I love sharing stories with children, and this time’s batch of seven and eight-year-olds was even more fun than most. With each workshop I conduct, I treasure the stories we create together. The little anecdotes, the bubbles of laughter, the wide-eyed astonishment – these make workshops special! I wrote about a class where we spoke about monitors and Maya in a Mess; that was just the first of four books we read together, and each one brought joy.
One of the activities we did with the book was to try to keep something safe for six weeks. Maya loses the cupboard key. How about the children at my workshop?
During the first class, I asked them to find something smaller than the hole in the hOle book, wrap it in paper and keep it safe. I did it too, as you can see, and the paper has my name and the date on it.
During the last class, I asked them to show their little treasures to me, and nearly all of them had kept their ‘little thing’, as we all called it, safe!
Spellbound! by Nalini Sorensen was fantastic fun. We made up magic words and had all kinds of conversations.
“Why is the pimple on Weyona’s nose red on the cover? What mood is she in?”
“Does Oat-Penguin Oil really contain penguins?”
“Why didn’t they show us a picture of Weyona after her annual bath?”
Nalini was kind enough to answer the first two questions for us. As for the third, I asked the children to send me pictures!
– Zayn
– Sohum
It’s amazing how much fun we can pack into two hours of class time because this is just the tip of the iceberg!
Our third book was The Absent Author, and this was was delightful. For me, reading programmes are about having fun. In the story, we have a character called Ruth Rose who always dresses from top to toe in a single colour. So, we did that. We chose the colour green – because the absent author’s favourite colour is green, because the story takes place in Green Lawn and for other reasons I shall not reveal. It was such fun!
I loved the guesses the children made as we read on and the mischief in the faces of those who’d already read the whole book. A few snippets:
“It shouldn’t be kidnapped, right? It should be adult-napped!”
“If they want to check if the author actually came to the hotel, why don’t they just look at the CCTV footage?”
“The book was published in 1997, so they would not have had CCTV cameras!”
“What? No CCTV?”
“But cameras were there in 1997. Why didn’t they have CCTV?”
Of course, we also created detective clubs of our own. How could we not?
One child created the Thriving Three – comprising his parents and him. Another said her club consists of her dog and her, and anyone else who wants to join would need to do a test. Yet another created the Lime and Lemon Detective Agency. I promised to pass on their coordinates to anyone who had a mystery that needed solving!
The fourth book we read was Book Uncle and Me. For most of them, it was their first book in verse. They took a while to wrap their heads around it, but it was fun!
As Book Uncle has the BEST recommendations ever, I asked the children to create a list of books for me – books they think I should read. Here are a few they suggested that I have not read yet!
The next edition of my reading programme is here! This time, we’re going to read The Monster Hunters, Bookasura, Esio Trot and At Least a Fish. On popular demand, I have not one, but two batches of this programme – a weekday batch and a weekend one. Children from Mumbai, Surat, Chennai, Hyderabad and Idukki (which I had not even heard of!) have signed up so far. Join them?
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