POND /TALE

The promised book by Tulika is finally here! A and I had a day out today, posting our letters for the international postcard swap,  and we came back around 4 in the afternoon. As I had been doing for the past few days, I asked the security personnel if there had been a courier for me. Negative. Oh, well! So we walked towards our building and A very half-heartedly checked our mailbox. The look on her face changed rapidly to delight and she pulled out the package with Tulika books written on it with the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit. No wonder security had said that there had been no courier, as the package had been sent through our good old postal services.

I had been reading the posts of all the bloggers who participated  in Tulika's blogathon 1, and who were to receive review copies of new books just for participating. I waited first patiently, then impatiently for my copy. Actually, the impatience was more on the part of my daughter A, who checked the mailbox downstairs everyday, and would come home crestfallen. Goading me to pester the guys at Tulika books for the whereabouts of my book. Sorry guys! And thanks for the book.

POND / TALE. Created by Anisha Thampy as part of her internship while studying at NID, Ahmedabad. Translated into Marathi by Snehalata Datar.
Ages: 3+

Image: Courtesy Tulika books. This image shows the Hindi version of the book, not the Marathi version which I have reviewed here. Tulika books needs to upload one for me to get a picture. (Don't carry a camera phone!)

When children begin to learn to read a new language, they are usually introduced to books which have lists of words, accompanied by pictures. These lists of words usually follow a pattern. They are either words starting with the consecutive alphabets in their alphabetical order. eg. A for Apple, B for Ball, C for Cat, etc. Or, like in the Indo-European group of languages, we have words and the corresponding pictures with different consonants, but the same vowel in each list. Like "Rama, Mama, Kaka," etc. Here, these are descrete wordlists and serve no purpose other than introducing the child to different words and different sounds. What happens if we decide to take another approach in which we have a similar book of familiar pictures with familiar sounding, simple everyday words, but which can be associated with each other consecutively to tell a story? We get a book like POND, where even the child can tell you the story in his own words once it figures out what squiggle means which word. Dr. Seuss, anyone?

So to cut a long story short, we promptly got a pair of scissors, cut open the packet, extracted the book, and (excitedly because here was her chance to try her hand at reading Marathi, our native language,) A read out the story to me. Imagine words. Wonderful!