A story well told can make us laugh, weep, swell with pride, or rise with indignation. Storytelling entails ways to make a child curious and encourages them to ask questions because this makes the child think. They learn to associate images in the book with the story and this develops their visualisation capacity and imagination.
With the above focus and thought in mind, Landmark book store initiated the ‘Child Reading to Child’. After it success of the ‘Child reading to Child’ initiative by Landmark last year, Landmark conducted auditions in multiple cities and selected five worthy winners of the story telling competition. These five children will get to travel and meet Ruskin Bond at his residence personally to inculcate the art of storytelling from the master himself. One of the winners of the competition Mohammed Ali is from Hyderabad. Excited and thrilled Mohammed credits his mother for the habit of reading. “My mother encourages to read a lot and like every year every summer holiday I go to bookstores to buy books. This year when I went to landmark I saw the poster with the announcement and got the details to enrol my self. In my spare time, I enjoy watching cartoon shows, animated movies and reading fantasy novels. The thought of meeting the legendary author Ruskin Bond hasn’t sunk in yet and is a dream come true for me,” says Mohammed.
Mohammed, a student of VI says besides reading the school books, he loves reading about “legendary heroes, Tenali Raman, Birbal ets, because it shows the intelligence and smartness of these great men,” he adds.
About reading at the competition, Mohammed says he was not scared but a little nervous about how he would perform, “but it went well,” he gleams.
