Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. Books make you travel the world and beyond but for some it may be a platter of boredom served with lots and lots of pages. Pratham books bring the excitement back to the boring and dull books with Christopher Lloyd’s “The What on Earth?” Wallbook for India. The wallbook concept is a way of presenting a big picture to people — young and old alike — so their minds can meander freely and enjoy all aspects of a story.
The wallbook that Lloyd presented before a select gathering at Pratham’s New Delhi office is the story of the Universe and our home, the planet Earth, over 13.7 billion years! A reader can stand back in awe at this most extraordinary story of all, far more incredible than any fantasy or fiction.
Lloyd is the founder of What on Earth Publishing Limited. He has a double first class degree in History from Cambridge University. He and his wife Virginia home educated their two daughters, and it is this experience that led him to write wallbooks on ‘Big History’, trying to connect subjects together through narrative and visualisation. “My main motive was to engage young people in non fiction,” says the author. The author and Andy Foreshow, the book’s illustrator, are currently working on the next wallbook, this time on science and engineering.
“The What on Earth? Wallbook” on India is in A3 size and comprises a remarkable 2.3 metre-long, fully illustrated timeline. It can either be read like a book or unfolded and stuck on a wall. The book also comes with a two-paged instruction sheet for teachers which focuses on how to use the book in fun and interesting ways for the students.
At the event the author explained how, keeping an eye on the altitude metre, a reader gets to know what happened in different countries at the same time. Once you have gone through the whole book, you get a perspective that everybody is equal. The book also has a Hindi version edited by Manisha Chaudhary and Rajesh Khan.
The wallbook is among the initiatives of Pratham Books that aims for “a book in every child’s hand” at an affordable price.
