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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by Elita Ouk. Photographs by Wendy Rockett.

Elita is a consultant for The Asia Foundation in Cambodia and Wendy Rockett is the Foundation’s Books for Asia senior communications manager. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and not those of The Asia Foundation or its funders. This post was originally published in The Asia Foundation’s In Asia blog here.

On September 18, nearly 20 publishers, editors, writers, and young technologists, ready with pencils and laptops, filled a co-working space in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, for the country’s first children’s e-book hackathon. The hackathon is part of Let’s Read! an Asia Foundation initiative that applies technology interventions to stimulate reading in developing Asian countries. By the end of the day, participants had created a series of engaging, original children’s content in electronic format, all in the Khmer language.

According to a 2015 Asia Foundation research study, 40 percent of Cambodian phone users own at least one smartphone, and a third of the population has access to the internet. Such increased access to technology is also opening up new opportunities for educational material to reach parents, teachers, and children, and helping to formulate a new way of publishing children’s content.

 

Hackathons have the potential to invigorate children’s book creation and distribution in Cambodia, where small amounts of children’s reading material are published every year. Shifting publishing from a linear process to a collaborative model lowers development and production costs and dramatically compresses the turnaround time. Photos by Wendy Rockett

Hackathon participants were divided into teams, each with a writer, illustrator, designer, and coder. An editor and children’s book experts from Room to Read guided the teams through the process, from conception to detailed storyboards and finished covers.

The teams spent most of the day refining the stories, with writers working closely with the editor to strengthen the narrative and sharpen the language, while illustrators continually refined storyboard drawings and cover art to make sure they were compelling to children.

 

For most of the writers and illustrators, the hackathon was the first time they had ever worked directly with each other in real time.

 

In 11 action-packed hours, the teams produced four stories that were further refined after the event: Big-Eyed Bee, the story of an adventurous and clever bee; Prach and Sathae, a tale of two boys who learn to resolve their differences; The Amazing Journey, the travels of a boy and girl with an intrepid alien; and The Storybook Princess, which captures the magic of storytime.

 

The Let’s Read! books will be freely available from the Ministry of Education’s Open Education Resource site, as well as through digital library apps such as Khmer LEARN for anyone to download, read, and adapt for their own use. The books will also be offered in e-pub and print-ready formats.

 

With the support of Smart Axiata, one of Cambodia’s leading telecom companies, the next hackathon in March 2017 will incubate even more publishing talent and further expand the quality and diversity of local children’s books.

Read more about Let’s Read!

You can follow The Asia Foundation on Twitter and Facebook.

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Nature’s shining green umbrellas, those green canopies with sprinkles of fragrant flowers and fruits, TREES are such magnificent things. Though rooted to the spot, just one of them can liven up an entire desolate road. Swing from them, play and sleep under them or just sit and study them, trees will always make time and space for you. Nature seems to be giving trees special attention these days...so we should too, right? Here are a few that we picked from our flowering array of stories available in varied languages.

 A Walk Among Trees written and illustrated by Nimret Handa

The king’s head gardener is panicked and scolding all his helpers! What could this royal head gardener have to worry about? Take a fun stroll through the King’s gardens and his beloved trees and find out who the king of fruits is... and why. We bet all these tree illustrations will make you fruit-hungry immediately! This story has been translated in Hindi, Kannada and Telegu.

Up World, Down World by Padmaparna Ghosh, Illustrated by Sunaina Coelho

We often have these invisible boundaries around us in which we like to keep our worlds all sewn up and intact. Imagine what can happen if we pull some threads loose and allow Our World to spill out into the one we have been told not to venture into, and let some of the Other World seep into our lives? Be brave! And read this remarkable and beautifully-illustrated story of how a little girl, Fatima, found an unlikely friend in Gopa, a dormouse! Wonderful things happen when two worlds meet. This gem is translated in 9 languages including Hindi and Bengali.

Let’s Go Seed Collecting! by Neha Sumitran, Illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan

Don’t you just love it when knowledge makes its way to you effortlessly? A great story with fascinating illustrations, this will help kids observe and learn from the tiniest detail of everyday landscapes, appreciate nature in its full glory, learn to be curious, and to seize the opportunity to spend time with a talking tree! Konkani and Marathi are two of the 10 languages in which this story is available in. Enjoy!

Jadav and the Tree-Place written and illustrated by Vinayak Varma

Ever heard of Jadav "Molai" Payeng? He has been planting trees for three decades now. This heart-warming story is dedicated to the undying spirit of a man who was so moved by the plight of snakes dying from heat that he decided to plant some bamboos to give them some shade. What this simple idea grew into... is incredible and an inspiration. Here’s another role model for your kids. We have this story in 11 languages including Odia and Tamil.

We love to see readers like you pitching in! Here’s a pick of three Community Stories where trees branch out in some form or the other:

Deepa’s Resolution by Usha Ayyar

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” Nelson Henderson’s words are even more relevant now! Read this simple story to your kids and see what they take from it.

Asha Gives up a Bad Habit by Geetha Ravi

Here’s an innovative way to make your child quit that bad, bad habit that you’ve been trying so, so hard to get rid of. Asha learnt two things in this story – How to give up a bad habit (Let’s face it, we all can use some help on that front), and to appreciate the impact trees have on us every minute. This story’s clearly a two-pronged winner.

Mango Tango by Reshma Jannath

This will remind you of all the innocent times as a kid when you thought that if you sow a seed, its plant would start growing tall the very next day! Nayana and Zia love mangoes, so they decide to plant a mango tree. What they didn’t take into account was all the friendly elements that will come together to help out the little seed. A Malayalam translation of this story is available here!

Do you have a favourite tree story? Tell us what it is in the comments section below, on Twitter or Facebook! 

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