The boisterous birthday celebrations finally came to an end with Jolly Jeeva! A Jungle Jamboree had both children and parents in splits as the master storyteller weaved popular stories from the Panchatantra to an enthralled audience.
The art of mural painting was brought to life by author Shyamala Shanmugasundaram at the launch of her new book Painted Walls of Malainagar. The exciting launch was followed by an art activity for the children.
For our readers in cities outside Chennai, Janaki Aunty brought back tales of everyone’s favourite ele-friend Gajapati Kulapati for an evening of fun, laughter, singing and storytelling on Zoom.
The birthday month celebrations continued as children tuned in to a fun-filled ZOOM session with Menaka Raman for her book ‘What Do We Name This Dog?’.
Thadaar! Padaar! Little Gajapati Kulapati rolled into the Tulika Bookstore for the grand launch of Little Gajapati Kulapati Kweeeee!, the newest book in the series. Author Ashok Rajagopalan launched the much-awaited book to a packed audience filled with children and adults alike!
As the first in our birthday month celebration line-up, was the launch of – Sculpted Stones of Mamallapuram by author Ashwin Prabhu. This was a small intimate affair that served as a virtual tour of the Mamallapuram.
We ended the year with a blast with Janaki Aunty’s storytelling session.
P. Sainath’s ‘Unknown Heroes of India’s Freedom Struggle’ was launched through a panel discussion at the Asian College of Journalism. On the panel were P.Sainath, illustrators Satwik gade and Kripa along with journalism students Ankita and Abhirup.
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To mark the occasion of Gandhi jayanthi, we had Vikram Sridhar at our bookstore, enthrall children with the storied from childhood of M K Gandhi, from the boy he was to the man he became.
We celebrated Jeeva Raghunath’s journey as a storyteller at our bookstore where it all began 25 years ago! With stories she wrote and some more, our bookstore was filled with laughter, and some dancing like the Tanjavur dolls!
Storyteller Vithya Dhanaraj brough a fun-filled, bilingual storytelling session to our bookstore which was followed by a fun craft activity.
We had many little ones join us for a Read and Do Book event of stretching and storytelling with Aditi Chandrasekar, author of ‘Growing with Yoga’.
It rained and rained stories and songs at Utopia with everyone’s favourite storyteller – Janaki Sabesh.
Marking the beginning of an exciting collaboration with TugBug Children’s Play center with a colorful session by author-illustrator Nancy Raj.
Rangana is back doing a happy ele-jig! Author Arthi Anand Navaneeth took us into the world of this nail-polishing loving ele with a musical story session!
Celebrating mothers everywhere with a storytelling session by Janaki Aunty. We hosted this session in collaboration with Lil Trails.
The grand finale for our birthday month was a warm and fuzzy storytelling session with everyone’s favorite storyteller Janaki aunty. What a way to end the birthday with a room full of wishes from little kids!
What can be more fun than celebrating two milestones in one. We celebrated our 27th birthday along with the 25th anniversary of Jeeva Raghunath’s journey as a storyteller with a rollicking-frollicking session at our bookstore, listening to wonderful stories from the Master storyteller herself.
With percussionist Muralikrishnan was our first bookstore event in our month-long birthday celebration. Just like little Zakir banged on pots and pans swaying to the beats, children banged on drums and created beats and rhythms in this musical session led by renowned percussionist Muralikrishnan.
We ended the series of events for this year with a laughter filled Tamil storytelling session conducted by performance storyteller Vikram Sridhar.
Children participated in this event where they got to learn about Gond illustrations through storytelling and artwork featured in our book The Magical Fish. This session was conducted by Team Tulika.
Illustrator Anthoni Guruz of our recent book Boom Boom, conducted an interesting art workshop where children got to make their own little wordless picture books.
Co-author, Aditi Chandrasekhar of Growing with Yoga led this session of storytelling through yoga. Kids kukaroo-d along with Ruru rooster as they performed various asanas under Aditi’s guidance
Storytelling and craft – We celebrated the first birthday of our book Ayyo… That Parrot! At our bookstore with a storytelling and craft session. The session was conducted by Team Tulika
The first event of our year-end calendar was an online storytelling session with Janaki aunty. She shared the stories of Gulab, Anya and Ostroo!
