Our Stories Fly into a Coursebook

Towards the end of December 2013, we received a mail from the ELT Schools team of Orient BlackSwan about 2 stories they wanted to use in a coursebook designed to teach language skills to kids. We were asked if we could waive the copyright fee or quote a low fee that would allow the cost of the book to remain affordable. Our prompt answer being on the lines of – “No problem, go ahead and use it. For free!”. Why, you ask? Because a lot of our content is under Creative Commons licenses that allow them to be used as long as they are attributed. People can remix it and even sell it! And no, they don’t have to give us any margins from the sales. We are just happy to see our books reach more kids in different forms! 

Last week the coursebook landed in our office and it was an example of a remix – our stories in a new format. The story had brand new illustrations. It also had several activities to go with it – describing a scene, questions about the story, teaching grammar, linking concepts mentioned in the book to other day-to-day situations, etc. The stories ‘The Seventh Sun’ and ‘Ritu’s Letter Gets Longer’ are part of this coursebook.

We also got to see the happiness on our editor Mala’s face when she saw that her story was not only featured in the book, but that her name appeared in the ‘august company of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson‘ (her words!) 🙂

Thanks ELT Schools team and Orient BlackSwan for the wonderful attribution in the book and for taking our stories to readers in a new format (and for bringing a big smile to Mala’s face).