Aindri Chakraborty is a communications designer specializing in narrative illustration and animation. She is one of the members of The Kadak Collective.

Apu’s Giant Earthquake is not only about why and how earthquakes happen, it is also a story inside a story. It is a story of the off-tune Bey-asura who likes to sing. It is also about Apu and his sister Pia, their grandmother and pet dog who are in the middle of both Bey-sura’s song and an earthquake. 

I wanted to start with the characters. They were based on Sudeshna Shome Ghosh's picture below. 

This is how the character Pia evolved.

Bey-asura is an Asura who causes a lot of destruction when he sings! I felt pity on Bey-asura in the story because I like to sing but I am not a very good singer! I had to find a way to justify why Bey-asura was a bad singer. I shaped his head like a string instrument and then realised, maybe he is a bad singer because he hasn’t been tuned yet. So there is a broken string which I designed as his hair. 

I made lots of textures of the earth. This is based on geology diagrams. 

I tried this one using salt while the ink was drying, so it created a nice rocky texture. 

I then collaged the textures to create landscapes for the story. 

'Apu’s Giant Earthquake' is both informative and imaginative so I tried to keep it sciency but also whimsical. It was exciting to work on StoryWeaver's digital-first children's story which will be available to everyone as it's openly-licensed.

'Apu's Giant Earthquake' will be available to read in 5 languages on StoryWeaver. If you can't find the story in a language you're fluent in, feel free to translate the story on www.storyweaver.org.in and share it with us! 

 

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Radhika Oberoi writes for The Wire on how platforms like African Storybook are helping children overcome academic difficulties by making culturally specific stories borderless. She also mentions StoryWeaver and Pratham Books' 'Missed Call Do, Kahaani Suno' campaign.

                                                                                           

'But before a story can be uploaded, downloaded, translated and shared, it has to be written. Among the ASb’s inexhaustible source of narratives is an Indian publisher of children’s literature, Pratham Books. Several original titles like Listen to my Body, The Moon and the Cap and The Elephant Bird have found their way to the ASb and captured the fascination of young readers across continents. Pratham Books’s own digital initiative, StoryWeaver, is a treasure trove of multi-lingual books, which, through a liberal Creative Commons licence, allows users to share and adapt stories as well as images in any medium. There are close to 1,800 stories, available for reading and sharing in 41 Indian and international languages. “While our Hindi and English stories continue to be very popular, we have seen the user community respond with great enthusiasm to Malayalam, Sanskrit, Telugu and recently, Tibetan and Santhali as well,” says Suzanne Singh, chairperson of Pratham Books.

Stories are the élan vital of open-source platforms, which prompt children to rapid fluency in the mother tongue, before they can read simple sentences in English. And perched upon the diaphanous wings of broadband transmission, stories can reach eager listeners through any digital medium. Pratham Books’s recent initiative, ‘Missed Call do, Kahaani Suno’ allows children to listen to audio stories in English, Hindi, Marathi or Kannada by leaving a missed call at a given number. An auto-generated call in response lets them pick the language of the story, followed by an SMS that links them to the story on StoryWeaver.'

 You can read the entire article here.

A curated collection of African Storybook's stories can be found on StoryWeaver here. 

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This World Book Day, we wanted to share the power of books to inspire children to be lifelong readers. Our aim? In many languages, and from far flung places, to #GetChildrenReading.

According to the ASER 2022 survey, 80% of children in third grade cannot read at second grade level. Yet by reading for as little as 30 mins every day, a child’s reading age can improve by nearly two years. Keeping that in mind, our #GetChildrenReading initiative aims to nuture children to become lifelong readers, by providing an endless stream of stories and bringing together a community of advocates for the joy of reading.

This year’s World Book Day theme was indigenous languages. Our impact partners brought some wonderful storytellers to the children they work with in underserved and indigenous languages. Our partners in Africa, African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) was specially attracted to the book, 'Mouse in the House', by Soumya Rajendran and held a translation sprint to make the book accessible in Akuapem Twi, Luganda, Ewe, Krio and more… to be read across the public libraries of Africa. Our partners Suchana, in Birbhum West Bengal read aloud 'The Very Wiggly Tooth' to a group of children in Santhali, one of the two official tribal languages in the country, and Kora, which is deemed to be an endangered linguistic community by UNESCO.

Vilas Janve, a renowned mime artiste, and Upendra ‘Annu’ were invited to read aloud by Gayatri Seva Sansthan in Mewadi and Vagadi. Promod Sahu, a Social Entrepreneur read aloud 'What Neema is Eating Today' in Chhattisgarhi. You can watch the incredibly lively sessions, as well as storytelling sessions in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and English here.

For us, there is nothing more heartwarming than hearing children from Ghana and Kenya reading our stories in unison, or watching a child’s eye light up as he rushes to bring more of his friends on a sunday afternoon to listen to Seema Wahi’s animated reading of 'A Book for Puchku'.

Our aim however, is to make such moments an everyday occurrence. This celebration is a part of our ongoing #GetChildrenReading initiative, a six month long effort by StoryWeaver to bring together our partners, and the larger community of storytellers, parents, teachers and all those who believe in the power of reading to build the habit of reading in the lives of children around them. Find out more on how you can join us here.

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