Just in time for Christmas, we hosted a session with Janaki aunty, consisting of stories on the spirit of giving, sharing and caring. This event was in collaboration with Lil Trails.
Author of Look Ma, No Hands! Vikram Agnihotri launched his first book amidst enthusiastic children at the Bangalore Lit Fest.
Author Devika Cariapa, Adithi Rao and Lavanya Kapahi were at the Bangalore Lit Fest engaging children in interesting book sessions based on their books Uncle Nehru, Please Send An Elephant!, Noon Chai and a Story and Many Colours Of Us! respectively.
Author Prema Revathi and Illustrator Anthoni Guruz launched their book Boom Boom at the Madurai Children’s Literature Festival. Boom Boom is one of our latest books in the recently launched Tulika Graphix series.
Janaki aunty brought us stories from the forest - of a snoring lion, of a hungry monkey and of a sweet-sweet Ostrich that just wants to tell a story. This time the event was conducted at Kindernest and children got to take home a copy of the book The Jungle Storytelling Festival written by the master storyteller herself!
We celebrated this special occasion at our bookstore, talking to children about the real story of Peter Marmorek from the book Uncle Nehru, Please Send An Elephant! Children made their own postcards and also posted them in our very own Tulika Postbox!
Over 50 children joined us in this fun session with Janaki aunty as she brought the story of Jokhu the jokhini to life through her musical storytelling!
Beach walk with Yuvan Aves! - Back on popular demand, in this beach walk with author Yuvan Aves we got a glimpse into some of the things from his book Shorewalk.
We launched our newest picture book Jokhu and the Big Scare with author Priyadarshini Gogoi who did a dramatic reading and illustrator Debasmita Dasgupta who taught children to create doodles of their own Jokhu!
Educators, teachers, librarians and parents joined library consultant and trainer JoAnne Saldanha as she shared how diving into a book is just the beginning and how we can explore and discover all possible treasures that are hidden within.
Scuttling ghost crabs, migrating butterflies, shell spotting and Beach Bingo... Beach-walking with Yuvan Aves was whale of a time as we launched his book Shorewalk!
Fest-ing in-person – woohoo! Author illustrator Nancy Raj led a wonderful art session for children putting a creative twist to monograms of their initials. Followed by this was an energetic and immersive storytelling session by Vikram Sridhar.
Everyone’s much loved storyteller Janaki Sabesh told the story of Bumoni from Assam, Basava from Karnataka and our elefriend Gajapati Kulapati. The children enjoyed looking at books and finding pictures during the session.
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In our first ever collaboration with Poo Paatu, children were engrossed in stories told by storyteller Vikram Sridhar of a little black goat Kajri and a stray dog Anbu from two of our much loved books. All this and more in Tamil!
A unique session not just for children but for parents too! Illustrator Nivedita read from the book Growing With Yoga and also shared fun couplets to get the session started! Co-author Aditi Chandrasekhar showed a quick and easy yoga flow, including asanas featured in the book.
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We launched our newest picture book Growing With Yoga, with co-author Rama Chandrasekhar at our bookstore. Along with her the little ones were quick to get into the various yoga poses which featured in the book!
For the first art workshop this season we invited children of ages 8-12 to join us at our bookstore as writer-illustrator Nancy Raj took on a 90 minute journey of self-exploration and creating self portraits.
We celebrated Mother’s Day with many little ones at Utopia World Chennai along with author-illustrator Ashok Rajagopalan. The children enjoyed splishing - splashing with Gajapati Kulapati and learning to draw their own Gajapati afterward. The session ended with book signing and one on one author interaction.
On the event of World book day we welcomed children of age 4-7 once again to our bookstore for a storytelling and a craft activity after 2 long years of conducting sessions online.
We launched our newest picture book God’s Little Ant, with author Khyati Anand-Puran and illustrator Prabha Mallya.
We celebrated India’s Republic Day with a first of its kind art only session- Design A Book Cover! Illustrator Satwik Gade shared ideas and tips with children ages 8 and above. The participants created their own versions of cover for the book Uncle Nehru, Please Send An Elephant!
We launched our fun and fabulous picture book Ayyo…That Parrot! With author Abhi Krish and illustrator Shreya Sen .
