Bindi Su visiting schools…

Written by Barkha

Over the last month we read aloud the story of ‘Bindi Su’ across standard I in all 4 schools. Bindi Su is a little red car who doesn’t want to stop! Bindi Su is the first of a series of ‘early readers’ children’s books to be published by Bookworm. The aim of these books is to help children find their world particularly that of Goa, within the book, whilst enabling first steps in reading and thinking.

At the end of the session we gave out individual copies of the books to every child in St. Thomas Boys Primary School, Auxilium School in both Carona and Caranzalem. There was an expression of disbelief on many of their faces. Shaunak, one of the most participative children, asked each of us individually if this was for real. He asked does ‘never’ mean next week or next year so we said never meant never ever. It was their personal copy of the book.

The children repeatedly asked us if they could actually not bring the book back. The week after when we went back to Carona, the children had brought back the books after completing the activities quite convinced it was time to return them to Library. We took time and explained to them it was for them to keep and look at whenever they felt like it.

At the Boys school in Aldona, we asked the children to close their eyes as we distributed the surprise. As the children opened their eyes there was so much joy in them and with my really poor Konkani I asked them to open the book and turn the pages. They were so very happy with the book. This is after they had heard Bindi Su as a Read Aloud and a Puppet play and were very familiar with her. Suddenly she was theirs !

I told them, ‘Ghara vhor’ (take home) and ‘Portun aadu naka’ (never bring it back). Soon they began to write their names on the first page and some even started to do the activity at the end of the story.

When we had started the story, the children had imagined the car to be a BMW, Audi, Mercedes or a Tarzan car and there was confusion when we showed them Bindi Su. Yet as the children turned the pages of their personal Bindi Su books, I felt the joy was more than if they had any of those fancy cars in their toy chest !