This Thursday and Friday, the team at Pratham Books was busier than usual. They had organised a Live Write-a-thon, to commemorate the International Girl Child Day (September 24), and the launch of their new website (www.prathambooks.org).
Four women authors and four illustrators from across the country got together for the occasion to pen a book in two days. “Since we strongly believe that reading is an important tool in the development of a child, we are launching this book on the International Girl Child Day,” said Mala Kumar, Editor, Pratham Books. “And we wanted our online community to be a part of this event. The idea of doing a book online with collaborators from all over the country seemed just right.”
Write now!
The Write-a-thon began on Thursday, with Rohini Nilekani (Founder - Chairperson, Pratham Books) penning the opening lines of the special book titled The Upside Down Story . “Oho! Here is Mummy, standing on her head again. She loves to do her yoga in the morning, before I am supposed to wake up. She does look strange with her feet higher than my head. From down there, maybe my feet look strange to her eyes too… I wonder - how does the world feel when you are upside down?” Rohini had written.
Children's Book Trust-award-winner Roopa Pai took over from there. Anyone who logged in to the official website of Pratham Books on Thursday could have seen Roopa working on her lines. They morphed into an exciting ‘Ulta-Pulta girl' poem within two hours!
Mala pointed out that the stories were being typed into an online collaborative document which was being shared among the authors, illustrators, translators and layout artists. “This document was in turn embedded into our new website. To showcase it live, we used auto-refresh in Javascript. To put it simply, this is something similar to what happens when one checks out live cricket scores online.”
Bangalore-based-Roopa had initially thought she could handle the challenge easily. She said, “When I was first informed about the rules of the Write-a-thon, 250 words in two hours didn't seem like such a tall order. Turned out it was, though! Especially because I had to take off from a certain point and then leave a tantalising thread for the next writer to develop. I think writers like to own their stories in their entirety, so there was also a bit of anxiety once I had finished writing my bit. I wondered what would happen eventually to my Ulta -Pulta Girl.”
At around 4 p.m. the same day, Subhadra Sengupta from Delhi continued the marathon. In the meantime, the website became more colourful with Suvidha Mistry's vibrant depiction of the Ulta-Pulta girl!
And that was not it. The editorial team at Pratham Books, Delhi, also translated the content into Hindi and made it available online for everyone to read. The book was simulatenously translated into Marathi and Kannada.
At the end of the first day of the write-a-thon, Mala Kumar said, “We realised that we had actually taken a big risk, only when we sat down to work on the story. We had some technical hitches, and a couple of collaborators had electricity and connectivity problems.” However, none of this was apparent to a reader, who logged on to their website that day.
The write-a-thon continued on the second day with Anita Vachharajani from Mumbai making the Ulta- Pulta girl and her friends work on an ulta-pulta human pyramid! Mala Kumar wrapped up the marathon at 2 p.m. on the same day. Anupama Ajinkya Apte, Tanvi Choudhury and Zainab Tambawalla worked on their respective illustrations simultaneously.
The illustrators, who normally take at least a month to finish an illustration, claimed they did a spontaneous job this time round.
The International Girl Child Day celebrations at Pratham Books do not end there. The team has also selected ‘Pratham Books Champions' from various cities to conduct storytelling sessions. These champions will be narrating the story of the Ulta-Pulta girl, apart from other stories, at various orphanages, government schools and community libraries in their localities today.
Since Pratham Books licenses its content under the Creative Commons, The Upside Down Girl, will be available for free download. Visit www.prathambooks.org/write-thon-book-download to get a peek into the Ulta-Pulta girl's world!