We launched our our newest compelling picture book Ammu's Bottle Boat with award-winning writer Niveditha, illustrator Aindri C and enviro enthusiast Srini Swaminathan.
We invited librarians, educators, teachers, parents and individuals to join librarian consultant and trainer JoAnne Saldanha (mythaunty) as she shared tips on little things we could do that emphasise the diversity around us.
Children ages 4 upward joined Team Tulika for a SPOOKtacular story with a faBOOlous craft activity to kickstart the season.
For International Non-Violence Day and Gandhi Jayanthi, performance storyteller and acclaimed writer Vayu Naidu shared a folk tale -Hiss, Don’t Bite! In her inimitable style. This free online event for the ages of 4 and up had children from India and Singapore listening in rapt attention and engaging in a wonderful Q and A with the author after the story telling.
For International Translation Day, we teamed up with everyone's favourite, Janaki Sabesh Aunty, to bring to you some catchy rhymes with cool rhythms in different languages! We sang 8 rhymes all in different Indian languages from our book Oluguti Toluguti.
We celebrated International Day of Peace with our latest picture book, Bumoni’s Banana Trees! Author of the book Mita Bordoloi lauched her book with children and adults joining in on Bumoni’s quest to save her Banana grove and help feed the wild elephants.
We celebrated International Literacy Day with some fabulous children from the Kallukuttai group in Tamil this evening. The session was conducted by Jeeva Raghunath who was written and translated over 60 books for Tulika.
Story telling with a games and interactive session around the much-loved book The 13th Riddle. The event was hosted and conducted by Team Tulika.
We're super excited for our Independence Day event in partnership with CSMVS, Mumbai. During this online session the children met Bal Sahitya Puraskar winning writer Devika Cariapa, to discuss some cool facts from her books India Through Archaeology: Excavating History.The interaction will be followed by an amazing virtual tour of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai!
Award-winning writer Sandhya Rao launched her new activity book for young writers, Jump Write In! The hour long session with budding young writers, had them spinning stories around visuals and audio that was shared.
A magical event to celebrate the World Paper Bag Day, with a story telling session of our book The Magic Feather followed by a craft activity conducted by Team Tulika.
We've combined two cool days, #WorldMusicDay and #FathersDay, to create an unforgettable event! Filled with music, anecdotes from the life of Ustad Zakir Hussain and art that makes the book , ZAKIR AND HIS TABLA: DHA DHIN NA come alive ,award-winning writer Sandhya Rao, acclaimed illustrator Priya Kuriyan and musician Parathasarathy came together to mark this special day!
What better way to spend #WorldEnvironmentDay than with India's leading wildlife conservation filmmaker, Shekar Dattatri!!! The hour session consisted of a presentation by Shekar showcasing his photographs whis led to the making of the 3 Tulika books- Lai Lai The Baby Elephant, Ira The Dolphin and Riddle Of the Ridley. Through the presentation Shekar spoke about hhis experiences while shooting the images and how they became books. Following this was a Q & A session.
This World Storytelling Day, we travelled to Kashmir with author Adithi Rao as we launched our latest picture book, Noon Chai and A Story!
Sound the trumpets!Our latest picture book is here! Join the fun with BOTH author, Devika Cariapa, and illustrator, Satwik Gade, as we celebrate this elephant-astic book
The Moving YA Book -Oonga was launched at the Jaipur Literature festival online by Devashish Makhija.
Award – Winning writer Devika Cariappa conducted an exclusive virtual session where she spoke about her two spectacular published by Tulika – Excavating History and 25 Game Changers. The event was open to parents, librarians and educators.
Inspired by our wonderful picture book , The Magic Feather by Roma Singh, we conducted a fun and creative session where children learnt to make 3D greeting card!
In view of International Day Of Persons with Disabilities, with great happiness, we invited acclaimed writer Jerry Pinto to read his latest book , Anya And Her Baby Brother!
Internationally acclaimed writer and cluster librarian, Fawzia Gilani-Williams, was all set with an extra special topic exclusively put together for librarians and educators .
A musical evening spent clapping, tapping and grooving along with Janaki Aunty.
Our gentle jumbo Gajapati Kulapati , travelled all the way to U.S.A , with author-illustrator Ashok Rajagoplan!
