The End
As I begin to look back at 2017 , the Bookworm story is onto another chapter, the story line appears pretty linear from the outside. So this reflection could be straightforward. We have much happiness to report. A growing tribe of readers with an additional LiS school this year. A new house in Chimbel for […]
The Story of a Panther
Mickey Patel’s Rupa the Elephant is well known to educators who work with books, but I suspect The Story of a Panther is not. This very fine book published posthumously by Ravi Dayal and disturbed by Orient Longman includes the remarkable illustrative style of Mickey Patel, but for me more powerful is the ethical dilemma […]
Spirals
The sign saying ” Wanted Library Assistant ” is up on the wall of our new library premises at Indira Nagar Chimbel. Every lane and every new location is almost like a bee hive transfer but with hosts of new bees coming in to nest. The room was alive when I walked in. Boys in […]
Presence and Absence
This we Have Now by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Not a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn’t. My presence has been to be absent from Bookworm for the past month and as […]
Library Educator’s Course English 2017 – Closing Ceremony
Play and Performance have been significant parts of the Library Educator’s Course. The graduating batch of LEC 2017, English under the direction of Alia Sinha put up a closing performance of the LEC Course for the closing ceremony. The remarkable aspect of this performance is that it was co constructed and imagined by each and […]
Lap Time Baby Time
On the Saturday morning pre – school sessions at Bookworm, I am known to work from home or creep up the stairs to avoid engagement. Deepali who holds this session does it remarkably well and I considered myself done with little ones. For years – as far back as I can I have worked with […]
Questions and Answers
So, Bookworm continues to reside in popular memory as a children’s library. A hole – in – the – wall that has some books for lending. No questions asked here. As awareness increases and one begins to understand the scale of our outreach work and the number of children who get a systematic, creative library […]
Watching a Community Library Begin
It is Sunday morning. We have rain in short bursts that render the green and the red sharper to the eye. I walk through a narrow lane, escaping a large buffalo ( if the buffalo would write, he might say the same thing!) and approach a plastic covered verandah. A low hum of voices […]
Teaching with Cultural Diversity
Our classrooms are expected to be diverse. In our Libraries in Schools program, we carefully and very intentionally select our schools on a criteria of diversity and then proceed to embrace this range of utter un-uniformity. The ethos of ‘access to all’ is made real by choosing schools with a high density of children coming […]
The Library Effect
The summer break seems interminable for some children. The heat and the chores of the day are broken by the library opening time. Look outs watch for the team as either a bike or a car or van from Bookworm pull into the lane. Languid young boys struggling to grow up fast into men, watch […]