Roberto Marcolin is a High School teacher near Milan, Italy. He’s been doing some very interesting things with StoryWeaver both inside the classroom and out! Read on to find out more.

“I’m a teacher in a high school near Milan, Italy and I'm in charge of the school library. Our school recently participated in Libriamoci a Ministry of Education project to promote reading aloud. Many different classes in the school took part, with some students reading out loud stories from StoryWeaver in English. At the end of January, we took part in Piazze Solidali (Solidarity Squares), an event held in the public library of our city. At the event some of my students read StoryWeaver stories in six different languages: Albanian, Romanian, Arabic, Spanish, French and of course Italian."

A class from Roberto's school is participating in Etwinning a European project,  students from the Czech Republic, Spain and Sweden. "Through this project they will translate books from English to their mother tongue on StoryWeaver.  You can find the first seven stories translated to Italian on StoryWeaver." 

Students read aloud stories from StoryWeaver at the Libriamoci event held in October, 2017. 

Roberto has also made an audio version of ‘Ghum Ghum Gharial’s Glorious Adventure’ in Italian with Canoprof an open source software created by the French education ministry.

“Framapad is an open source software for collaborative writing which I used when preparing for the Piazza solidale event. I made some recordings of stories like this one and I hope to do others. I think they could be used to promote reading amongst students.”

Roberto has a few other ideas on how he would like to use StoryWeaver. “In 2018,  I would like to organize a collaborative translation of some stories of StoryWeaver involving other teachers and students. The translators could meet in a place at school like the library and collaboratively translate some stories together. I would also like to create free digital libraries using StoryWeaver stories as my French colleague Cyrille Largillier has already done here.”

We look forward to hearing more from Roberto and his students this year!

If you are using stories in your classroom or library and would like to share it with our community, write to us at [email protected] and we’ll feature you on our blog!

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Amrita Tripathy, Marketing and Communcations Manager at Pratham Books does a round up of her favourite stories starring Daddy dearest.  

Call him Daddy, Appa, Baba, Acchan, Abbu, Babuji or Pitaji.  He is strong. He is loving. He is the protector and nurturer. He is no less than a superhero. My ‘baba’ is my role model. I’m sure your father must be your idol too. This Father’s Day, we bring to you some of our interesting stories on this real-life superhero – father. 

Anu and her love for moustaches- adapted from the original story by 'बाबाच्या मिश्या' (in Marathi) by Madhuri Purandare and translated by Jayashree Gopinath

Moustaches are so interesting  and it becomes double intriguing when dads have it. Some have thick ones, while some have thin ones. There are many without one and some have long ones forming a beard. Our little Anu is in love with his daddy’s moustache! Actually, Anu likes anyone who has a moustache. No sooner has Anu seen a moustache and her mind brims with wonderful ideas. To know the ideas, read this interesting story. 

Biju Spins Some Magic by Jaya Jaitly  and Bhramara Nayak  

Biju and his family are weavers in rural Odisha. They create beautiful fabrics and sell them in big cities in India and abroad. This is the tale of Biju’s adventures when he accompanies his father to Delhi to sell the saris, and in the process, impresses a city boy with his skill. With the traditional patachitra artwork, this story is truly a nostalgia of my childhood memories, of my homeland and those train journeys with baba. Not to ignore the Odisha handicrafts. A must read is what we suggest!

Cheenu's Gift by Sridala Swami and Suvidha Mistry

We all have waited eagerly in our school days for our dads to pick us from their busy schedule. Add to it, the joy of going around the city and helping dad get his works done. You never know when he gets happy with your help and gets you a surprise gift. Cheenu also gets a wonderful gift from his appa for being a good child. 

DeeSy short stories 3 : Connecting the Dots... by  Dr. Deepti S., Alicia Souza and Upamanyu Bhattacharyya

This wonderful short story showcases the importance of parents giving time to their kids in the midst of their busy schedule – office appointments, working on laptops and mobile phones and even on weekends and vacations. Sweet and impactful, this story says a lot about a father-son relationship in today’s time. So, why wait anymore! Let’s just connect the dots… 

Raza Meets the King by Subhadra Sen Gupta and Tapas Guha

Who doesn’t love reading stories of Akbar, The Great? We all did. We all still do. Here’s a story from history when great Mughal King ruled the country where Raza's father Rahmat Khan is the royal tailor to the emperor. When they go to the palace to deliver the Emperor's new summer clothes, Raza realizes that the emperor is not completely satisfied with his father's designs. Raza wants desperately to help his father. But what can a little boy do? Find out.

