Ekya Book Nook’s first virtual literary fest began with the inaugural ceremony at 2 pm on 21st December 2020. The session began with a couple of prayer songs in English and Hindi respectively; this was followed by a student speech on experiences at Book Nook. The highlight of the event was the guest speakers who took time off to be at the fest. Ms. Varsha Seshan spoke on the importance of cultivating a reading habit, Ms. Anushka Ravishankar addressed student writers and encouraged them to write as much as they can. Mr. Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, one of the Founders of the Bangalore Literature Festival shared his views on the importance of literary fests for children. The Chief Guest, Dr. Sabitha Ramamurthy addressed the gathering and shared her views on the significance of reading and the advances in technology that has given us ease of access to books.
The second part of the fest consisted of four sessions that happened parallelly between 3:00-3:45 pm for the four separate sections- pre-primary, primary, middle, and senior school.
The pre-primary session was conducted by Ms. Renu Chamarthy, a professional Storyteller and Creative Puppeteer. The session was streamed live on our social media platforms. Ms. Renu did a warm-up activity and prepped the students by singing a song. She narrated the story ‘Crocodile and Monkey’ from Panchatantra Tales using props and puppets.
Ms. Asha Nehemiah was the speaker at the Primary session, she is a children’s author and has written picture books, chapter books, short stories, and mystery novels for children of all ages. about her latest release, ‘The Grand Chapathi Contest.’ She narrated the story to the students. She also read out a poem ‘Roll, roll, roll the chapati’ based on the story and later asked the students to write the poem and add new words to it. The students participated in the activity with great enthusiasm.
Mr. Arjun Talwar facilitated the session for middle schoolers. The author spoke about his book “Bim and the town of falling fruits”. He read the first chapter of the book. He showed illustrations in the book. Ms. Anushka Ravishankar was the speaker at the Senior school session and she spoke about her latest book called, ‘Ogd’. She also spoke about her books and what it is like to write nonsense verse.
The third part of the session was held between 4:00-4:45 pm as four separate sessions. The pre-primary session was facilitated by Ms. Subadhra G K, who brought forth an ancient art form of story narration, puppetry, to animate and communicate an amusing story titled, “Elephant lost his tale”. In this story, students explored the importance of friendship and how to be helpful to others. This was followed by a show and tell competition wherein students had to showcase their favorite book and speak about it.
The Primary session was conducted by Ms. Megha Gupta has authored articles for TerraGreen, Careers360, and The Hindu and she has contributed to WWF-India’s One Planet Academy. Ms. Megha works in children’s publishing and ‘Unearthed is her third book. She illustrated a story of India and our environment from 1947. She spoke about movements like Hugging trees and Save the Seeds. She also threw light on how development added to the environmental problem. She showed a short promo video of her upcoming book ‘Unearthed’. She conducted a fun quiz ‘Guess the Name’. Students participated very well during the quiz and they thoroughly enjoyed her session.
Students thoroughly enjoyed participating in these interactions and contributed with vibrant and fun-filled conversations.
The eagerly anticipated Lit Fest was organized by Ekya Schools on 21-22 Dec. After a common inaugural session, the event was structured into class-specific activities. Students explored and discovered the fascinating world of literature through the real-life experiences of renowned authors through interactive sessions, workshops on filmmaking, creative writing, and exciting competitions.
I was honored to be asked to give the welcome address and introduce the invited speakers in the inaugural session. The three guest speakers, Ms. Varsha Seshan, Ms. Anushka Ravishankar, and Mr. Srikrishna Ramamurthy are eminent professionals in their respective fields and spoke about various facets of reading and writing through their personal experiences.
It was a joy to hear them speak so passionately of their literary experiences and advise budding and voracious readers. The wonder in a world of words couldn’t have been better conveyed.
On 21st and 22nd Dec, students enthusiastically participated in the sessions and workshops conducted by various writers and authors. The talks specific to my category were informative and illuminating, adding to a complete literary experience. I especially enjoyed the workshop, ‘Unearthed’ by Ms. Meghaa Gupta, the sessions by Mr. Rajesh KK and Mr. Rakesh Godhwani, and the talk by Ms. Vrunda Bansode on ‘How to become a Junior Entrepreneur’.
All in all, the Lit Fest was an event that was enriched in the content providing me an experience that I hope to build on in the days to come.
Finally, I would like to affirm the organizers for visualizing, planning, and organizing this event in such an admirable manner and thank the participants for taking the time and making the effort to speak and interact with the students of Ekya schools and providing them an unforgettable literary perspective.
“Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of Humanity.”
- P.T. Barnum
The second day of Ekya Book Nook’s virtual Literary Festival was a combination of expressive Storytelling sessions, intriguing Writing Workshops and mesmerizing Author Speak sessions. There were three sessions planned for the first time slot between 2.00 to 2.45 PM. There was an Author Speak event by Ms. Lavanya Karthik for Pre Primary Students. She spoke about her book, ‘When Adil Speaks, Word Dance.’ She introduced the theme of making friends with a deaf friend. As a part of the session, she shared a lovely video to introduce sign language. She read part of the story. Also made students learn sign language of alphabets from A - H. Students were also taught how to express happy, please, sorry, and thank you through sign language.
