StoryWeaver celebrated 2 special milestones on May 29:

1. We crossed 5 MILLION reads on StoryWeaver! ✨
2. We now offer storybooks in 250 languages! 📚

A big thank you to our wonderful community for being such an integral part of what we do. Authors, illustrators and publishers who have open-licensed their content at scale. Linguists and translators who have introduced us to new languages. Educators, parents and storytellers around the world who have welcomed us into their reading routine, and into the hearts of their children.

Here’s to the next 5 million reads, and nurturing the next generation of readers. 💛

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(Photo credit: Greshma Patel)

Mathangi Subramanian is an award winning author and educator who writes for the young and the young at heart. In 2016, her novel Dear Mrs. Naidu (Young Zubaan) won the 2016 South Asia Book Award and was shortlisted for the Hindu-Good Books prize. She currently lives in Delhi with her husband, her daughter, and many, many picture books.  Her book 'A Butterfly Smile'  is available to read, translate, download and share for free on StoryWeaver.

The thing I remember the most about the two years I lived in Bangalore is the construction. Everything was new, new, new: new flats, new hospitals and new offices. Every street seemed to have at least one cordoned off area where the air was thick with dust and the sidewalk was jagged and broken. People who grew up in Bangalore grumbled that the sleepy town they knew disappearing, brick by brick, block by block, swallowed up by glass walled skyscrapers sprouting from the pavement like steel flowers.

But I saw something different.

I didn’t just see new buildings. I saw new families. Mothers who buttoned men’s shirts over their saris, wrapped towels on their head to help balance buckets of rocks and gravel. Fathers who stopped to retie their dhotis before hoisting steel pans of gravel up to waiting hands cracked from sunlight and labour.

But most of all, I saw children. Babies playing in piles of sand, toddlers learning to walk on newly laid linoleum floors. Girls in faded school uniforms snapping laundry on lines strung between unfinished walls, boys eating roti off of dented metal plates in the shelter of unfinished doorways. Children who grow up shuttling between some of the city’s poshest buildings, and yet, were unsure of where their next meal is coming from.

Research repeatedly shows that in India, one of the primary reasons that parents migrate from villages to cities is for the schools. Some come from areas where education is subpar; others come from areas where there aren’t any schools at all.

Although children don’t have a say in their parents’ choices to migrate or stay, many that I’ve met over the years are thrilled at the chance to learn. But they are also terrified.  

Remember your first day of school? You may have three, four, or five years old. Now imagine that first day as a seven, eight, or nine-year-old, sitting next to children who have already been learning to read and write and add and subtract for years before you even dreamed it was possible.

Kavya, the protagonist in “A Butterfly Smile,” is character I developed based on conversations I’ve had with migrant girls attending Bangalore schools where I once worked as a researcher. Like the girls I’ve met, Kavya is strong and hopeful and brave. But she is also grappling with moving to a city that labels her and her family as backwards, ignorant, and pitiful.

Just because Kavya has never gone to school, though, doesn’t mean she’s ignorant. Kavya, like many children, is observant and curious. She knows about butterflies because when she lived in her village, she paid attention to the world around her. She noticed life’s details.

In the city, we get used to tunneling our vision, to focusing only one what is in front of us so we can get through our day. So even though we see the traffic jam around a new construction that makes us late to work, we don’t see the butterflies hovering around our car windows, or the families building cooking fires in the shelter of a half-finished office building. We shut the bustle out just so we can get through our day.  

For me, “A Butterfly Smile” is a story about migration. But it is also a story about the importance of looking around, and of seeing each other – insect and human, rich and poor, child and adult. Kavya is one of my favorite characters that I’ve created, because despite her uncertain world, she let has the courage to let life in.

After reading this story, I hope you will too.  

You can read 'A Butterfly Smile' by Mathangi Subramanian and illustrated by Lavanya Naidu by clicking on the above image. The story has been translated to Tamil and French and will soon be available to read in Hindi, Marathi and Kannada. 

