On a stone bench in front of our apartment, three boys, about five years old, sit huddled around a mobile phone. Two women, a scooter, a dog and its owner, pass them by, and they don’t look up. Not once. The phone has their complete attention. Good old cycling, playing cricket, putting together a puzzle, or simply ambling around, following the neighbourhood cat — children are passing up these activities for more screen time. What if they had something the size of a gadget, but not actually one, to play with? Something that exercised their minds and encouraged them to use their fingers? A quiet book, that’s actually a toy in the form of a book, could work wonders.
Mumbai-based Priya Ravishankar’s startup Cubs and Calves makes a range of such books for kids, ages zero to six. Made using cloth, quiet books are ideal to keep your child entertained on a long journey. “When my daughter was one-and-a-half, I looked online for fabric-based books. It was difficult to find good quality ones,” says Priya. The ones she found were expensive. That’s when she decided to make them herself. Soon, her idea turned into a business, and today, Priya ships her books worldwide, working with a unit of 30 artisans who hand-stitch each book.
Every page in the book has an activity that a child can learn from. The activities help toddlers master fine motor skills, learn shapes and colours, and everyday tasks. For instance, “there are activities that teach them how to tie a shoe lace, how to zip, how to button a shirt,” explains Priya. “They can learn pairing, sorting, and matching.”
Varied themes
With themes such as Seasons , Maps and More , Colour Crush , The Counting Book , among others, Priya says that children can learn to do the various activities, based on their individual capacity. “Each child is different. So we allow the parent to choose what they think is suitable through elaborate video tutorials,” she adds.
Priya is a believer in open-ended play and the principle that a toy should do 10% of the work, while the child should do the rest. “The toy shouldn’t dictate what the child should do,” she feels. Sadly, the high-tech toys that shops and our homes are flooded with, do just this. “Children can be over-stimulated by them,” she says. She wonders if we, as a society, are moving away from our traditional games and toys. What with so many gadgets around, “children are not allowed to feel bored”. For only when they are bored, do they “dig deeper, and create something,” feels Priya.
Priya’s quiet books cost upwards of ₹1,500. She encourages parents to let children take care of each book they own, adding, “The book does the least — it inspires the child to do everything.”
