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Editorial - Issue 1 | Bookworms Beyond Borders

26Dec

By Bookworms Beyond BordersNo Comments

Editorial - Issue 1 | Bookworms Beyond Borders

Stories do matter. Many stories matter. We chose this theme as a gentle reminder that stories are the foundation of library work, especially when held by everyone involved. Stories will reflect themselves in our approach to our work,our care for the collection, our harvesting of stories in many forms and our interactions with our community in the sharing of stories as we come together. In this first issue of Bookworms Beyond Borders, we are delighted to bring a range of articles and activities that keep the story at the center. In a world dominated by distance and mere technological connections, we are committed to the story as a single and most powerful act of our human experience. Rebecca Solnit, a writer who defends democracy writes, “Stories surround us like air; we breathe them i...

<strong>A Writing Challenge</strong><i> of Pandemic Proportions</i>

7Jul

By Mathangi KrishnamurthyNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

A Writing Challenge of Pandemic Proportions

Most days, it is difficult to remember why one writes. In the times of this pandemic, one can expand the question to ask, why is it that one does anything at all? At the beginning of the lockdown, a time I remember as being one of overwhelming vertigo, I tentatively proposed on my Facebook page the formation of a lockdown writing community, one that would respond to a prompt sent out in the morning by writing 500 words to be shared by end of the day. Even though, in hindsight I could speak of the many ways in which this was a well thought out plan following in the hallowed footsteps of Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Camus and such, it really wasn’t. It may have been summarily informed by the “Top ten writing habits” of successful novelists and such, but even that is a stretch. Truth be told...

<i>Lockdown</i> <strong>Conversation</strong>

7Jul

By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

Lockdown Conversation

With Nayan Mehrotra and Rituparna Neog Moderated by Samina Mishra For more information on Nayan’s work, check out Youtube channel For more information on Rituparna’s work, check out the Youtube channel and Facebook page

<strong>Drawing the Lockdown </strong>-<i> a (longish) graphic exploration </i>

7Jul

By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

Drawing the Lockdown - a (longish) graphic exploration

The day after the first lockdown was announced in India, a flurry of messages started coming in from people known and less known. Messages of concern, gentleness, empathy. It felt urgent to capture this- how amidst the uncertainty and fear, the overriding instinct was to reach towards each other in tenderness. It felt as if we were writing our history in every moment we leaned across walls, windows, time-space to ask “how are you?”. (March 25th 2020) I am an illustrator and theatre practitioner currently based in Delhi, and living alone. When the first twenty five days of isolation were announced, my immediate strongest instinct was to draw what I was feeling. The strangeness of it. The unstable sense of reality. (March 28th 2020- the first in the Crow series) I began one of the most ...

6Jul

By Bookworm TrustNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Breathe

Bookworm recommends these Picture Books when being alone: Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, from An Anthology of Stories and Poems by World Book, Inc. A River Dream by Allen Say, published by Houghton Mifflin Company Draw by Raul Colon, published by Simon & Schuster Books Bertolt by Jacques Goldstyn, published by Enchanted Lion Books Silent Music by James Rumford, published by Roaring Brook Press The Cello of Mr. O by Jane Cutler, illustrated by Greg Couch, published by Dutton Children's books When I coloured in the World by Ahmadreza Ahmadi, illustrated by Ehsan Abdollahi, published by Tiny Owl The Trip by Ezra Jack Keats, published by Scholastic Inc. The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan, published by Simply Read Books The...

<i>Lockdown-Proof: </i><strong>Booklovers Tell us About the Titles They Just Can’t Get Through</strong>

5Jul

By Neha YadavNo Comments

Issue 13 – June 2020

Lockdown-Proof: Booklovers Tell us About the Titles They Just Can’t Get Through

During the series of lockdowns enforced in India since the pandemic came to our airports, life, as we know it, has turned on its head. For the privileged among it, it has meant a greater familiarity with the four walls of our houses, experiments in the kitchen, Zoom hijinks, work from home irritants, and worshipping at the altar of reliable high-speed wifi. To the reading community, the lockdown ostensibly grants what we swear up and down is the only thing keeping us from devouring as many books as we like: time. As weeks pile upon weeks however, many of us have had to come to terms with the fact that there are some titles and authors that even an unprecedented pandemic-wrought lockdown won’t make palatable. Below, readers from all over the country share with us the titles/authors they ju...

<strong>The Pangolin's Sneeze: </strong><i>A Lockdown Diary</i>

21Jun

By Sunder and SonatiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Pangolin's Sneeze: A Lockdown Diary

We (Sunder and Sonati) have spent much of the last twenty years in growing trees and our children, here in Thekambattu. No time for anything much else than housework, land work, the kids and visitors. Now, with the boys grown up, and the trees to some extent, there was time for poetry. The poetry started as a response to the events in Kashmir. (How does one respond? has been a recurring theme in our lives). The poems more or less wrote themselves, and this continued with the coronapoems. I (Sunder) write the poems and Sonati edits them to tone down the rants or to suggest a more elegant point of view. Hope that this selection makes you pause, think, enjoy the poetry and gets you to write some poems of your own. The world needs more poets. March 24th Stay at Home If y...

