Written by Krystle and Terence
Read Aloud – a practice of bringing stories alive by reading from the text, is a significant practice of the Mobile Outreach Program (MOP) of Bookworm. Many children of various ages come to the various mobile library sites not just to borrow books, but also to listen to the stories read by the library educators.
At the Chimbel library, we have extended the idea, where the children are the story readers, while the library educators along with the other children listen to the story.
This all started when, one day Abdullah a Class-3 boy, at Chimbel mobile library started reading the book along with Stephie, a library educator who was reading aloud ‘The Magical Fish’ by Chandrakala Jagat and illustrated by Shakunlata Kushram.
Noticing that Abdullah was showing an interest in ‘Reading Aloud’, Stephie asked him and the other children present, whether they would like to read a story to everyone someday.
Along with Abdulla a few children volunteered. Some children like Nazia and Nilu took this up very seriously. They took the help of the library educators in selecting some books of their choice, they practiced reading the book after every session, very diligently to ensure they got the pace and words right.
As many of the children who come to the Chimbel MOP site speak and understand Hindi better than English, usually the library educators explain difficult words and sentences in Hindi, to help the children understand the story.
Knowing this, Nazia, after having two practice sessions, requested Krystle, a library educator to change her book to a bilingual book- Hindi and English, she said, “it is a language I am comfortable with and if any child asks me to explain the story, the English words are in the book.”
Finally the day came when Nilu and Nazia felt they were ready to read their books. The library educators of that day, Gayatri, Stephie and Terence quickly consulted with each other and agreed that the time was right!
Nilu went first, reading aloud a story about a king who went to buy a pomegranate. The book, ‘Tesu Raja Beech Bazaar’ by Nirankardev Sevakwas was in Hindi and the pictures were visually rich and interesting. The entire plot of the book was about the fruit, in the form of questions between the King and a character.
We thought, ‘Wow! This is refreshing!’ Here, we were, the library educators, sitting back in the audience, relaxed trying to understand the story and enjoying it!
Nilu completed the book and then proudly answered questions posed by the audience who listened to the story.
A complete role reversal for all of us and done well.
Next, Nazia read aloud a story about a little frog, titled ‘Little Frog/ Nanha Mendak’, a story by Ranjitham Paul with pictures by T.R Rajesh.
The Frog was told that, he should croak only when the dark rainy clouds appear. Every time he sees a shadow in the sky, be it a flock of birds or a plane he would start croaking and the other animals would have to tell him to stop because it was not the dark rainy cloud as yet. After many such occurrences, finally the frog has a chance to croak at the right time, when the dark rain clouds appear.
With this story, Nazia completed her bilingual read aloud and was very proud to talk about the book with everyone as she had read and understood it well and so did all of us.
The session continued after this and as the library educators left the library and walked to their vehicles, greeted by dispersed black clouds in the evening March sky and felt like croaking joyfully!