lovely if our intern lived in Bangalore (so they can come by and share a cup of chai with us), we're more than happy to cast the net wide, and invite applications from story lovers across the country. 

If you would like to apply for this internship, do write to us at [email protected] with a covering letter stating why you think you're the right person for the role and attach your resume and any work you think is relevant to the position. 

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Last year, during the launch of StoryWeaver, we reached out to Guru Baliga at the World Konkani Centre who helped us get Konkani (in Devanagiri script) on to the platform. A few weeks later, we had another Konkani story on thanks to Sujata Noronha (who runs Bookworm, Goa) and her friend Jose Salvador Fernandes. This time, the script was Roman. 

To us, this was an exciting and hopeful entry into the world of Konkani. 

More recently, through a grant from The Oracle Giving Initiative we have been able  to create 20 STEM titles and make them available in 10 languages under the CC-BY 4.0 license. 

The 20 stories woven from the Oracle Grant project, they have feet. Feet that are meant to travel the length and breadth of this country and beyond. That’s the dream. That’s our dream for each and every tale that has ever been born.  

The endeavour to translate these stories in 9 other languages found us connecting with storytellers pan India. We were on the lookout for translators with an inherent understanding of the delicate world of children’s literature. Faced with this mildly daunting task, we turned to the community for support. And they came forward eagerly, to weave these stories with us in many, many languages.  

While these stories were being translated and reviewed across languages like Odia, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi…we wanted to hear these stories in Konkani voices too. Finding ourselves at the Konkan shores, we knocked on the doors of our friends at the Konkani Bhasha Mandal (Goa) who responded with enthusiasm and positivity. A couple of mails and some very quick reverts later, our Konkani captain Tanvi Bambolkar hopped on board for our Oracle odyssey. I call her the Konkani Activist. Armed with her energy and the passion of creating more and more stories in a language she strongly feels for, Tanvi and a like-minded Konkani comrade, Hrishikesh Kadam, translated about a dozen odd stories for us.  

There's a palpable energy and passion in the Konkani community across age-groups which Tanvi explains: "I think the main reason for it is we feel that there is a lot to be done for Konkani and we cannot waste time. So we try to give as much as possible in whatever ways we can." Perhaps this is how they both managed to carve out time while juggling examinations, paper setting and jobs at AIR on the side. 

                                                                                                         

And no, they didn’t stop at this. Tanvi introduced us to other Konkani Bhasha Mandal gems - Ms. Ratnamala Divkar and Ms. Kiran Budkuley – who not only ensured that they themselves signed up but also helped us with more leads of other Konkan linguists to collaborate with. 

Ratna personally spoke to each and every contact on her list, and set the wheels in motion for us. Sunetra Jog lent us her professionalism, Prashanti Talpankar her inimitable child-like enthusiasm; Chetan Acharya his diligence; and Nayana Adarkar’s quiet work ethic saw this dream through. Yogini Acharya, Sandesh Prabhudesai, Rama Murkunde and many more who signed up; we couldn’t have done this without these language stars. 

We also had stalwarts like Mr. Ramesh Veluskar (Sahitya Academy Award winner) coming in on this project and helping us raise the bar many notches through his wisdom and clarity.

“The Konkan community in Goa is so small - its not even a district. At home, we hear Konkani. Our children are growing up with Konkani. We don’t have to forget our own language just because we are learning another language.” shared Mr. Veluskar with StoryWeaver. “A mother tongue for any individual is a natural expression, its spirit comes from within. Every other language that one learns as we grow is an acquired understanding of a new language. The most natural quality of one's expression will reflect coherently in one's mother tongue. That is why there is a need to safeguard and replenish it.”

This collaboration is the fusion of the old with the new. The younger lot has worked on most of the story translations and their seniors have come in as reviewers for their work to help iron out the seams. 

As the end credits are about to roll on this chapter, we have names of 15 Konkani enthusiasts (and counting) of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Goa who have made this work. This group has a cognisance of the diminishing footprints of their mother tongue from the children literature landscape. They talk of trying to salvage the special subset; the children’s language that is lovingly nurtured within every language of the world.  The driver is their intuitive understanding of the lacuna that this loss will leave behind in the collective Indian heritage. They are working tirelessly to populate everlasting Konkani contributions in the field of literature, art, philosophy… so that the coming generations do not lose their sense of belonging. 

