And the winner of the Retell, Remix, Rejoice Contest 2011 is…

We’re delighted to announce the winners of the Retell, Remix, Rejoice Contest 2011 that we started on World Storytelling Day! The competition was tough, and the finish, neck-to-neck. Judges from within the organization had to fight each other because everyone picked a different winner in the Above 16 category. And then, author Ramendra stepped in to make a studied choice.

Below 16 Category: Sruthakeerthy Sriram aged 13 years for her story Jump into Jilebi Land
Above 16 Category: Annie Besant of Chennai for her story The  Girl Who Wasn’t Scared

Congratulations Sruthakeerthy and Annie! Look out for a professionally laid-out copy of your story in the coming days.

We also liked the entries of Nithila Ramesh and Shruti Jain in the Under 16 category, and those of Remya Dharmarajan, Ravi Srinivasan, Joysree Das in the Above 16 category. And a big clap-clap to the team from Protsahan India Foundation! The sweet story was written jointly by the children and volunteers of this NGO. Many of the children who contributed have never been to school, and are only now beginning to read and write. Congratulations kids! We also got one Hindi entry from Mohd.Arshad which we could not upload, and one Marathi entry. We were happy to see entries from people 6 (Keep it up, Muskaan!) to above 60!

Says Ramendra, author of 16 books for children and the editor of the website for children www.bolokids.com published from New York, “I found some of the stories, specially in the under 16 category, really good! I had to read and reread a couple of times before zeroing in on the winner. My compliments to all those who took part. In this age of gaming, SMS, Facebook, Twitter et al it is nice to see gen-next actually involved in the written word.”

Ramendra is the author of our soon-to-be-released title, ‘Paplu, the Giant’, that is at this moment being printed in five Indian languages.

The spider was not a part of the story in Noni’s original story, ‘Listen to my Body’, but the cute spider created by illustrators Angie and Upesh was such a hit with our contestants that we had quite a few entries featuring the little thing.

The contest has been possible largely due to the Creative Commons philosophy that we love at Pratham Books. The original book Listen to my Body, the editor’s remixed sample ‘Ranju Meets Poochee‘ and all the remixed versions that our contestants have created are now available for any one to download and read. Read all the entries here and rejoice!

Pratham Books takes this opportunity to thank the following people: our participants; the author and illustrators of ‘Listen to My Body’; our guest judge Ramendra; and all who helped spread the word about the contest.