About 300 schoolchildren and teachers participated in various activities on the concluding day of Ghummakkad Narain — the travelling literature festival for children.
On Thursday, sessions conducted for children in the 15 to 17 year age group and addressed by culture and education specialist Shaguna Gahilote, Hindi writer Prempal Sharma, Oriya and English writer Manas Ranjan Mahapatra and acclaimed Australian author Christopher Cheng. In the morning Shaguna led the screening of "A little Poland in India' produced by the Polish Institute and Doordarshan followed by an interactive discussion on displacement related to war and conflicts and natural disasters like Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir floods.
This was followed by a lively discussion with Prempal Sharma who appreciated the initiative to promote reading among children, especially considering the depleting numbers in reading.
Mahapatra spoke to the children and urged them to think freely and be inquisitive and ask questions. Cheng enthralled the audience with his stories of rats, phythons and a mini zoo in his own house. later on he interacted with the teachers for a one on one session to give tips on how to include storytelling in the class.
Rachna Gahilote, President Nivesh and organiser for the festival said, "It was the dream of journalist and writer Vishva Narain Singh, the inspiration for this festival, to see every child with a book and his/her own library. We have managed in some very small ways to make this come true by taking the festival - books and writers to places where there was no access to the same."