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Most of StoryWeaver's digital-first books explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) topics in interesting and fun ways. Some of you may remember some of our amazing STEM titles from last year: 'How Old is Muttajji?', 'Jadav and the Tree-Place', 'Up World, Down World', 'Dum Dum-a-Dum Biryani!', etc. We’re happy to announce that these are also being printed early next year!

“This year, we’ve tried to create books that are simpler than last year, based on conversations with our outreach partners. Simpler does not mean easier, of course, and in many ways it has been more challenging. Fortunately, we’ve been working closely with some of the finest editors, writers, illustrators, art directors and translators who have helped us create a set of wonderful books. While the aim of each book is to inform and educate, the idea is also to nurture the innate sense of wonder in children and in turn, encourage them to explore further,” shares Yamini Vijayan, who anchors content creation for StoryWeaver. 

Exciting ideas through exciting partnerships

This year, we hope to widen the lens through which children look at the world around them, with stories that explore topics like space, types of houses, trash, seasonal food, subtraction, evolution, simple machines and even toilets! 

From author-illustrator Rajiv Eipe's book on simple machines

These books have been created in collaboration with 4 Guest Editors and 2 Art Directors. Award-winning author Roopa Pai has steered the books on math, Bijal Vachharajani – a journalist who writes on nature and the environment – has given shape and form to the books on environment, author-illustrator Vinayak Varma, former Editor and Art Director of Brainwave Magazine, has helped create fun science books and author-editor Payal Dhar has made technology and engineering appealing to young minds. With illustrations being such an integral aspect of these books, we were keen to involve experts in the field and so these books have been art-directed by talented illustrators Kaveri Gopalakrishnan and Vinayak Varma. We’re excited to say that some of the most promising authors and illustrators have contributed to the creation of these 20 titles. 

Priya Kuriyan brings Neema to life in vivid colours in 'What's Neema Eating Today?' by Bijal Vachharajani

In Math, we have books on subtraction, patterns of similarity and dissimilarity, division and estimation. Needless to say, all these have been explained through simple stories that show how we use math in our everyday lives and that it isn’t restricted to our textbooks alone. At Pratham Books, we have always realized how important it is to have conversations about the environment to children. This year, we have chosen to focus on trash, seasonal food, migration and earthquakes. Themes in science that we have decided to ‘storify’ are simple machines, virology, evolution and the lives of gharials. We’re certain that early readers will become more enthusiastic about science after reading these enchanting stories. You’d think that children’s stories on technology and engineering can get a bit boring. Well, you’ll change your mind when you read our stories on space, wheels, flying, types of houses and toilets. In addition to these STEM books, we have two moving stories on emotional intelligence, one on anger and the other on perseverance. 

Here's what we've digitally published so far:

Environment

What's Neema Eating Today? Neema loves to eat seasonally, and you will to now!

Science

Ammachi's Amazing Machines  How simple can simple machines be? Ammachi's here to teach you!

Apu's Giant Earthquake: what's causing those tremors?

Sniffles, in which a girl spreads her cold during a football match. 

Ghum-Ghum Gharial's Glorious Adventure, a young Gharial's adventure in the Ganga. 

Math

One by Two Share some biryani and gulab jamuns and learn a thing or two about fractions!

More or Less? Need to Guess! How many sweet boxes do the wedding guests need? Guestimation to the rescue!

I Spy! How many children are left at a birthday party? 

Same-same or different?, showing the friendship between a Sparrow and a Snake and also explaining the idea of sorting. 

Technology

Gul in Space: a girl explores outer space. 

In keeping with our commitment to creating good quality multilingual content for children, each of the 20 titles will be translated to Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil. (Plus, don’t forget, on StoryWeaver you can translate the stories to a language YOU’RE fluent in and help us spread the joy of reading to even more children.) The development of these 100 books (20 titles in 5 languages) has been supported by Oracle.

 

To say that we’re excited about these new stories is an understatement! We cannot wait to share them with readers, young and old. Happy reading!

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