An exploration of the joys of reading with the shortlisted authors of the Big Little Book Awards 2016
Pune, November 09, 2016: Leading up to the 2016 Tata Literature Live! Mumbai LitFest, the Parag Initiative of Tata Trusts held two exciting and interactive workshops for young, enthusiastic readers at the Garware Bal Bhawan in Pune on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
The Big Little Book Awards, established by the Parag initiative of Tata Trusts, is the first award recognition of its kind in India and looks to identify and credit significant contributions to children’s literature by Indian authors and illustrators.
The workshops saw several excited young readers interact with notable children’s literature authors Rajiv Tambe and Madhuri Purandare over the last 2 days. Through these interactive workshops, the authors initiated exciting activities ranging from storytelling sessions to science experiments and even language games with the captivated audience!
Author, Rajiv Tambe’s workshop, on Tuesday, was extremely interactive and fun-filled. He demonstrated the manner in which science is a part of our day-to-day life, in order to encourage interest in science amongst kids from a young age. One of the cool science experiments that Rajiv conducted, along with the children was a lemon and water experiment. In the experiment, he showed how a lemon sinks in plain, tap water and floats, once you add something to the water, which increases its density. He also took a small storytelling exercise, where he gave the first two lines of the story and asked the children to complete it. Most of the children proposed common endings. Rajiv told them that if they want to be writers or poets, they should not offer the first 6-8 endings that come to their mind as those are the ones that everyone thinks of, thereby conveying the message that one needs to explore beyond the obvious.
Author, Madhuri Purandare’s workshop, today, was an activity-based workshop. She started her workshop with a visual story and explained the process of creating a book to her young audience. To engage them further, she asked the children to choose from two poems and then design the layout of the page. The kids were very enthusiastic and came up with extremely creative ideas. Madhuri Purandare also played three language games to demonstrate it importance in great storytelling. The children enjoyed the sentence making game, where they were divided into groups of nine each and were given nine words. Each child had to make a sentence with one of the nine words and those nine sentences then put together resulted in a funny, yet interesting story.
Mr. Rajiv Tambe, who has previously worked with UNICEF as an educational consultant and is a 2016 Sahitya Akademi Awardee, introduced the young minds to a series of charming children’s stories and surprising science experiments! Tambe’s notable works include Premal Bhooth (2013), Gammat Shala (2014) and The Wonderful Secrets of Science (2014).
Ms. Madhuri Purandare, author of more than 23 storybooks including the popular Yash (2009) series, imparted a valuable lesson to the children on how to design illustrations for a poem and pages for a storybook. She also engaged her young audience with a few rounds of fun, yet educational, language games. Purandare’s other notable works include Chitravachan (2006), Pachavi Galli (2014) and Radhache Ghar (2015).
The Big Little Book Awards 2016 will aim to distinguish authors and illustrators, who have written and illustrated stories that actively delight their young readers, make them smile more, open their curious minds to new concepts and cultures, and inspire them to dream big.
The winners of the Big Little Book Awards will be announced on 20th November at the 2016 Tata Literature Live!Mumbai Litfest. The awards will be presented in two categories – one for the author and the other, for the illustrator / artist.
