This year, we'll be taking some of our authors and illustrators to classrooms and reading centres around the country. These are authors and illustrators who have contributed to the digital-first, STEM books that have been developed with support from Oracle. We're organizing these mini-events in association with our outreach partners. Pratham Books is eager to create more opportunities for our contributors to interact with young readers from across India, and this seems like a great start!

Neema (aka Bijal, our editor) and Cheekoo (aka Karanjeet Kaur, our author) trudged up to the Tamarind Tree School, Dahanu on a very rainy day for story sessions with the kids. Here is that story...

The Tamarind Tree School is an experiment in trying to bring in much needed equity in the education domain through open-source. The aim is to open up the world for the first generation learners of the tribal communities of Dahanu through a learner driven environment using the pedagogy of activity based learning. The school, in its 7th year of operation, has 150 students (90% belong to tribal villages in the neighbourhood) where technology is used extensively with the educators supplementing conversations around learning. 

The biggest impediment in this endeavour is not a physical one. It is the long history and the weight of oppression borne silently by these tribal communities. This effort to draw them out into the light is an exercise that needs to be handled with utmost empathy. 

Our sessions:

Neema was welcomed with open arms as courses on food, seasonality and bio-diversity are an important part of the syllabus here. The teachers put up a play at the school assembly on the advantages of eating with the seasons. This set the tempo for all the learning conversations to follow. Bijal's story sessions with Grade 3, 5 and 6 students included everyone talking about their favourite and least liked veggies and fruits, the Warli names of what Neema likes to eat, an informal quiz of what grew when & why..and a formal quiz at the end of the session with a video of Sam (an educator at Tamarind Tree) on how he has finally understood why his mother always stressed the need to eat the fruits and vegetables available in the season. The kids plan to make their own Dahanu seasonal calendar with Sam!

In the assembly, the teachers introduced three new words to the kids - ‘trash, biodegradable and recycle’ through a play. And then Karanjeet went on to narrate the story of naughty Cheekoo learning a lesson in cleanliness and social responsibility. The key conversation to emerge from these sessions was one where the Grade 7 students of Tamarind Tree School have now decided to embark on a 4 day clean-up drive of their neighbouring pada within Sogve village. The recce and pre-planning for this initiative are on as we type this up:)

And some other stuff we just have to share:

It was a wet week in Mumbai and Dahanu was green, silent and gorgeous. Brown chikkos hung low outside our classroom window as we sat chatting about our Cheekoo and her story:)

The cafeteria is a very important learning space. The students read-aloud the lunch menu, make a note of the displayed array of raw materials for cooking the day’s fare, comment (preferably in long sentences) on what they thought of the meal and then help with the clean-up.

The food was yum. And we were CHOMP! CHOMP!ing, MMM…MMMing just like Neema.

Signing off with one of our favourite pics...

You can read What's Neema Eating Today and A Cloud of Trash in 5 languages on StoryWeaver. 

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Vinayak Varma is an illustrator, writer and editor based in Bangalore. He is the author of 'Angry Akku', 'Jadav and the Tree-Place' (Pratham Books) and 'Up Down' (Tulika Books), and was the founder editor of Brainwave magazine. His articles and short stories have been published in The New Indian Express, DNA, Deccan Herald, The Hindu, Muse India and Out of Print Magazine, and he has illustrated books for Penguin, Harper Collins, Hachette, Scholastic, Duckbill and Pratham Books. You can visit Vinayak online at www.mixtape.in, instagram.com/mixtape.in and twitter.com/eyefry. 

Vinayak is judging the 'Who is Ameena?' contest and shares some insights on illustrating for children's books for those of you planning to enter.

To start off with, here's a general overview of the process that I (and most other illustrators) follow:

1. Once I receive the brief for a book, I first try to identify a set of visual criteria that will work best for it: 

• A governing style -- if I want to try something entirely new, which is different from the way I've drawn before, I create a mood board with a bunch of reference illustrations from various sources (Pinterest works particularly well for this purpose), and I try and spend some time at a good children's book store (like Lightroom in Bangalore) for some inspiration;

• The medium -- I decide what art materials I should use, how much of it should be traditional media, and how much can be digital, etc.;

• Visual research -- if I'm drawing an animal, for instance, I'll need photo references of that animal in various angles and poses. Similarly, for landscapes, buildings, flora, etc.

2. I then sketch character designs for the central protagonist(s) in the book. I do multiple iterations in several styles, so that I have varied options from which to choose.

3. Next, I make thumbnail drawings for all the illustrations -- these are very rough, and meant only to indicate the overall composition of each illustration. Along with these, I make one detailed drawing, as a proof of what the rest of the book will look like. 

4. I then submit all these to the art director or editor I'm working with, for their approval.

5. Once approvals come in, and pending any corrections, I make detailed pencil sketches of all the pages (based on the thumbnails I already made), ink these drawings, and go ahead with the final colouring.