From <i>Eye-to-Eye</i> to <i>Screen-to-Screen</i>

21Jun

By Jane SahiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

From Eye-to-Eye to Screen-to-Screen

Opening Up the Book Club in Time of Lockdown A book club in Bengaluru for children between the ages of 9 and 13 was started about three years ago. The pattern has been that each month one of the members would choose a book a few weeks in advance and the other members would have a chance to read the book and come prepared for a discussion and an activity related to that book. Typically the child who chose the book would lead the whole event including choosing the next ‘host’. It would be hosted in one of the homes of the children and sharing food and fun were an integral part of the whole happening. Most of the children had been or continue to be homeschoolers and the levels of reading and engagement with books were high. One of the distinctive features of this Children’s Book Club is th...

<i>Summer Camp </i><strong>(HE)ART</strong>

21Jun

By Beena ChoksiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Summer Camp (HE)ART

Come April-May, almost every NGO that works with children, has some sort of a recreational camp planned to mark the end of the academic year and the start of the summer vacation. Those who are not heading for their village after schools close are all agog. At Sahyog, the summer camp has become an annual feature of its Roshan library programme; children gather for 2-3 days to learn, play, express, create, form and strengthen friendships, and feel valued. The sudden announcement of the lockdown knocked the camp off our calendar. It receded from our minds as we began to respond to the survival challenges that scores of families in the community were facing. Besides, with physical distancing strictly enforced, the question was, how is a camp even feasible? Three weeks into the lockdown, after...

<strong>Reading</strong><i> in the Times of Coronavirus</i>

21Jun

By Thejaswi ShivanandNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Reading in the Times of Coronavirus

Is there a way to explore reading to make sense of life under lockdown? What is certain in these times is uncertainty, and as we explore this through books, is there a way ahead? The times we live in befall on people around the world once every three or more generations. While we struggle to feel the pulse of the world, Imre Kertesz is able to capture, in his Holocaust novel Fatelessness, the quality of such times — when quantum uncertainty extends to the macroscopic world of daily experience. As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up. While you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment; you are already attending to your new business. You live, you act, you move, you fulfil the new requirements of each ...

<strong>Butter And Mashed Banana</strong>,<i> a radio play</i>

21Jun

By Niranjani IyerNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

Butter And Mashed Banana, a radio play

When the lockdown was suddenly announced I, like most people, had no idea of how long we would be shut down or the absolutely tragic proportions it would take in India. The shutting down of the historic Shaheen Bagh protest site was almost like the government seized on a global emergency as an opportunity to settle an ideological score that it had been sorely losing. In the midst of a pandemic, the authorities found the time and resources to wipe out graffiti of dissent, as if it was more dangerous and contagious than the virus. For all its rhetoric of national unity to ram the CAA through, the insincerity of the government’s commitment to the common Indian was revealed soon after, as the poorly planned, poorly executed lockdown left millions in deep economic, social and psychological dist...

<i>The</i> <strong>Library</strong><i> is Present</i>

20Jun

By Lakshmi KarunakaranNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Library is Present

Keeping a community library alive during times of COVID 19 lockdown As the country came to a near halt during the COVID 19 lockdown in late March 2020, like many library educators across the nation, I wondered what the lockdown meant for libraries, their functioning and purpose. As hunger, displacement and the pandemic gripped the nation, books and reading were defined as non-essential services. I joined my team at Hasiru Dala in relief work for waste-pickers and other informal workers in Bangalore and witnessed some of most disturbing sights of my life. While waste management was listed as an essential service by the government, informal waste pickers who remain on the forefront of the informal solid waste management framework of any city were not recognised as essential service provide...

<i>The</i> <strong>Lockdown</strong><i> Art Project</i>

20Jun

By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Lockdown Art Project

Lockdown is a word. Lockdown became the world. For over 3 months, we have been in varying degrees of being locked down in India (and in some places continue to be) – or on the streets, depending upon our accident of birth. People have been trying to make sense of what this means for the present and for the future in different ways, and one of the coping mechanisms seems to have been the explosion of art on the internet – old work, new work, work created specifically for these times. For children, there has been a burst of storytelling and educational sessions. Often brand-building exercises in this strange and alienating time, many of these have been about providing content for children to engage with. Some allow for children to ask questions and interact with resource people but the limit...