Award- winning illustrator Nancy Raj launched her new book – It’s My Colour! -through a colourful and engaging event.
Author Devashish Makhija and storyteller Bhumika Dube, put up a wonderful, funny and engaging performance by enacting the story – When Ali Became Bajranjbali .They performed virtually for all our little audiences, bringing the experience of theatre to homes !
Fawzia Gilani-Williams through a fabulous session launched her latest picture book -Henna On My Hands.
A wonderful group of young audience joined us in celebrating Gandhi with author Devika Cariapa, and Tulika Book – 25 Game Changers.
Publishing director Radhika Menon in conversation with Karadi Tales’ Shoba Vishwanath , telling us the wonderful story of Little Vinayak and Gajapati Kulapati – Kalicha Kulicha!
An evening well spent , learning to draw our favourite ele-friend with author/ illustrator Ashok Rajagopalan at the launch of his newest book – Gajapati Kulapati Kalicha Kulicha .
Our Publishing Director – Radhika Menon was a part of international panel, that discussed the business of kid lit.
What do publishers look for in translated children’s literature? How do market standards differ across regions? What are the unique challenges brought on by the pandemic, and how does it affect the kid lit universe? Expert panelists joined from India , Canada and the UK to give us their perspective.
(A) 24TH JULY, 2020 The riveting story of Kaveri flowing your way through music, mudras and movements with Thresh Dance.
(B) 9th JULY, 2020. The Story of River Narmada brought to life through ebbing and flowing narration and movement with Thresh Dance.
(C) 10th June, 2020 . The story of Ganga , performed through music , mudras and movement by The Red Curtain Project.
Our One of its kind, very first e-book launched keeping in mind the year the has been – ZYRUS THE VIRUS, by Zai Whitaker. Also marks the first time Tulika went live on social media as well! Woot!
In partnership with Apalam Chapalam, a multilingual storytelling channel.
(a) Actor Suhasini Maniratnam reads Go Away Coronavirus ! In Tamil. As a part of Tulika Publishers’ multilingual reading campaign, many languages …. Many voices….many stories…., here is actor Suhasini Maniratnam reading Go Away Coronavirus! A picture book in verse Divya Thomas. It talks to children about their safety, speaks to their fears and gets them to look at the bright side .
(b)Actor Shriya Pilgaonkar reads – Go Away Coronavirus! In Hindi.
(c)Actor Kalki Koechlin reads – Go Away Coronavirus! In English.
Our Publishing Director Radhika Menon was live on Instagram , in conversation with our favourite Janaki Sabesh, collaborated by Lil Trails!
We celebrated Rabindranath Tagore’s 159th birthday with a book that makes children- curious learners, careful observers, critical thinkers. With 21 innovative activities a multi-disciplinary , multi-sourced, participatory approach in keeping with Natural Curriculum Framework.
For World Book Day , we made an extra special announcement , we launched e-books from Tulika, to download, read, print, colour and more!
For GOLPO Tales’ first Online storytelling session in collaboration with Lil Trails , Janaki Sabesh chose to retell the story of gentle elephant Gajapati Kulapati , through music and animated expressions.
A happy bunch of budding writers got to meet and learnt from acclaimed author Ken Spillman, at a special creative writing workshop. He has written some of our well-loved books, Clumsy! , Advaita The Writer, No fear, Jiyaa!
We had a wonderful interaction with acclaimed writer, Ken Spillman at the Tulika Bookstore, Chennai .for an after-school meet-the-author session. He has written some of our well-loved books – Clumsy! , Advaita The Writer and No Fear, Jiyaa!
Celebrated author Mamta Nainy, who has written our well-loved picture book LILA’s LOSE TOOTH , illustrated by Habib Ali , was at the first ever Story Fiesta in West Delhi at GD Goenka Petite Pitampura , where she met and signed copies of her book , for the many little readers who visited .
‘The Tenth Son’ travelled all the way to Austin with Ayan and Ashish Malpani, the authors of the book . They spoke about the book to over a hundred fifth graders and a class of third graders at Elsa England Elementary A lot of questions about the story, the book and Tulika Publishers were addressed.
Author Poorva Agarwal launched her latest picture book – WHAT MAKES me ME, published by Tulika at Blossom Book House Bangalore. The illustrations of the book is done by Maithili Joshi.
