Almost everyone knows about the Cinderellas, Snow-whites and other western fairy tale characters, but few about Indian fairy tale characters to be read as bedtime stories to children, despite India’s rich folklore history.
Now things are slowly changing and one of the organisations Sauramandala Foundation, under the Forgotten Folklore project, has come out with 45 children’s books and these are getting rave reviews.
Two of its books: The Tunes of Kongthong (the whistling village in Khasi hills) and When a Huro (Hoolock Gibbons are found in Garo Hills) Sings based on folklore of Khasi and Garo Hills were selected by the National Book Trust and featured at the International Children’s Book Festival at Bologna, Italy this year.
The colourfully illustrated books not just catches the attention of the children but also adults, and more importantly the entertaining stories speak not just about the characters, but have underlying messages on environment preservation, culture and customs.
“The digital edition of the books were a bigger success and these have been translated into different languages like Japanese and Tamil and would be translated into other languages soon,” Project Leader, Lanu Tsudir said during the recently concluded Shillong Literary festival here.
Tsudir said there is huge demand for children’s books and people usually fall for western characters as India, despite its rich folklore history, has few books with Indian characters that could really captivate the little readers’ mind.
The Operation Associate of the foundation, Phiniairibha Warjri said the organisation also has several jingles for the kids and these are again not just about entertainment, but also with messages about environment, culture, and customs mostly based on the folklore of Meghalaya.
Meanwhile, Subroto Chakraborty from a publishing house in Kolkata rued about children not getting into a reading habit. “It’s very important that parents read bedtime stories till the age of at least 11 years, which researchers have found to be the most receptive for their mental and cognitive growth and this would lead to a lifelong desire towards learning.” (eom)
