Remixed. Retold. Now, Time to Rejoice!
10 years ago
The Retell, Remix and Rejoice contest is a contest where we see the delightful reincarnation of stories, making reading that much more fun. A contest where the end result is as delightful as the beginning, if not more. This ‘Tentastic’ year at Pratham Books, the ‘Remix, Retell, Rejoice’ contest witnessed many children and adults participating enthusiastically, with their thinking caps on and their creative juices flowing.
With a total of forty entries from kids and adults, our judges were amazed at the permutations and combinations that the illustrations from “My Car’, ‘Aaloo-Maaloo-Kaaloo’ and ‘Where is my bat?’ threw up. Maaloo had many new adventures, Khaidi learnt new lessons and made new friends and the lost bat was found in many amusing ways.
We were pleased with the stories written in various regional languages like Kannada, Tamil, Hindi and Marathi. Though English took the lead, the regional languages marched close behind with their heads held high.
Choosing a winning story was a difficult task for the judges (as all the stories were fun in their own way) yet inevitable.
The winners are :
In the ‘Above Sixteen’ category, Arundhati Venkatesh’s ‘Tsangpo’s Wish’ is the winning story! Ms.Venkatesh has linked the three friends beautifully, paid close attention to details and the illustrations gel well with the text. Here, though the friends are unknown to each other, they give a new meaning to the proverb, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’
In the ‘Below Sixteen’ category Aviral Sood’s ‘Naughty Chou Zheng’ bags the first place. Though the story is in the realm of fantasy it is firmly grounded as it brings out the importance of safe driving. The message of the story is well woven and humorously brought home.
Other stories too were well written and deserve a special mention. Arathi Srinivasan’s ‘Lost it or found it’ helped me find my smile reminding me to keep that frown upside down. 🙂
Pavithra Sankaran’s ‘Akhi and the Earth’ broadened my smile into a wide grin when Akhi and his brother lifted Mother Earth’s spirits by doing a very simple thing – tickling her!
A loud shout-out goes to Latha Rangarajan for having observed the illustrations keenly and for interpreting them quite differently, to Mitra Dave for bringing the dinosaur back to life, to Vani Balaram for sending us 4 stories, to Sangamesh and Vignesh for being the only children who sent us stories in a regional language, to Samiksha Foundation for fostering the little writers amongst the kids they work with.
Congratulations Aviral and Arundhati. Your stories will be laid out by our designers and you will receive the hard copies of the same.
Thank you participants for adding colour and vigour to the stories and for making this contest a big success.
