Reading – A Gift That Keeps on Giving

Being the holiday season, I wanted to re-post a favourite story of mine here at Pratham Books and it pretty much sums up why I do what I do. As some of you will remember, we spent the last few months of 2008 distributing hundreds of thousands of books across Bihar and spreading the joy of reading across the state. During one of the melas that were organized to distribute these books, we always had kids come up to us and ask for books to read or by.

Our mela was at a school that was functional during the mela hours and these kids would come every morning and look longingly at the books we’d displayed. So I asked them, in my terrible and halting Hindi, what they were looking at and they said they wanted to buy a book or two to read. Unfortunately, we didn’t have loose books and were only distributing sets. So I snuck a few books to them which they read and returned everyday.

 So gift a book and spread the joy of reading this holiday season!