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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Contest extended till May 10, 2019 

Welcome to the 2019 edition of Retell, Remix and Rejoice, StoryWeaver’s annual storytelling contest. Every year, on World Storytelling Day, we invite our community to join us and celebrate stories by hosting the Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest. And this year you can let your creative juices flow in 10 languages. More languages. More original stories for everyone to enjoy.

This year our focus remains on Level 1 and Level 2 books for our early readers, with stories that reflect their lives and the world around them. The themes have been handpicked by our editors.

Themes for this year

Family, friends and neighbourhood stories: Stories that explore children’s relationships with family, friends, and even pets as well as their home environments and neighbourhoods.

Funny stories: Themes that use humour to tell a story and promise to make you laugh.  

Sports stories: Football, cricket, gilli danda — stories that involve playing a sport and the community around it. Know of an inspirational sports person who deserves his or her story? We are listening!

School stories: Life in a school, friendships in school, teachers, time spent in school and even lunchtime in school!

Reading levels

For this year’s edition, we’re asking you to be as creative as you can and convey as much as you can – using as few words as possible. Use our reading level guidelines as you create your stories.

Regional languages first

Through the contest our aim is to promote original stories in English, Bengali, French, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish and Urdu. If you have an original story to tell in your language then we are all ears. We want to discover writing talent in the above mentioned languages and you could be one of our stars.

The win-win situation

Three finalists will win a hamper of books plus a one-on-one editorial feedback session with one of our editors. One grand finalist will win the chance to have his or her book re-illustrated!

Guidelines for submission

1. The contest runs from March 20 2019 to April 20, 2019.

2. All stories submitted must be your original work.

3. Stories must be in English, Bengali, French, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish and Urdu.

4. Participants must be over the age of 18 to participate.

5. By submitting your work to Retell, Remix and Rejoice 2019, you are agreeing to a CC-BY 4.0 license being applied to it. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. To know more about CC-BY 4.0, click here.

6. Terms and conditions apply. All final decisions rest with StoryWeaver. For more read here.  

For any queries, do write to us at [email protected]

How to enter

You can submit your story for Retell, Remix and Rejoice 2019 by using illustrations from our image bank here. Here’s also a quick video tutorial on how to create stories on StoryWeaver. 

Note: You will have to sign up or log in first to access the contest page on StoryWeaver. 

You can enter the Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest page, by clicking on the button below.

 

Enter Contest Now

 

All the best!

 

 

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In the hilly terrains of Phaltan, Satara district, Maharashtra a movement to seed the joy of reading in classrooms is being quietly seeded in 150 Zilla Parishad schools.

Pragat Shikshan Sanstha is an educational enterprise that supports schools, teachers and children in the district of Phaltan and other nearby areas. The organisation works with students through their own flagship school and after school programmes,  and also trains  teachers in good educational practices in government schools. By engaging researchers, government officials and the general public in an ongoing dialogue Pragat Shikshan Sanstha hopes to positively impact the education ecosystem.

“We are trying to impact the educational ecosystem by  changing the image of ‘the child’ and ‘the teacher’ through excellent classroom practices, sound pedagogies,  elements of classroom research and education for equality.” Manjiri Nimbkar, Secretary, Pragat Shikshan Sanstha.

Drop Everything and Read

One of Pragat Shikshan Sanstha’s areas of focus is setting up more libraries in the region. This, they felt was something that would not only benefit the schools in the area but also children from other nearby communities. The organisation felt that it was imperative to make books and read aloud sessions a part of their training offering to teachers. The idea was to get more teachers to use more books in their classrooms and libraries through read alouds and storytelling sessions.

Reading in so important in early childhood as books can free a child, and give them the opportunity to think and imagine. By helping children express themselves in varied ways, books  encourage them to understand and empathise with the lives and experiences of those who are marginalised.

Pragat Shikshan Sanstha came across StoryWeaver - a digital repository of multilingual stories for children from Pratham Books and in it, discovered a source of stories in Marathi, the language of the region. All content on StoryWeaver is openly licensed under CC-BY4.0 and can be read, translated, downloaded, printed and shared for free. Through StoryWeaver, the organisation has access to many joyful stories in Marathi but without having to heavily invest in buying books regularly.

It’s story time!

Pragat Shikshan Sanstha curated a list of stories, in different levels across a variety of themes and topics and circulated it amongst the teachers who were being trained in using storytelling as a medium for language development.

These teachers also double up as librarians! The teachers choose from the circulated list the stories they think will work best for their students, downloaded them as per their class’s requirement and conduct read aloud sessions. Each library is equipped with a tablet and a projector which the teachers use to project stories off StoryWeaver. They also conduct various activities - art & craft, book reviews, games, skits etc around the books to help extend learning.

Pratham Books was fortunate to watch one of these wonderful sessions at a Zilla Parishad schools in the region. The classroom was equipped with a projector donated by a local badminton association and some computers (in working condition) from a corporate.

Bohra Bai, who teaches grades 2 and 3 in the school, first did a little warm up with the children before asking them to sit down. The story she had chosen that day was ‘Sam’s Christmas Present’ by Annie Besant and Alicia D’Souza in Marathi. Bohra Bai  started from the cover page and urged the children to note everything that was there on the cover and predict what could the book be about.  She got them to make connections, relate it to their own lives and pointed out sight words. Basically, everything you would expect a good teacher to do with a good book.

“We have regular sessions with teachers on how good read alouds are done, what are the different activities one can do with the books and the teachers value these training.”

 

When we took Bohra Bai aside to ask her a few question, young Diksha took over and continued to read the story aloud to her classmates, and did a tremendous job of it!

“Storybooks with illustrations help children imagine and understand better, along with learning about new cultures or things they don't see otherwise. For example with this book Sam's Christmas Present, they got to know about the festival of Christmas or the food that is eaten during Christmas as children from villages have never seen or eaten things like that.” shared Bohra Bai.

 

When asked about using technology in the classroom, she had this to say: “Projecting stories help catch children's attention better because this is new for them. Its interesting because it looks like TV to them.”

Stories can be an excellent tool in the classroom, an idea Bohra Bai strongly agrees with! “Stories really help children expand their vocabulary. For example, they get to know options of words in proper language that they use otherwise in their day to day lives, in dialects of that language. This really helps language development.”

A total of 150 Government schools in the Phaltan district have libraries & digital set up from PSS. About 30000 children from Grades 2 to 7, get to listen, read and enjoy stories in Marathi and Hindi.

“Going forward we hope to create more books for children with imaginative illustrations and help people understand the importance of illustrations. Create literature to help children understand and tackle issues and problems. Encourage children’s own creative writing.”

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