Author Priya Narayan and illustrator Satwik Gade , launched their latest picture book Srinivasa Ramanujan : A friend of Numbers. We learnt a lot about the mathematical genius from Priya and Satwik helped children find patterns everywhere.
Interview with author Poorva Agarwal, author of our new picture book What makes me Me.
Author Mamta Nainy , launched her newest book A Saree For Ammi, published by Tulika at The Book Café In Dwarka, Delhi.
It was a triple treat! Author Praba Ram, Ashok Rajagopalan and Arthi Anand Navaneeth launched 'Can you?' with a reading session followed by a fun 'sketch and guess' activity by Ashok Rajagoplan.
Niveditha Subramaniam launched the event with beautiful stories about instinctive upcyclers - our very own grandmothers. Everyone went home with an Ammama doll draped in a sari.
Tulika celebrated the new book with a Quiz! A fun way to introduce Indian personalities who made a difference. Quiz master Advaith Jayakumar not only set up a great quiz, but also regaled the enthusiastic student audience with unknown facts about these personalities.
We had not one, not two but four stops for the Runaway Peacock Launch! Madurai, Chennai, Pune & Bangalore.
Ayan & Ashish spent an interesting evening with us at the Tulika Bookstore after introducing the book to a couple of schools in Chennai!
Malli came to the Tulika Bookstore along with her creators, Jeeva Raghunath and Nancy Raj. It was a riot of reading and singing, cutting and folding!
Verses that made us laugh or cry and made our toenails twinkle.The response was overwhelming! Mayil authors and judges Niveditha Subramniam and Sowmya Rajendran had a hard time choosing. There was rap, props, conviction & confusion.
World Book Day was celebrated with a Treasure Hunt at the Tulika Bookstore. The children were given clues from the books. It was heartwarming to see them stop mid hunt, when they found a book especially interesting and read for a bit. Every hunter took home a book trophy!
Cloud Eater released on Women's Day at the Tulika Bookstore. Our designer Roshini Ponchont dressed as Phumtopchen. Small cardboard cutouts of the mountains helped create an illusion of the giant girl.The children enjoyed the performance and the distribution of organic, flavoured cotton candy at the end. They were tasting the clouds just like their superhero the Cloud Eater!
Our powerful picture book, I Will Save My Land bagged the 2018 Neev Book Award for Best Picture Book!
We launched our most path-breaking picture book yet, Red by Sagar Kolwankar! Kirthi Jayakumar of The Red Elephant Foundation read out the story and then everybody discussed the idea of war and the hope for peace. Read the wonderful messages of peace the children left on our big RED kite.
A bright bunch of sci-fi lovers gathered at the Tulika Bookstore last Saturday as we launched our superhero book, Shrinking Vanita! The kids clearly had a blast as writer-illustrator-cartoonist Manjula Padmanabhan read from the book – she wasn’t allowed to stop even after Vanita had saved the world. So the acclaimed author went on to read from her stunning recent picture book, Mama, What is The Night? After some tickling trivia about fireflies and jellyfish, eight-year-old Swathi informed us that the book was filled with “bioluminescence”! Always happy to be in the company of 'bright' young minds!
Aaaaaaaa... Gobak! That's the sound of hungry listeners relishing storyteller Jeeva Raghunath's Tamil tales! From the all time favour-hit Aainthu Kutty Kurangugal/Five Little Monkeys to the latest bilingual book Kutti Anbu/Little Anbu, the Tulika Bookstore was filled with songs, riddles and stories – and parents had the most fun of course! Watch this space for the next session of Kekalaam, Pesalaam, Padikkalaam!... the jolly-joyful immersion into a Tamil learning experience!
The NEW Tulika Bookstore sent out a colourful welcome with its first event! Children waved cheery, bright dupattas (the colours of the world) that writer-turned-Colour Thief storyteller Sandhya Rao grabbed and dumped in a big ‘hole’, leaving the kids in chatters and giggles – just as in the story. Later it was colour-for-all time, with lots of doodling and drawing.
We were chuffed to hear our nomination for Best Children's Publisher of the Year Award! And as always, we were excited to be at the Bologna book fair surrounded by fabulous children's books from around the world.
