Rewind. Recap.

To celebrate the magic of stories, we are conducting the ‘Retell, Remix, Rejoice with Chuskit Contest‘. Have you or your children sent in your entries yet?

Our book ‘Cauvery’ made world water day a special day for the kids at the Government Urdu Higher Primary School in D J Halli, Bangalore. Read about the event here and here. We also had a great time during the Marathi Sahitya Sammelan. The Creative Commons blog talks about how Pratham Books uses creative commons licenses to make children’s books more accessible. Our book “Freestyle” has been listed in NBT’s “Reading Our Common Wealth Catalogue“. Ashok Kamath, Trustee – Pratham Books, writes about his trip to Cambodia and about our books now being read by kids in Cambodia.

Ramendra Kumar, author of our upcoming book ‘Paplu the Giant’, writes about how he started writing for children.

Chintan Girish Modi discovers a book called ???? ??? ??????? ?? ????? ????? ???? ?????? ?????? ???????? ?? ??? ?? ????? (translated as Shall I Give You a Good Book? A Book for Amateur Book Activists), that was published way back in 2003. The book is an an excellent resource for people who want to start community libraries in villages and small towns, or hold book exhibitions to create awareness about the vast amount of reading material that is available, or even run small bookshops. Click here to read more and find out how you can get your own copy.

An article in DNA questions the categorisation of Indian books in bookstores. Read about this father-daughter reading tradition that carried on for 3,218 nights. A study done on British children revealed that boys read as much as girls but the books they choose are far less challenging and easier to comprehend than those selected by girls, and this gets worse as they grow older. Read about the Ghalib Institute. Comix.India is a multi-lingual, black-and-white indie self-published comic magazine which focuses on original work by Indian creators. Read the story of ‘Kali for Women‘ : India’s first feminist publishing house. Bangaloreans, are you on the look out for second hand books? Balapet’s second-hand bookstalls may be the place to visit to find your next literary treasure. What happens to a book cover in the e-book era? An end to the days when we could see what others were reading or project our own literary tastes through book covers?

Penguin has come out with a collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. Pop-up book lovers, take a look at this awesome pop-up book.

Nila Foundation is inviting sketches for the book ‘Puzha Malayalam’. 14 entries will be selected and incorporated into the individual chapters of the book.

Shukla Bose tells the story of her groundbreaking Parikrma Humanity Foundation, which brings hope to India’s slums by looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual. “What would you buy with $50?” was a question asked to more than 100 kids in Uganda. The kids responded with drawings of what they would buy if they had $50. YouTube EDU was launched with a simple mission of delivering some of the world’s greatest university courses to anyone with an Internet connection and a screen. A year later, it is now one of the largest online video repositories of higher education content with more than 65,000 videos and 35 full courses. The Khan Academy, started by Salman Khan, is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. He started recording the videos and put up the tutorials on Youtube. The videos range from mathematics to Economics, Algebra, Trigonometry, Physics, Chemisty etc. Guest blogger Rati Ramadas tries to understand the concept of unschooling and wonders if it would work in India.

Mystic Mythology is a series of summer camps being held in Bangalore. Get enthralled by the fascinating stories of various cultures from across the globe. All through various mediums including art forms such as painting, crafts, dance, music, theatre, photography, magic, sculpting, art & technology, puppetry, cooking, etc. Nature workshops are being held for children in Lalbagh (Bangalore) during the month of April. Orient Black Swan and Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad present ‘Granny tells a Story‘ from 12th-16th April, 2010. Mountain Echoes is a literary that will be held from the 17th – 20th May, 2010 in Thimphu, Bhutan.

Rashmi Gopal writes a guest post on our blog. Click here to read about a myth related to Lake Chilika and the attitude Rashmi’s son has towards water conservation.

We leave you with this excellent video of child prodigy Adora Svitak talking about what adults need to learn from kids.