This International Mother Language Day, to celebrate the beauty of multilingualism and linguistic diversity, our intern Rahel put together a  list of stories written in the languages of the world. These stories are every bit as beautiful as the languages they’re written in and are accompanied by absolutely gorgeous illustrations.  

Gul in Space by Richa Jha and Lavanya Karthik

In this poem, join Gul on her birthday as she goes to outer space. In a dream, she floats in the space station, gets jalebi and samosa in her hair, and is wished by the moon and the stars.

एकशे सदतिसावा पाय (The Hundred and Thirty-Seventh Leg) by Madhuri Purandare

When the millipede breaks one of her hundreds of legs, neither the sparrow, nor the butterfly, nor any of the other animals want to help her. The only animal willing to help is the spider. But for the spider to wrap her leg in his silk thread, she needs to teach the spider how to count beyond eight.

 ಮೊಲ ಮತ್ತು ಆಮೆ   (The Hare and the Tortoise. Again!) by Venkatramana Gowda and Padmanabh

Remember the famous race between the hare and the tortoise? The story that coined the phrase “slow and steady wins the race”? Now put a twist on that. A twist that requires the animals to work together in order to deliver a message from their king to the neighbouring king, in a day. In this story, follow the hare and the tortoise in their race against time instead of each other.

ଏଣ୍ଟେଜ ସେଂକଏ ଆଉ କୁଲାବ୍‌ ସୁମୁସିଞ୍ଜ୍‍ /କୁକୁଡ଼ା ଏବଂ ବେଲ ଗଛ (The Clever Chicken/चतुर चूज़ा) by Juanga Writer’s Group and Sugrib Kumar Juanga

In this beautifully illustrated, bilingual book, a little chicken is being relentlessly hunted by a hungry jackal. Can the chicken successfully outwit the jackal in his endeavour to eat it and escape his jaws once and for all?

ముక్కు విరిగిన రామచిలుక (The Parrot with the Broken Beak) by Shahid Anwar and Shailja Jain Chougule, translated by Nagaraju Nichenametla

Watch Kansi, a budding artist, as she takes her father’s favourite pen and draws a blue parrot on the wall, breaking the nib of the pen in the process. After she faces an angry father, she goes to sleep to meet an angry, blue parrot with a broken beak in her dream who teaches her wrong from right. This colourful story is perfect for children.

 بادشاہی پارک (Badshahi Park) by Shahid Anwar and Tapas Guha

When Ashhar laughs at Zulfi for being afraid of the king’s grave, Zulfi dares him to go in there, by the light of the full moon, and hammer a nail into the head of the forbidden grave.

 துப்பறியும் துரை (Kaushik, The Kind Detective) by N. Chokkan and Megha Vishwanath

Armed with a brand new torch and magnifying glass, Kaushik goes exploring the forest like a true detective. When he examines a group of mushrooms, he discovers Lalitha, a tiny girl, sitting under the mushrooms.

 ਬਾਣੀ (Bani) by Herminder Ohri and Taposhi Ghoshal, translated by Narinder Singh

Join Bani and her new friends as they float through mushroom town, eating laddoos and chips from mushrooms and drinking from streams of lemonade, orange, and mango juice. A story clearly filled with imagination and perfect for children.

 

 सबरंग (Colourful) by Kamla Bakaya and Audrey Agnier

A book of poetry coupled with gorgeous illustrations, सबरंग is a collection of four poems sure to make you fall in love.

We hope you enjoy these stories as much as we do!

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This position has been filled! Do keep following us on Social Media for updates on other job openings. 

You’re reading about this position because you believe in the power of content - good content. Similarly, at Pratham Books, we believe in the power of stories – good stories. For well over a decade we have strived hard to reach children across India with a variety of award-winning stories across 18 Indian languages. With our digital crowd-sourcing platform – StoryWeaver we now share the power of stories with a global community of educators, parents, authors, illustrators and translators.

                     

About the role

Pratham Books is looking for a dynamic individual for the position of Content Manager (StoryWeaver). A self-motivated individual with experience and skills in curating content from multiple sources, forging strategic partnerships and anchoring the process of migrating content to the platform. The person will lead a team and be responsible for timely execution to expand the content available on the platform to serve the needs of children globally. The role will report to the Head of Digital Initiatives and will work closely with different internal and external stakeholders. This is a full time position based out of Bengaluru.

