Recommended Books for 10 – 13 year olds, told humorously
Moin and the Monsters – Anushka Ravishankar Moin the Monster Songster – Anushka Ravishankar Mayil will Not be Quiet – Niveditha Subramaniam Mostly Madly Mayil – Niveditha Subramaniam and Sowmya Rajendran Ha Ha Ha Hasya – Ashok Rajagopalan Dungeon Tales – Venita Coelho My Nana is a nutcase – Ranjit Lal Book Uncle and Me […]
Literacy Playground
Amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, schools and others, through parents are enabling learning using digital media. How does this work? Does it work for everyone? In the last few weeks, we have been reflecting on the inequity of the digital divide and sharing an infographic to help us all think together for a way forward. 1) […]
Tomie dePaola and the Joy his stories brought
Unknown to us at the time, as Tomie dePaola passed away on the 30th of March 2020, amongst the Bookworm team, we were all reading and preparing for a book discussion on The Clown of God, one of our more charged and purposeful discussions of 2020. We read Nana Upstairs Nana Downstairs to hundreds of school children every […]
Stories Connect Us
Social distancing in the library has resulted in empty library rooms, forlorn passages, a quiet hall and the depressing realisation that my day is empty without the children. I am struck by how much of my thinking and doing is because of the interactions that children and adults bring into my library work and just […]
Kids Cook!
I have always liked cooking and baking. However, when it was decided in the September of 2017 that I was to hold “Kids Cook”, a cooking class for children, I felt nervous and excited at the same time. I worried about how I was going to conduct this class, whether the children would like what they made, […]
Stitching in the Library
Besides the books, an element in Bookworm that runs through the shelves, across the walls and hides in secret spaces in the Library, are the stitches. Stitching is a much practiced craft at Bookworm, and each person who joins the team learns to stitch, from hand stitched logos, to collaborative stitching activities, that when put […]
I Remember the Stories
No matter what the grief, its weight, we are obliged to carry it. These are the first two lines of a poem by Dorianne Laux titled ‘For the Sake of Strangers’. I retrieve those lines here and more in this post as I attempt to share a rather singular story that emerged out […]
Being Gandhi
Written by Paro Anand Pictures by Priya Kuriyan Published by Harper Collins Children’s Books Like Chandrasekar, the 13 year old protagonist in the story – many of us feel that we have notionally reduced the month of October to remembering Gandhi as an ideal or a symbol of ‘freedom’ through school program – projects – […]
Reading Lila’s Loose Tooth
It sat there upon the New Arrivals shelf in the library, not quite fitting between different sized books, slightly askew in its place and almost nudging itself to me. Lila’s Loose Tooth it read , by Mamata Nainy and Habib Ali. All new ! I was on the calendar to facilitate story time for our […]
Home away from Home
Written by Blaise D’sa, Library in-charge, Alban Couto Community Library I have a ‘Home’ away from home. A pretty, cosy little nook tucked away in a corner of the Aldona Parish centre which comes alive by mid evening with children running to and fro either borrowing or returning books or some sprawled on the floor […]