With the cost of sending our books to Sue being way too high, our Creative Commons-licensed books came to the rescue. We could share the raw files with Magicbird Publishing and they could print it in Malaysia. Ohhhh, how we love Creative Commons licenses.
Nine months later… here we are. Magicbird Publishing is distributing our books in Malaysia under the One for One Books Campaign.
Sue mailed us today to share the following pictures and said,
At our first Prantham book distribution at SMK Joseph Kepong – a Govt Tamil Vernacular School 🙂 The storytellers loved your books!
The Reading Bus will also be bringing 30 of each of the 15 Titles to the Philippines to distribute over there once they go and have just made another donation to Kalsom Reading Programme, SOLS 24 / 7 and of course the Reading Bus 🙂
About Magicbird Publishing
Magicbird Publishing is a social business established in 2012 as an independent non-profit children’s content creator with a focus on book publishing, building of reading spaces and Wisdom Clubs. We are dependent on our direct sales channel to get print books out on a one-for-one basis and are trying to secure grants to build readings spaces. Our ultimate goal is for poor children to always have constant access to stories and storytelling (Wisdom Clubs).
We believe that brains needs books and above all storybooks and storytelling. Over and above a right to education and a right to play children need access to non – fiction books where reading is just for pleasure and not to pass exams. Once a child learns to read for pleasure the world will open out exponentially. We aim to open up children’s minds to imaginative, creative worlds whilst at the same time encouraging thoughts and discussion.
To us poverty should not be a barrier to the world of wonderment and stories.
Why Pratham Books?
To build reading spaces / libraries in schools, community centres, shelters who already have a strong reading programme which we can augment to move learning to read to reading for pleasure and to include a storytelling component at these places. It is to this end that we are very grateful for Pratham Books to agree to work with us to help us publish books to fill up these libraries. Quality books are so expensive and to be able to publish and distribute is so much more economical for us. This of course could not have been done without the help of Midvalley our sponsors for this first wave of printing.
Cost to purchase books is expensive and to be able to get quality books at the cost of printing was an exciting prospect for me. Also these books have been tried and tested so we know children love them. Furthermore they have an Asian feel so its nice counterpart to the more western reader type books like Peter and Jane that many children learn English from.
Reach of the books
We are printing 1000 copies of each title (we chose 15 titles). The books will have a very wide reach.
(a) 300 books of each title to
SOLS and another 300 to the Reading Bus
(b) 100 books of each title to Beatrice a friend who runs reading programmes independently in several schools
(c) 100 books of each title to Mezo Refugee School and Ideas Academy for their onward actions in that community.
(d) 200 books of each title I kept for donations on my end.
A big thank you to :
Ken Spillman for introducing us to the One for One Books Campaign,
Sue Yian Quek for making this happen,
CK Koh for formatting all the books,
Midvalley and Mastercard for sponsoring this particular print run of books.
Learn more about our Creative Commons inspired collaborations
here.