Come Home, Papa  by Apoorva Mathur, Hari Kumar Nair, Kabini Amin, Kaveri Gopalakrishnan, Soumya Menon, Vartika Sharma  and Vishnu M Nair

What do you do when our father goes missing? Would you look for him? To whom will you turn for help?  Read Vishakha's tale to unravel this mystery. 

A girl with a lantern by Ravi Ranjan Goswami, Sonal Goyal, Sumit Sakhuja and Sumit Sakhuja

In the pitch-dark night, little Neelima goes in search of her dad. Did she manage to find him? Was she scared? Why did her dog bark? Know more. 

Springloaded by Chenél Ferreira, Sam Wilson and Thea Nicole de Klerk

Neo’s father is an inventor. When he invents a helicopter hat and flies away, Neo decides to make an invention of her own. Like father, like son! A book with no words, just wonderful pictures that tell a beautiful story. 

The Parrot with a Broken Beak adapted from ٹوٹی چونچ والا طوطا by Shahid Anwar, Shailja Jain Chougule and  translated by Manisha Chaudhry  

Her father's pen calls out to Kasni. Should she, or should she not pick it up? After she uses it, she finds an angry father and an angry parrot. A tale with charming colours to make any child happy! And for grown-ups, this story is a childhood memory. To know why, read the entire story.

The Magic Powder - A Folktale from Myanmar by Greystroke and P.G. Dinesh

Once upon a time, in a little village on the banks of the Irrawaddy river, there lived a young woman called Thuza. She was very happily married to handsome young Theingi. But there was one problem that nagged Thuza – her husband believed he would find a way to turn dirt into hold! Did he succeed? Read this delightful tale from Myanmar to find out.

So, what are waiting for. Celebrate this Father’s Day with us in our style. 

Happy reading! 

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On World Book Day, we are excited to launch Classics on StoryWeaver, a collection of beautifully re-illustrated storybooks for children to read and enjoy!

What are classics? 

A. Montgomery Johnston in his article ‘The Classics of Children's Literature’ describes classics as those books that have a high literary quality, great child appeal and have themes that are of universal interest. Most classics have stood the test of time and have therefore been read by several generations. 

Donna Norton in her book ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’, talks about the importance and the need of exposing children to good children's literature. She says it nurtures growth and development of personality and social skills, helps develop emotional intelligence, provides an opportunity to learn about various cultures and transmits important literature and themes from one generation to the next. In his 1970 Nobel Lecture in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that literature can convey the life experience of one whole nation to another and thus becomes the living memory of the nation. 

Classics on StoryWeaver

Keeping all this in mind, we at StoryWeaver were looking for ways to bring some of these classics back to children who have perhaps not been introduced to them. Since all of the content on StoryWeaver is under the open Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, we looked for classics that were either out of copyright or in this open space. 

We were thrilled to find Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/), which was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. This is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks, which are digitized and diligently proofread by thousands of volunteers for enjoyment and education.  

While the stories on the Project Gutenberg platform were incredible, most of them had very few and very dated illustrations. Since StoryWeaver mostly hosts picture books for children, we decided to re-illustrate a few of these beautiful classics so that a new and younger generation would be able to read and enjoy them. 

We are also re-illustrating some children’s classics from the giants of Indian literature like Rabindranath Tagore, Munshi Premchand and Sukumar Ray and publishing them in their original language. But more about that later! 

Today, on World Book Day, we are proud to launch our Classics on StoryWeaver series with the following titles The Man in the Moon, Pussy Cat Mew, How the Whale Got his Throat, and The Rooster that Crowed Too Soon, beautifully illustrated by Sahil Shaikh, a Communication Design student from the DJ Academy of Design. 

An illustration from the storybook The Man in the Moon, written by L Frank Baum and illustrated by Sahil Shaikh

An illustration from the storybook How the Whale got his throat, written by Rudyard Kipling and illustrated by Sahil Shaikh

Do read the books on StoryWeaver and let us know what you think!  We hope you love these books as much as we do. 

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