The individual will be responsible for all the following

Strategic Partnerships

1. Create partnership opportunities with other publishers to open license their content on the platform
2. Create partnership opportunities with Indian Universities and Language Institutes to increase the pool of good quality translations on the platfor
3. Identify and forge partnership opportunities with international organizations like Translator without Borders  to nurture translation partnerships in International language
4. Working closely with the content team for sourcing children's stories under open licences from across the globe

Programme Management & Design     

1. To build a strong cohesive programme operations team including setting up the Studio department and putting the processes and work-flows in place
2. To ensure that we meet our commitments to donors, delivering projects on time and on budget, and delivering the committed activities and project reports in compliance with the project design
3. To work closely with all stakeholders to ensure high quality standards are met for crowd-sourced content - including review processes and red flagging of inappropriate content
4. To take on other tasks or responsibilities, as required for the project  
5. Archiving and documentation

Content Migration

 

1. Prioritizing the pipeline of content from all sources for migration
2. Managing the studio teams for the timely delivery of large scale data migration
3. Working closely with the design teams to define new design templates 
4. Work with the technology partners to develop efficient processes for content migration

Liaison with co-collaborators & internal stakeholders:

 

1. Creating a database of content creators, authors, illustrators, translators, etc on the platform to enhance engagements
2. Work closely with the marketing team to come up with interesting promotions to promote use of content
3. Work closely with the content, research and marketing teams to deliver the project goals

Required Skills

1. Post graduate in Literature / Communication / Journalism with 7-10 years of experience in related fields. Experience with a publishing house is favourable.     
2. The candidate must have experience working in an editorial position in a publishing house and should have hands-on experience in review, proofreading and production related processes.
3. Exceptional communication skills     
4. Highly organized and detail oriented
5. A proven track record to manage, lead and deliver large-scale operations
6. Proven ability to build consensus and work effectively within a cross-departmental team     
7. Self-starter, team player, strategic thinker and all around book nerd
8. Passion, integrity and energy!     

Nice to have but not mandatory

1. Experience working with non-profits.     
2. 1-2 years working in a partner facing role     
3. Indic language and digital publishing experience

Location: Position is based out of Bangalore and is full-time.

Salary: Will be commensurate with experience. We are looking for a passionate individual who wants to be part of a team that is creating a new model in multilingual publishing to address the scarcity of books for children in need.

Interested candidates can email their resume to [email protected]

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The cutest, warmest, furriest, squishiest and bubbly cheeks-pull worthy 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 (We are hopeful that the crazy futuristic era will have an easy animal courier service so that we can all share different pets in different states… or even countries… ! Ah! What a bliss! But we digress…). So, until that future hops, skips and prances up to us, what we CAN give you is a list of books instead 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

Illustrator – Sonal Goyal, 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

Illustrator – 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 her bad habit. Read about the human and animal behavior she witnessed there to make this surprising decision. Apart from some Indian languages, this book is also available in German and Portuguese!

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

Illustrator – 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 frienship that… saved lives! Do you know Sniffles, the crocodile also speaks in Kiswahili and IsiXhosa? We have this story available in these two African languages too.

Clean Cat by Kanchan Bannerjee

Illustrator – 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

Illustrator – 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 ideas for food alternatives. Do read and find out what Samira finally chooses!

(The Generous Crow) by Venkatramana Gowda

Illustrator - Padmanabh

It's hard to be in a classroom full of students feeling left out as you 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 into a journey of self-identity and self-esteem.

 

Noisy Crows by Kanchan Bannerjee

Illustrator - 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, make sure that you find out which animal likes this crow's singing.

The Jungle Book by Madhav Chavan, Meera Tendolkar

Illustrator - Ketan Raut

Translated in Punjabi and Odia, along with three African languages, this book follows the day of 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

Illustrator – Deepa Balsavar

Have you ever seen ants just loitering about or sitting under a 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

Illustrator – 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- a cow, crow or a dog! 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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