Pratham Books Champion : Nithya Sivashankar
13 years ago
24th September was a very special day for all of us at Pratham Books. We managed to create a book in 4 languages in 2 days. But, we also had many friends from within our community volunteer to become a ‘Pratham Books Champion‘ and conduct storytelling sessions in their neighbourhoods. We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.
Today’s story comes from Nithya Sivashankar who conducted a storytelling session in Coimbatore.
Nithya Sivashankar is a journalist from Coimbatore. She enjoys reading, writing, music, and being with children. She thinks she reads more amount of children’s books at this age than she used to when she was a child. She has always loved listening to and narrating stories. As a young girl, she would read out a lot of stories from children’s magazines to her younger cousins. Now that they have all grown up, she has stopped storytelling for lack of an audience.
Why did you volunteer to be a Pratham Books Champion?
I have heard of Pratham Books and have been an avid follower of their blog posts. One day, when I saw the update that promised “something exciting” on Facebook, I immediately volunteered to be a part of it. It was a wonderful activity organised by Pratham Books – sending lovely books and making champions organise storytelling sessions in their respective localities. I hope Pratham Books conducts many more such events, of which we could be part.
Nithya wrote to us about her storytelling session …
I just got back after conducting a storytelling session at Sathya Ammaiyyar Ninaivarasu Kuzhandhaigal Kaapagam (a Government-run orphanage for children in Coimbatore). It was a lot of fun. There were about 25-30 kids (aged anywhere between 6 and 16!), who kept flitting in and out of the room where the storytelling session was conducted.
I had received the Tamizh version of The Annual Haircut Day, Ting-Tong (the bilingual), Can and Can’t (in English), and Little Bird Learns To Fly (in English). The kids were excited to see the illustrations. They really enjoyed ‘The Upside Girl Story’. Since they do not learn English, I couldn’t make them read the books. They were happy listening to the stories. I asked some of them to come and share their stories too.
More than anything else, the kids were keen on laying their hands on the books! They were so enamoured by the illustrations that they asked me if they could have these books. I gave them away to them, and they began fighting for them!
Thank you once again for having organised something like this. Looking forward to participating in more such events from Pratham Books.
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Thank you Nithya for spreading the joy of reading!
Click here to read the stories sent in by all the Pratham Books Champions.
Note : If any of you want to be a Pratham Books Champion and join us on our journey of getting ‘a book in every child’s hand’, write to us at web(at)prathambooks(dot)org.