The students of Grades 1 and 2 had a puppet storytelling session conducted by the professional storyteller and puppeteer Ms. Renu Chamarthy. She chose a story from the scholastic publication titled ‘The Fabulous Friend Machine.’ Which conveyed the importance of valuing the friends we have in our lives. It was an interactive narrative session where students had the opportunity to predict and voice out the choices each character would make in the story. Students were excited and participated actively in the session. The creative writing session for Grade 3-5 was facilitated by Ms. Dipti Das. Ms. Das is an avid reader with interests spanning from travel, blogging to Writing. She focussed on the concept of creating one’s style of writing. She encouraged students to start writing a minimum of 500 words to improve and work on their writing style. Ms. Dipti was keen on answering questions, doubts, and clarifications that students had concerning Creative Writing. It was an informative and interesting session.
The students of grades 6 to 8 participated in an Author Speak Session with the author Rajesh K K. The session began with Mr. Rajesh asks questions such as the genre of their interest, have they tried writing, the themes they have used. He shared his experience as a young reader and his writing journey. Threw light on tips for effective writing to young budding writers. The session concluded with a quiz on literature.
The second part of the session was conducted between 3.00 to 3.45 PM. Where in the Pre Primary Students were part of a Storytelling session conducted by Neha Toshniwal. Ms. Toshniwal is a certified storyteller from Kathalaya and a German language coach. She freelances with Kathalaya and Scholastic Publishers and has been conducting workshops for children between the ages of 4 to 8 years for the last 8 years. She likes to bring out the creative side of children encouraging them to be innovative and imaginative. She believes the child acquires learning through stories that last forever. She narrated “The mountain that loved a bird”, “The stonecutter” and “Pete the Cat” stories. Children enjoyed the stories and also shared their thoughts about the story with the narrator. Mr. C. G Salamander read the extract of his recent book “Moodunit” to students of Grades 1 and 2 in an Author Speak session. Post introduction of the author, he guided the students to draw a comic. He shared tips on how to draw a comic. The session concluded with Q&A.
A skit writing workshop was conducted by Ms. Ayushi and Ms. Maitreyi for the students of Grades 3 to 5. The resource people are students from Srishti Institute of Design, Bangalore. The session began with a warm-up activity, followed by the introduction of skit and skit writing and the four important elements of it- character, storyline, scenes, and dialogues. The students voted and selected the topic titled, ‘A day in my life’ from the options given. They decided on three scenes, character names and were divided into three breakout rooms to create the scenes they were responsible for. This session came to an end after the reflection activity. Ms. Sindu Roy facilitated the workshop on how to write a travel blog for the students of Grades 6 to 8. Ms. Sindhu is an avid traveler, photographer, and blogger. The session highlights include how to write on travel, the components of a travel blog, and the layout of a blog. The second part of the session was dedicated to answering questions and students got their doubts clarified by Ms. Sindhu Roy. It was indeed a time of fruitful conversations.
Students of grades 9 to 12 had a Short Film making session conducted by Ms. Nisha Satpure. The session began when Ms. Satpure introduced herself as a cinematographer. She also shared her experiences in the field of cinematography. She played a video that depicted the backend struggles of all cinematographers and took over the session by conducting an interactive discussion with the students. Students shared their observations and the purpose of having each department in film making. She took us through the journey from mini shots to a complete feature film. She also shared her experiences working with the Marathi Film Industry. Students came up with a lot of curious questions geared towards creativity. It was a session of complete engagement from both parties.
The virtual literary festival came to an end with the final slot of events conducted between 4.00 to 4.45 PM. Where the students of Pre-primary students participated in the last story of the event narrated by Ms. Shwetha Narayan. Ms. Shweta Narayan, a parent of Ekya JPN conducted a storytelling session based on a book named ‘Room on the broom’ written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Students found it interesting and were engrossed in the story. Ms. Shwetha captured them with creative gestures and facial expressions. Overall this session helped the young minds to expand their creative thinking. A Puppet Making workshop was conducted for the students of Grades 1 and 2 by Mr. Karthik Shinde, who has been working with Ekya JPN as a visual art specialist. The session began by sharing a story titled ‘A Pair of Twins.’ written by Kavitha Mandanna. Post narration, Mr. Karthik instructed the students to make the puppet of the elephant and Sundari- two main characters of the story using paper and color pencils. The children were amused at their creation and were satisfied with the new learning resulted from the session.
Students of Grades 3 to 5 participated in an Author Speak session conducted by Ms. Rasil Ahuja. Ms. Ahuja introduced her new book “Unfair” to the audience. Read the extracts from the book and made it interesting for the students by having an interactive session. She provided tips on writing a poem with an example. The session concluded with Q&A. The Author Speak session for grades 6 to 8 was conducted by Vrunda Bansode. She currently heads India Data Insights, a data portal for the Indian social sector, at Sattva Consulting. She has co-authored the book Become a Junior Inventor. She spoke about her book and encouraged students to think like young entrepreneurs. Students were motivated by her talk and almost all participants had a question to ask her. She very promptly answered all their questions like; how to start a business, make a profit, a platform to reach the customers, etc. The session was very informative and uplifting for the students.
Dr. Rakesh Godhwani facilitated a discussion on Effective Communication for the Students of Grade 9-12. This was live-streamed on our social media handles and was very informative and engaging as Dr. Rakesh shared his personal experiences and how he decided to follow his passion and has been enjoying what he does. The session focused on the six C’s such as Confidence, Communication, Collaboration, Curiosity, Creativity, and Competence. There was a Q&A session towards the end and students posed some exciting questions to the Author. It was a time of energetic and lively conversations.
This Literary festival conducted by Ekya Book Nook was truly an opportunity for the students to meet and interact with professionals of literature. Explore the literary world and fall in love with its limitless ability through hands-on workshops and a great source of inspiration to kindle the joy of reading in young minds.
Leave a reply