Over 70 little budding birders migrated to Starmark Bookstore, Express Avenue, Chennai, where writer-environmentalist Zai Whitaker told them the true story of her birding burdens, and they were riveted!
Around a hundred teachers and librarians turned up for Goa's very first publisher-teacher conference and we're pleased to have been a part of it!
What a flutter there was at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival! Children twittered excitedly as authors of the two birdy books – Bhavna Bhuta of The Birdie Post and Zai Whitaker of Salim Mamoo and Me – told their stories. Then more chirping and chattering as they tried to guess answers at Zai's what's-this-bird quiz. A few birders were born there, we hope.
Hundreds of stalls, thousands of people, millions of books… that’s the buzz of a book fair! Many, many parents and children shopped their wishlist at our stall, at the grounds of St George's School.
The scene was hotter at the Bangalore Literature Festival in November 2017 where Krishna Bala Shenoi brought out the dragons! The young illustrator of The Boy and Dragon Stories and Other Tales, Okaasama Otousama and Gone Grandmother had a public debut with his Drawgon last month. The children clearly had a blast!
It’s the big 10 for Bookaroo in November 2017– being THE children’s book festival in India. And the party at the Jaipur bash included Deepa Balsavar, illustrator of One and Many (and many more books) and animator-filmmaker Nina Sabnani who showed how A is for Ajrakh. At the Delhi Bookaroo, Illustrator Nancy Raj went with the moo-gnificent Maharani, the cool cow that holds up traffic. Wait, Not Yet!, says Nandana Dev Sen, who had an act lined up with frogs and hippos and a little girl who won’t go to bed. Also in attendance was A Walk with Thambi author Lavanya Karthik in a panel discussion on disability in children’s books.
A Walk with Thambi was launched in partnership with Chetana Charitable Trust which celebrated the first anniversary of the Chetana Accessible Reading Material Library on Sunday, 19 November 2017 at The Anna Centenary Library, Chennai.
The bilingual hit Not Yet! went to the Dhaka Literature Festival! Author Nandana Dev Sen flew with the birds, snuggled a whale, kissed a kangaroo… did what it takes, as she performed the perfect story for little ones to call it a night!
Sparrow says Cheep Cheep...and the kids love it in heaps heaps! Illustrator Soumya Menon conducted a session at Lightroom Bookstore, Bangalore, with her popular board book Cheep Cheep in October 2017. She also taught the kids how to make the creatures in the book – with shapes!
Drip drip! Woof woof! These were the kinds of sounds heard at Kahani Tree in Mumbai, one gloomy morning as author Vaishali Shroff read the monsoon hit Raindrops to a cheery bunch of children. After soaking in the story, they made adorable puppy puppets to take home! Thank you, Kahani Tree, for putting together one more fabulous event in September 2017.
Delhi based storyteller-writer Tanu Shree Singh hopped over to Chennai in August 2017 where she told stories of the move-me-not Maharani mystery and gaga-over-raga Ruru saga! Two little boys played the police officer and Maharani and everybody played Ruru. Booming with sounds and movement, the session ended with the rambunctious rooster raga.
In August 2017 Ammachi surfaced (with gusto, without glasses) for JustBooks Anna Nagar’s fourth anniversary. After warming up with giggles and wiggles, one young girl took a shot at 'telling' the story of this wordless picture book from the crow’s point of view. The other children enjoyed it thoroughly and added to it themselves.
To celebrate 70 years of Independence in August 2017, we relived history in a unique event in association with RED Planet. Right next to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on Marina Beach in Chennai, writer Sandhya Rao told children The Story of Dandi March. Just as with the real event, there was first a song and later a march to the edge of the sea to pick up a handful of salt. A short spell of rain added to a spellbinding experience!
Bengaluru’s travelling children’s bookstore, Funky Rainbow, turned four in July 2017 and who do you think they celebrated with? Rainbow-loving Ranganna! At a session in Samhita Academy, author Arthi Anand “had the children of Standard 1 listening, laughing, singing, dancing and drawing as only she can with infectious charm and effortless ease.” Would you like to sing and dance too? Move and groove to these Ranganna rhythms.
