Children’s Dreams – Our Spanish Connection

Last year, Roger Omar from Spain read about Pratham Books in our blog and wrote to us. This magazine editor had a fascinating collection – of dreams! “Since 2002 I have been personally collecting dreams written by children in different countries. Now I am printing some accordions fold-mini books, each one containing six illustrated dreams dedicated to the city where the dreams were collected,” he wrote. Roger’s work has gathered into a book of dreams, El monstruo decolores notiene boca (The Colored Monster Has No Mouth). He asked illustrators from around the world to illustrate the 150 dreams. After visiting our Flickr pages and website, he wanted to join us in our mission to promote reading and books among children in India. He translated a set of dreams written down by children in a village called Villavva in Navada, Spain, our colleague Rajesh Khar translated them from English into Hindi. Roger got the dreams illustrated by Fred Blunt, Madrid-based Ernesto Ramírez designed the book, the Pratham Books team worked on the Hindi layout, and soon ‘Orange Pajamas’ was ready for the world.

Roger supports the idea of free education. So after he shipped a box of mini books, we distributed them to kids in India. The pictures here show children reading the dreams of children across the globe, sitting in the Akshara libraries in Bangalore.

You can see more of Roger’s wonderful project here. Thanks a ton, Roger, may all your dreams come true!