This position has now been filled.

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 3,000 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, our digital platform that hosts stories in 60 languages. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free.

We are looking for an Art Director

Today, Pratham Books creates books suited to both print and digital mediums in multiple languages. We are looking for an Art Director to help us create visually appealing picture books with a strong understanding of how each of these mediums work.

As an Art Director, you will be responsible for the design and production of books created for both print and digital. As most of our titles are migrated to StoryWeaver, we are looking for someone who is tech-savvy and eager to find ways of minimising loss between print and digital book design. This will require you to work closely with our editorial team and external content creators we collaborate with (illustrators, consultant art directors). The candidate needs to have excellent graphic design skills and experience in print production.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage a team of graphic designers to ensure that the book design is completed within agreed timelines
• Work with freelance illustrators and consultant art directors to create visually-appealing books keeping in mind print and digital requirements
• Find innovative ways of reducing losses when a book is adapted from print to digital, or vice versa
• Ensure highest quality of print books
• Work closely with the editorial team to create stories with rich, diverse and nuanced visual narratives
• Bring in expertise of typography, keeping in mind multilingual content

Required skills

• 6-8 years of experience in Graphic Design
• Strong understanding of print production
• Strong communication skills
• Expertise in Photoshop, InDesign
• Ability to multi-task
• Be a team player

Nice to have but not mandatory:

• An interest in illustration and book publishing
• Knowledge of children’s books

Location: The position is based out of Bangalore

Salary: Will 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.

Write to us: Email your resume with Art Director in the subject line to careers(at)prathambooks(dot)org

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Imagine if the language you speak to your friends, think your funniest thoughts in and dream your bravest dreams in, is hardly known in your own country, and might even reach an early death in two decades. To ward off this isolation acutely felt by Kora and Santali, tribal languages spoken in communities across West Bengal and Odisha, Suchana has been working towards their preservation with quiet determination fuelled by their love for literacy and a zeal for preserving adivasi languages.

Suchana, a 10 year old community group, works in Birbhum, W. Bengal towards the education of pre-school to class 10 children from Santal and Kora adivasi communities. Suchana knows that when education knocks at your door, it must come in a language that you understand. Entering a school room can be daunting for a child from an adivasi background as she or he is expected to know a state-language that they or their family have never learnt, or have been denied access to. Our education system is missing out on a huge cultural opportunity here by not being inclusive of more languages, and thus not reaching out to children who need education the most. This tragedy of education not benefitting children who are trying to break centuries-old shackles of being looked down upon as an adivasi is profound.

This is where Suchana steps in to ensure ‘Right to Education’. They have made it their mission to make sure that Kora and Santali are looked upon as legitimate, literacy-inducing languages, and that ‘adivasi school going kids’ can just be school going kids. They aim to sustain cultural identities and promote literacy among the tribal and underprivileged communities through their education programs. As far as they know, they are the first organization to have created children’s books, or in fact any books at all, in Kora.

One of their key educational initiatives, Mobile Library, was started in 2011 with children of 6 villages. Today, the library travels in two vehicles, covers 25 villages and has 1135 members. It consists of books that are written in multiple languages, especially in the tribal languages (Kora and Santali) that children can relate to and learn in. Children who have never held story books in their hands or understood their importance now have access to joyful reading material that’s related to their education and growth, along with creativity and imagination.

   

Kirsty Milward, Founder of Suchana, says, “In Santali and Kora – and other adivasi languages – there is no children’s literature at all. This is at least partly because until the current generation, most adivasi children did not go to school. Among the (still quite young) mothers of Suchana’s current adivasi students, for example, 80% never went to school at all. So where was the need for children’s books in those languages?”

We are proud of our association with Suchana. The organisation’s teacher-translators have been able to develop supplementary reading materials in Kora and Santali at a much faster and prominent way through StoryWeaver. Currently, 27 Kora books and 19 Santali, both in Bengali script are on StoryWeaver. Suchana has printed 10,000 copies of these books for their mobile library and are exploring loading e-books onto SD cards to disseminate stories on low cost mobile phones.

It’s a huge step for languages that were near obscurity and oblivion, to be suddenly sailing the digital waves and ready to be accessed by the whole world in the form of beautiful stories. Read these stories in Bengali script in the tribal languages of Kora and Santali.

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Since February 2009, the United Nations has observed the 21st of February as International Mother Language Day to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.

This year’s International Mother Language Day theme has been beautifully summarised on the United Nation's website:

“To foster sustainable development, learners must have access to education in their mother tongue and in other languages. It is through the mastery of the first language or mother tongue that the basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy are acquired. Local languages, especially minority and indigenous, transmit cultures, values and traditional knowledge, thus play an important role in promoting sustainable futures.”

