Bookaroo in the City (Day 2) : Bharati Jagannathan

Today’s session of story telling was at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Faridabad for the kids of classes 3 and 4. Bharati ji did an fabulous job by making the characters in her book come alive in front of the amazed kids who enjoyed it to their fullest. The changing expressions and voice modulations used by the story teller enchanted the little kids into entering the wonderful world of stories. It was a brilliant, interactive and fun filled session by an amazing story teller!

The storyteller Bharati Jagannathan also wrote about her experience with the kids …

I had a reading session at Kendriya Vidyalaya-2, Faridabad, on the
9th of November, 2011. The volunteer, Debahuti Brahmachari, picked me up
in good time and we had plenty of time to take in the atmosphere of the
school before the session started. Though I had been told that the
session was for older children, i.e., of classes IV and V, and that I
was to read Subhadra Sengupta’s books with historical themes, I had
stuffed my own books into my bag as well. It turned out to have been a
wise decision for the headmistress and her associates wanted me to read
to class III students as well.

So I did my own stories for class three, and Subhadra’s for class five.

I certainly enjoyed both sessions, though I must confess that having
had a fair bit of practice enacting my own stories, I know how to ‘stage
the performance’, so to speak, and to keep the children engrossed in
the tales. I tried to enact as much as I could with Subhadra’s very
interesting stories too. I did struggle for accurate translations here
and there. I thought that I would reach out to my audience far better in
Hindi—with English words and phrases punctuating the telling, of
course—especially when I couldn’t find the appropriate word in Hindi!

All in all, a pleasure, as always.

You can read about all the Bookaroo in the City sessions here. You can also view more pictures here.