Bouts of laughter were heard at a storytelling session at Kahani Tree, Mumbai, when storyteller Sonali Chand narrated the riveting A Bhil Story in July 2017. Children also made stick figures with twigs and painted on them, pithora style! Looks like kids love this kind of art – remember the pithora tree?
In July 2017, from the Taj Mahal, little Pooni went all the way to meet the little kids of Chennai! Natural Parenting Community organised a session with storyteller Bhagirathy to tell this tail-chasing tale, where many Minnies ran around the venue looking for a naughty, runaway, orange-striped cat.
Read… Explore…Discover…That is what R.E.D. Planet stands for and that’s exactly what the children did at Litopia, their children’s literature festival. From book based crafts and doodling workshops to discussing Indian and international children’s literature, the two-day fest was ‘the highlight of their summer’, they said. The other highlight was a little girl at the costume parade – among Snow Whites and Pinocchios, she came as a grand Maharani the cow and was the centre of attention as the bovine in the book!
Passing a cow that is lazing (after grazing) in the middle of the road is an everyday thing. But feeding a cow and other animal friends is special. And that was the treat in store for children last weekend at The Farm, OMR – hobnobbing with cows, goats, horses, chickens and turkeys, before settling down to listen to the doings of Maharani the Cow from her author Christy Shoba Sudhir. All udderly amoosing!
To celebrate a day that celebrates books, we put together a two-part event at Wandering Artist, Chennai, with a writing workshop and lively storytelling – to a room-bursting response! Some creative prodding from writer Sandhya Rao, some dreamtime thrown in with her Dream Writer, and a bunch of quick-thinking children churned out a half baked cake! Whaaat? Another dream? Next, it was get-set for the gentle gi-normous Gajapati, with his creator Ashok Rajagopalan and actor-storyteller Janaki Sabesh!
'Graaa-ooo-ooo-oon' chimed the little ones at ABC Playschool at the launch of When Bholu Came Back. Author Kavitha Punniyamurthi read the story in English soon after which her husband read it in Tamil – and the children were delighted to hear the story in both languages! Inspired by Niloufer Wadia's illustrations, they designed their own setting for the ship of the desert which was as colourful as Niloufer's. Looks like they have 'graaoon' to love Bholu!
The Indian Museum in Kolkata was roused to bustle with the first Bookaroo bash in the city. Author Swati Sengupta's Talking Bird talked, illustrator Shreya Sen's Kumbhakarna snored, and translator Indrani Barua's Sultan roared (in Bangla!). These pictures are proof of the ha-ha hulla-'bhalo'!
Australian writer Ken Spillman charmed the children at Early Learning Centre, Mangalore and Kids Central, Chennai, when he spoke to them about the power of imagination! He lated introduced them to the little girl in his picture book, Clumsy!, whose imagination created a world of words and pictures.
When Nursery grade at Oberoi International School went kukaroo kuroo, miaow, heen haan and kkrggh with me as Natasha Sharma read out Rooster Raga. So much fun!
Back again to Bengaluru. What happened when the children at Valley School met their favourite author? Stories stories stories – for Sandhya Rao’s list of books is mighty long and growing. 'Magical' was how the session was described. It had to be! Says Sandhya: "As hundred little ones and I shared Stories on the Sand and Look, the Moon! and swapped stories and feelings, a few tiny things walked into my lap... and one leggy thing thrust a leaf cup into my hand saying: 'Here's some Valley School sand for you!' Then, another hundred joined us to sing and dance to the tunes from Oluguti Toluguti and Dum Dum Dho!... Thank you, Valley School and Bookalore!"
The hot-off-the-press three-quel, Gajapati Kulapati Gurrburrrrooom! has been blowing people away since its arrival – especially adults! Actor-storyteller Janaki Sabesh used the book for a teacher training workshop in Chennai and says the response was thunderous! The teachers loved the book so much that they even enacted the story! Take a look.
Gillo Theatre Repertory’s performance of A Silly Story of Bondapalli received mounds of rounds of rolling applause after a series of successful shows in Mumbai. Author Shamim Padamsee, who attended the event was delighted to see a version of her story go down so well. Long live Bondas! Long live Bondapalli!
Bookaroo’s Jaipur jamboree had an overwhelming response. With Dungi doodles, Rangannarangalands and Dum Dum Dho dhamaka, here are some moments from the fun-filled festival of children’s books…
