Ghummakkad Narain — the travelling literature festival for children opened in Dehradun on Wednesday at the Jaswant Modern School.
Mimi Basu, an academic and editor from Puffin India and Nimmy Chacko, a writer and editor with Penguin India conducted sessions for children in the 11 to 14 years group on the A-Z alphabetic tour of India and the Wildlife Wisdom Quiz. "The aim of the sessions was to carry forward the affinity of children which is started with Panchatantra to move to more knowledge about their country and the wildlife so that they grow up to become protectors of their environment. I saw an incredible India brought alive into the classroom", said Mimi Basu. The Wildlife Wisdom Quiz book on wildlife is aimed for middle school students and has been brought out in partnership with the WWF. The WWF would be launching a national quiz based on the book next month, across schools in India.
later in the day a session on creative writing and making the class more interesting was also conducted for the teachers. The festival reached out to about 200 children and teachers on the first day.
Nivesh president and organiser of the festival, Rachna Gahilote said, "It's been an incredible journey of five years for this festival. It was the dream of Vishva Narain Singh, the inspiration for this festival, to see every child with a book and have 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."
On Thursday, sessions will be conducted for 15 to 17 year olds and will be addressed by Shaguna Gahilote, Prempal Sharma, Manas Ranjan Mahapatra and acclaimed Australian author Christopher Cheng.