<i>Story as </i>“<strong>a weapon for survival</strong>”

30Jan

By Jane Sahi1 Comment

Issue 12 – February 2020, Spotlight

Story as “a weapon for survival”

Image courtesy: www.kobo.com Matilda, the protagonist and narrator of Lloyd Jones’ novel Mister Pip[i] confides to the reader at the conclusion of the story, “Pip was my story, even if I was once a girl and my face black as the shining night”. She is referring to Pip, the hero of Charles Dickens’ classic, Great Expectations and also to the context when she first heard the story as a 13 year old pupil in a village school in a remote Pacific island off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the 1990s. The island which forms the historical backdrop of the fictional story of Mister Pip is torn apart by a brutal civil war and is under siege from the ruthless Government forces of the nearby mainland following a dispute over mining rights. There is a certain irony that the children of the island of ...

<strong>The Open Library</strong> <i>at Centre for Learning</i>

30Jan

By Usha Mukunda1 Comment

Issue 12 – February 2020, Spotlight

The Open Library at Centre for Learning

From the start, the library at Centre for Learning was visualised as a space of freedom, autonomy, relationship and responsibility. This approach is in harmony with the overall philosophy of the school but it seemed important to demonstrate this in multiple ways through the library space. The library is a space where ownership is equally shared by the students, the library educators and the teachers. Once that is clearly internalised, the consequent action is effortless and happens seamlessly. But channels of communication, listening, and relating play a crucial role in sustaining this spirit of an open library. An important experience for every child is the library project. This is usually in the last term which ensures there has been ongoing immersion in reading and library practices o...

<i>On Making an Emotional Map of </i><strong>Our Library</strong>

30Jan

By Karma Dolker1 Comment

Issue 12 – February 2020, Spotlight

On Making an Emotional Map of Our Library

Recently a group of us- Tibetan Librarians from across India- wanted to explore how the library looks and feels to our students, using art as the medium. The idea was to make collaborative images that represented their emotions towards the school library space, and to reading there. Presented below are some pictures of the emotional maps from different groups of students who came together to do this activity, in response to the same common instructions. This is a detail from the map of the junior school library drawn by class VI and V students of TCV (Tibetan Children's Village) Bylakuppe, where I am the Junior school librarian. I gave them the instructions and observed through the activity that the children's minds were full of imagination. This piece was created b...

<i>The Preface to Issue 12: </i><strong>Libraries and Schools </strong>

30Jan

By Jennifer Thomas and Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

The Preface to Issue 12: Libraries and Schools

This issue of Torchlight: A Journal of Libraries and Bookish Love, explores the infrastructure- physical and emotional- that gives rise to school libraries, and what libraries can represent not just for educational spaces but also for a democracy. Between the conception and final publication of this issue, in a matter of months, the world around us has changed leaving our democracy transmogrified. The weeks leading up to this issue saw many acts of senseless violence including a library being attacked, tear-gassed and vandalised. However, these weeks have also seen libraries spontaneously spring up around us alongside roads, at bus stops and in bastis – we will read to resist. For this issue, the definition of a “library” extends from the brick and mortar of the physical building, to the ...

<strong>Exploring Partition in the </strong><i>Library</i>

30Jan

By Sujata Noronha2 Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Exploring Partition in the Library

Foreword by the Editors For those of us who went to conventional schools that had library spaces, we may (often )think of the library as a place that perhaps smelt of old books, where the main activities involved being quiet, returning or borrowing a book and occasionally, if we were lucky, listening to a story read aloud. We feature this article in this issue for a few special reasons. Not only does it make us question our assumptions of what a school library should be like and what it should do, it also surprises us with its definition of a different kind of school. This study documents an intensive exploration of a difficult theme- that of India's Partition- by a Goa-based library educator working with a small group of home-schooling/schooled students. It is a compelling account of wh...

<strong>Reinventing</strong><i> the School Library </i>

30Jan

By Nirupama Kaushik2 Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Reinventing the School Library

“What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.” – Harold Howe A poster with this powerful quote adorns the bulletin board in the library at The Somaiya School (TSS), where I work. My journey as a Library Educator began in 2017. It was a new role, very different from teaching in a classroom. I was eager to dive into the job. My opinion of school libraries before this was heavily influenced by my own experience in school where books were stuffed inside cupboards; guarded under the watchful eye of the librarian behind the desk. We were allowed to issue books only during the weekly library period. As we picked an old magazine from a neglected pile, ‘pin drop’ silence prevailed. Library period became a time to catch up on incomplete work. Ultimately, the...

<strong>Teachers as Readers </strong><i>and its Ripple Effect!</i>

30Jan

By Timira Gupta5 Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Teachers as Readers and its Ripple Effect!

“When I started taking books into my classes, I realised my students made a note of it, went to the librarian and pestered her to give them the same book,” says Kaynat, a Primary English and Math teacher at Akshara High School.“I saw the effect it had on my students who wanted to be well-read and join conversations on whether they have read a certain book or not.” This article focuses on the impact books and a thoughtful school library programme can have on teachers, developing a teacher’s professional and personal capacities, and how it also deeply impacts the students of the school bringing about a reading culture for all. The Akshara context Akshara is a not-for-profit school, following the ICSE board. English, in most cases, is the third (if not fourth) language for our children a...