Natasha Sharma at Junior Writer’s Bug Literary Festival

Maya 12 years ago

Natasha Sharma, the author and illustrator of our book ‘Kaka and Munni‘ conducted a book reading and activity at the Junior Writer’s Bug Literary Festival. She wrote to us to tell us about her experience :

Writing in about my fun morning at the Junior Writer’s Bug Literary festival held this Sunday in Chembur in Mumbai. The festival was a first of its kind particularly in that part of suburban Mumbai and I was thrilled to be invited by the Writers Bug team to be a part of it.

I held a reading of Kaka and Munni for 35-40 children in the age range of 4 – 7 years.

To the surprise of the children, once they settled in, I played a music track of dhol bhangra music. The quizzical looks soon gave way to excited answers when I asked them if they recognised which part of India this music was from. With many yelling “Punjab”, the scene was set to introduce them to Kaka and Munni, the folk tale from Punjab.

With the help of a crow puppet and a tambourine to tap to the verse, it was a delightful morning spent in a very interactive reading of Kaka and Munni. Midway through the reading, children were being able to help me complete the verse as the repetition of the chain had them happy to fill in.

After the reading, I brought their attention to the illustration style using collage and explained the technique. We then spent a few minutes talking about Earth Day since it happened to be on that day. Linking the need for us to take care of Earth, to protect trees and the cover the book with its trees, we set out to create our own collages.

I had kept the various bits of the collage ready already cut due to time constraints and the children armed with glue sticks, pasted the background sky and ground before “growing” their tree with its trunk, branches and leaves. I used paper from old magazines and greeting cards for the tree to again tie in with Earth Day and the need to recycle. Some decided to make their trees lush with leaves, another had bare branches and two leaves falling off for an “autumn tree” and yet another had a lovely “wind blown tree”. All in all a fun musical and sticky morning.