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Last year, we celebrated linguistic diversity with the Freedom to Read campaign, where our amazing community of co-creators helped us add stories in 13 new languages on StoryWeaver, for children to read and enjoy. Many of the languages added represented underserved and endangered linguistic minorities.

“When a language dies, with it a wealth of knowledge is lost forever. It is a death of a culture. Having rigorous discourse on this issue, and implementing mindful efforts to preserve endangered languages and its cultural capital is a requisite of every publisher and language warrior.” shares Suzanne Singh, Chairperson Pratham Books. “Through StoryWeaver, weaving stories of communities in their own languages, and increasing access to quality reading resources for children has been made possible like none other. We are also grateful to collaborate with our passionate partners whose primary mission, just like ours, is to nurture multilingual languages and take it to every child in the country.”     

This year, we carry forward the spirit of our first Freedom to Read campaign, in a more focussed manner by seeding hyperlocal (both print and digital) libraries in three minority languages: Konkani, Bhoti and Haryanvi.

Konkani books for all

The Konkani Bhasha Mandal is Goa’s pioneering non-governmental institution striving for the cause of Konkani in social, educational, literary and cultural spheres. Since the launch of StoryWeaver, The Konkani Bhasha Mandal has been a steadfast supporter and collaborator. Passionate about strengthening the pool of children’s literature in Konkani, the organisation has translated over 100 books to the language on StoryWeaver and shared these stories digitally with children in schools who have enjoyed them tremendously. On the occasion of International Mother Language Day 2018, Pratham Books and the Konkani Bhasha Mandal have further strengthened their partnership and commitment to spreading the joy of reading by printing 25,000 copies of 50 Pratham Books titles in Konkani and distributing them freely to 250 schools in the region, impacting 25,000 primary school students.   

 

50 Pratham Books titles, translated on StoryWeaver, printed and ready for classrooms.

Chetan Acharya, President, Konkani Bhasha Mandal said, “It is our pleasure to join hands with Pratham Books which is working immensely in the field of children's literature. After knowing that there exists a website with a pandora of stories which can be used by teachers and parents for their children, we started translating them to Konkani. Konkani Bhasha Mandal is always in the process of producing delightful reading material in Konkani. We conducted many workshops especially for college going students on how they can translate a story from StoryWeaver. We are extremely delighted and happy that 50 storybooks created by Pratham Books and Konkani Bhasha Mandal are being released now. We will certainly have a long and fruitful partnership.”

Haryanvi Hackathon

In the run up to International Mother Language Day, we conducted our first ever translation hackathon with 25 educators from across 20 districts in Haryana. The two day, residential workshop saw the translation and inbuilt peer-to-peer review of over 60  level 1 picture books for children to Haryanvi.  The workshop was organised with the support of Mr. Pramod Sharma , a senior Education Department official in the Haryana Government.

Amna Singh, Consultant Editor, Pratham Books helped organise the hackathon. "The energy of the educators translating the stories and the excitement of the students peeping in and watching the stories take shape was palpable. These children have never before seen or read a storybook in their mother tongue language,  and neither have their teachers! So yes, in a way, history was created. And hopefully, the first step in the journey of documenting a predominantly oral language to safeguard it for the coming generations has been taken from Gorawar, a village in Rohtak, Haryana. And StoryWeaver is proud to be an enabler in this endeavour." 

Participants are all smiles after the translation hackathon.

The seeds of a digital library in Bhoti

The Ladakhi language also called Bhoti or Bodhi, is a Tibetic language spoken in the Ladakh region of India. 17,000 Ft Foundation, is an organization that works to improve the lives of the people of remote, high altitude mountainous villages of Ladakh. In 2015, the organisation collaborated with Pratham Books to translate Pratham Books titles to Bhoti and distributed printed copies of these books to over 350 schools in the region. 

We have added ten of these Bhoti stories to the StoryWeaver platform, and will add more stories to the platform over the course of the year.

"Six years ago, 17000 ft Foundation bought its first set of titles from Pratham Books for its libraries, an encounter that helped reach story books to children living in the remotest and most inaccessible corners of high altitude Ladakh. A first in a region where the only books available to children were textbooks in English, these books helped fire up the imagination of little children and helped draw them into a world of reading. Things then got even more exciting a couple years later when we translated 10 titles from Pratham Books into the local language, Bhoti, and distributed it across thousands of children in Ladakh. Today, the request for more story books in Bhoti pours into our office every day and StoryWeaver has made that process more easy, accessible and enjoyable. The privilege of making these wishes come true is all ours." shared Sujata Sahu, Founder of 17,000 feet.

How are you celebrating International Mother Language Day in 2018? Will you share a story in your mother tongue with children? Will you give your creativity a space to flourish and write or translate a story your mother tongue? However you decide to celebrate, share it on Social Media and tag us @pbstoryweaver!

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