Pratham Books - BSR

I have been wanting to write about Pratham Books, which is an NGO doing some wonderful work in promoting reading among children. I waited a while as I wanted to pick up the books and get a personal idea before writing about it :).

First here's the information given at Blogadda:

Activity: Pratham Books was set up in 2004, as part of the Read India movement, a nation- wide campaign to promote reading among children. Pratham Books is a not-for-profit organization that publishes quality books for children in multiple Indian languages. Our mission is to see "a book in every child's hand" and democratize the joy of reading.

In the last 6 years we have published over 200 titles in upto 11 languages and have spread the joy of reading to over 12 million children!
Details: Read about our why we are using Creative Commons here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/24780
Support: reading, literacy, education, kidlit, children's literature, publishing
Note: We have put a lot of our content under the Creative Commons framework and we have begun to see success with this. Which means that we make our stories and illustrations available under an open license model and the larger community can then repurpose our content to create something completely new and thus contribute to the cause of a book in every child's hand. Our books have been adapted by our community into a range of  new creations from audio and Braille books for the print-impaired, to iPad and iPhone applications - all to reach every child in India.

We are hoping that many more people can come forward and help translate/remix/re-purpose/distribute our Creative Commons licensed content.
This post is a part of BlogAdda's Bloggers Social Responsibility (BSR) initiative. I am exercising my BSR. You can too with three simple steps. Visit http://www.blogadda.com/bsr/  and support the NGO's.

And here's my personal take:

This amazing initiative brings out books for as low as Rs. 10 and gives so much variety at prices like Rs. 20, 25 that I sat down on a stool and looked through the collection at Sapna Book House in Jayanagar for quite a while before "settling" for some of them. And there were still so many books left in the pile I'll definitely have to go back many more times to actually make it through all of them :). Here are photos of the books I picked up to give you an idea.

For the 3-6 years category:

For the 7-10 years category:

For Introduction to Reading - these are books with short and simple sentences and I couldn't resist  preparing for S to start out on the reading journey :) !!

Back to the basics :)

This one is dedicated to D & S, after all the off-topic posts I seem to have been doing lately :).

D is growing into such a young lady. The other day I put out her clothes - a white slightly frilly shirt with a denim skirt. At first she said "Shirt and skirt! Isn't that funny?", then after wearing "Oh, I look like I'm going to Office!!". Much amused at the things children seem to pick up from watching TV :). And in the couple of weeks since this happened, I've rearranged the cupboards so she can take out her own clothes and wear what she wants - interesting choices :).

She has now started talking a few words in Tamil - usually single word responses to a question of mine in the same language.. probably picking up on my feeling bad that both the kids talk only in English.. she's very perceptive that way, always has been! She has become such a responsible child, does all her getting ready for school herself. Her grandparents (my parents-in-law) have just come to visit and are very impressed :). I am of course taking most of the credit ;).

S, oh my God, what do I say about this guy. He's a total salesman in the making, no already made, since the day he started communicating actually ;). Ask him a question, and he'll never say "I don't know!". He had a submarine (a word he didn't know yet) on his T-shirt the other day and when someone asked him what it was, he said "Only when I am a grown up, I will know what that is."

He's at that exasperating stage when he wants to contest anything I want him to do, from drinking his milk, to eating his food, to going to sleep (naptimes slowly becoming a no-go unless I lie down with him). Atleast I'm hoping it's a stage and trying to work through it all holding on to my patience the best I can :(. On the bright side, he's a trooper about eating his food himself - hoping to make him get used to it as soon as possible, so I can have more time to myself ;). This is one of those things where it definitely helps to have an older sibling's example!