These Konkani stories are a potent mix of zeal tempered with the wisdom of storytelling and the comfort of the language of one’s origin. 

                                                              

Sometimes, we walk miles only to be able to come back home. And what a homecoming this has been. 

More power to our generous and enthusiastic translators, our sparkling community.

If you'd like to translate stories on StoryWeaver but can't find your language of choice, write to us at [email protected]

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C G Salamander is a writer and comic journalist who lives in Chennai with his dog Hazel. He's currently working on completing his first children's novel. He has guest edited and written books for Pratham Books.

If you’ve ever played with a crazy ball, you’ll know just how hard they are to control. If you haven’t played with one, I highly recommend you do, because there isn’t a better feeling in the world than watching a ball bounce back and forth between the floor and the ceiling.

The day I bought my first crazy ball was the day my brain flew out of my ears -- BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY BLEW MY MIND! Pretty much my entire class collected crazy balls, and we often had competitions to see who could bounce them the highest. Granted, we did break our share of bulbs and tubelights, but on the bright side it led us to “Ultimate Craze” -- a sport that I pioneered along with a bunch of other class 7 students. The aim of Ultimate Craze was to bounce the ball as high as possible, which often meant dropping them from our classroom corridor -- located on the 3rd floor. Remember when I told you that watching a ball bounce between a floor and ceiling was the best feeling in the world? Well, that might have been hyperbole. But bouncing a crazy ball from the 3rd floor isn’t! Because I swear to you, I once bounced a ball almost as high as my school! And it remains the proudest moment of my life till date. But needless to say, I took things a bit too far, and had to stop when my mom threw out all 20 of my prized possessions for allegedly breaking things around the house. She said that they weren’t called crazy balls because of how high they jumped, but because they were driving everyone mad.

Gratuitous though it may seem, that anecdote was part of the reason why I wrote Bounce. Kaayal, the protogonist of the book, loves her new toy and simply can’t stop playing with it. But unlike me, Kaayal has the good sense to play outside. She does however, get a little too excited and ends up bouncing her ball a little too high. Kayal chases the ball around the park, follows it up a lamp-post, pursues it into a random terrace, but it’s all in vain. Neither Kaayal nor the people she meets in the park can catch it. THAT BALL IS JUST TOO DARN CRAZY!

One of the reasons I really wanted to write this book was because I liked the idea of things happening in a counting book. I liked the idea of a counting book packed with action, and I thought it would be nice to set it in the Anna Nagar Tower park in Chennai. The second reason I really wanted to write it was because I liked the elaborate backstory I made for Bounce -- almost all my stories have a backstory that I keep to myself and don't really share with anyone. But since I’ve been asked to write about Bounce, I can tell you that the events in the book actually take place inside Kaayal’s head. She’s re-living one of her fondest memories just as she goes into surgery. Kaayal drifts into her happy-place after the anesthesiologist asks her to count backwards from ten. But there’s no need to worry about Kayaal, she’s just having her tonsils removed, and she's going to be just fine.

I wrote Bounce the way I would write a comic. I scripted it, treated each page as a panel, and made sure the pages in the script were fluid and jelled well together. But if I'm being honest with you, Reshu Singh did almost all of the work. She designed the pages wonderfully, made sure the illustrations in successive pages went well together, chose an amazing colour palette, and even made sure the angles and trajectory of the bouncing ball were accurate. It's often the smallest details that set a book apart, and with Bounce it's the purple lines that show the trajectory of the bouncing ball. The reason the purple lines are so important is because they kind of guide the readers eyes through the book, and they also make it possible for the book to be read backwards. Shinibali (the guest editor) suggested we make it an ascending and descending book, so we designed the book in such a way that it could be read from front and from behind.

There are few times in life where it's okay to paraphrase Hannibal (not the roman guy, the guy from the A-Team). This book was one of those times. Bijal commissioned it over cake, Shinibali's inputs were wonderful, and Reshu Singh's illustration's can only be described as kick-butt-ninja-lion. On the whole, the book sort of just came together. And I love it when a book comes together. #hannibalmisquotes #a-team

If you’ve made it this far, and are still with me, be sure to check out Bounce! 

Glossary 

Ultimate Craze - A sport invented by the author et al (patent pending).

A-Team - An amazing show about renegade army peeps. It aired in the 80s.

Kick-butt-ninja-lion - A high praise reserved for all things amazing.

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