A few general tips and tricks:

-- You can build consistency in your artwork (and pose a fun creative challenge for yourself) by defining a very specific colour palette, and drastically limiting the number of inking and colouring tools you use. Visual consistency also comes from creating a strong internal logic for your style of illustration, and sticking to it. For example, some artists choose to draw characters' eyes as little black dots, some draw white circles with black dots, some draw them in the shape of large pomfrets, and some draw anatomically correct eyes. Similarly, there are the artists who draw buildings, landscapes and objects with perfect perspective and clean lines, while others may use a more impressionistic approach. What you choose to do in any of these instances is entirely up to you, but once you've made your choice, you need to stand by it for the rest of the book.

-- Your art should add a whole new dimension to the story. Instead of merely repeating what the text says, allow your illustrations to take creative liberties, and add interesting details that go beyond what the writer has suggested. Remember that picture books always have two authors -- both the writer and the illustrator are creative equals in this medium, working in tandem but with distinct viewpoints -- so don't be shy of exerting your unique authorial and artistic vision.

-- Having fun while illustrating is important, of course, but it might also benefit your artwork to imagine that this might be your last and greatest work, and that everyone is going to judge the hell out of you based on how well this turns out. I often use this strategy to frighten myself into delivering (I hope) a somewhat-above-average product. And it works for the most part -- except when I allow the fear to paralyse me into a state of deep inertia... Hmm. On second thoughts, maybe this isn't the best advice in the world. Yeah, okay, forget I said anything. Just do that 'having fun' part.
In summary: look at lots of picture books before starting out, make strong artistic choices, take plenty of creative risks, and have fun.

For more details on 'The Who is Ameena?' contest and to enter, click here.

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For the last 13 years, Pratham Books has published 300 titles in 18 languages and helped put them in the hands of 3 million children. But in a linguistically diverse country like India with 122 major languages and 1599 ‘other’ languages, achieving the mission of ‘a book in every child’s hand’ becomes a challenge.

StoryWeaver was envisioned as a means through which we could significantly scale the creation of joyful reading material for children in a language they’re fluent in, whether it’s a mainstream, minority, tribal or endangered language. These are languages that are traditionally overlooked by mainstream publishing. Since its launch, StoryWeaver has played a small but key role in the preservation of these languages, by providing language champions, teachers and authors a platform on which they can translate, create, download, print and share stories with ease and for free.   

Surjapuri is a lesser known Bengali dialect is spoken in pockets of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh by 1.2 million people. In Bihar, the language is spoken in Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnia and Araria districts.

As many of the villages in the Kishanganj  district are located in the interior realms of the district, they have little by way of basic infrastructure and primary health care. The literacy rate is low and primary schools often lack even the most basic facilities. As most of the high schools are located in Kishanganj and Thakurganj towns which are far from the villages, girls tend to discontinue their education leading to a high drop-out rate.

The Azad India Foundation

The Azad India Foundation (AIF) was founded by Yuman Hussain in 1998 to seed initiatives in education and primary health care. The activities reach out to marginalized women, adolescents and underserved children from rural and urban areas of Kishanganj district. AIF has 73 learning centres impacting 3500 children directly in the area. StoryWeaver is periodically used in these centres.The children in AIF’s centres are aged between 6 - 9 years and are either school dropouts or children attending Madrassas. The centre’s syllabus includes Hindi, English, Science and Maths.

Yuman Hussain shared “The main aim of the initiative is to ensure that children are ready to merge with mainstream education in state-run schools by grade 4. Literacy initiatives play a big role in ensuring this. The children that I engage with at the learning centres have never seen a story book in their mother tongue. Even my teachers haven’t read books in Surjapuri.”  

Previously, AIF used printed storybooks in the centres and were limited by the number of books they could source. Plus, these books were not in Surjapuri.Through StoryWeaver AIF has access to thousands of stories free of cost.

“The reading culture among children is diminishing.” says Yuman. “I can put together a sizeable bank of stories from StoryWeaver as they are freely available and nudge the children towards reading. Before I came across StoryWeaver, I hadn’t thought of translating stories for the children. When I realised that it was so easy on the platform, I decided to give it a shot. The level 1 and 2 books were really fun and straightforward and I felt perfect for the children we worked with. Translating on StoryWeaver for children has made me realise the importance of picking the ‘right’ words in line with the reading level and the essence of the story. Also, Surjapuri has minor variations across villages, so choosing a word that would be understood across speakers was also an enjoyable challenge for me.”

The AIF Centres are not tech equipped as there are electricity issues in the villages. So Yuman picks stories to read to children or for translation at the AIF office in Kishanganj where there is better connectivity. She uses Google Input Tools for translations and then, pastes the text in the StoryWeaver editor. After translating the stories, they are downloaded, printed and distributed to teachers who then carry the stories to the learning centres to read to children.  

Yuman strongly believes that reading books in Hindi and English will improve the children’s language skills. “Plus, if educational concepts are taught through stories in their mother tongue and if we engage children in activity based learning, they are more eager to learn and will grasp the concepts better.”

Yuman was motivated by reading how other educators were using StoryWeaver in their classrooms.

“The stories were received very positively by the children. The stories in Surjapuri, the mother tongue of the children, left them amazed. I plan to keep exposing the children to more and more stories with the hope that they will then start to read voluntarily over the course of time.”

Watch this short video about AIF.

 

 

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