In conversation with the Pratham Books’ Team Story Weaver
A team that has been working very hard to achieve a very important mission: “A book in every child’s hand.”

Brief History
A non-profit book publisher, Pratham Books came into existence to solve a very important problem-critical supply shortages for joyful reading resources for children. In other words not enough books, in not enough languages, compounded by poor access and high cost of story books. The publisher created several low priced but high quality storybooks for children and distributed them to schools and libraries all over India.
Since inception, Pratham Books had achieved a readership of 50 million, but knew they still had a long way to go. In order to achieve a mission of ‘a book in every child’s hand’ they began exploring alternate ways of reaching more children. The challenge was to massively scale the creation of content for a highly multilingual and multicultural country.
In 2008, they came across the Creative Commons philosophy and loved the openness and the flexibility of the model. They saw opportunity in this model to provide universal access in a way that they could allow for collaborative creation of multilingual resources in order to get closer to to their mission of “A book in every child’s hand.”
Experiments with open licensing resulted in selected stories being uploaded on digital libraries like Scribd under Creative Commons licenses. The results were nothing short of stupendous. Their stories found new life in several languages like German, Ladakh and Sanskrit and in various formats like Audio stories, Braille books, YouTube videos and digital apps. This set the wheels in motion for deep diving into Open licenses and thinking of ways in which they could leverage technology to create a multiplier effect that would address the scarcity in multilingual children’s book publishing. The result was StoryWeaver.
On StoryWeaver, users can access thousands of multilingual stories for children absolutely free. All content on the platform is openly licensed under CC-BY4.0, one of the most liberal Creative Commons Licenses. Users can read, download and print all stories and images on the platform, as well as use the tools embedded on StoryWeaver to create and translate content into more languages and versions.
Since it’s launch on September 8, 2015 (International Literacy Day) StoryWeaver has grown from a repository of 800 stories in 24 languages, to one with over 9000 stories in 115 languages from around the world.
On StoryWeaver, users can access thousands of multilingual stories for children absolutely free. All content on the platform is openly licensed under CC-BY4.0, one of the most liberal Creative Commons Licenses. Users can read, download and print all stories and images on the platform, as well as use the tools embedded on StoryWeaver to create and translate content into more languages and versions.
Since it’s launch on September 8, 2015 (International Literacy Day) StoryWeaver has grown from a repository of 800 stories in 24 languages, to one with over 9000 stories in 115 languages from around the world.
Reading Journey (RJ): I understand the concept of making stories available in different Indian languages. It is interesting to see that storyweaver allows stories to be translated into foreign languages as well, thus throwing the reading net to a wider audience so to speak. Would you like to tell us a little more about how making books in different languages helps in putting a book in the hands of as many children as possible?
Team StoryWeaver (TSW): At Pratham Books, we believe that it’s important for all children to have access to joyful reading material in a language they are fluent in. But there’s a real dearth of quality, affordable, multilingual books for children. A report on mother tongue literacy from UNESCO reaffirmed this belief by stating “children should be taught in a language they understand, yet as much as 40% of the global population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand”. Though StoryWeaver was envisioned as a digital platform that would begin to make inroads into solving the literacy gap in India, we have found that the platform is being used by a community spanning 190 countries around the world. One of our great joys is to receive emails from users, language groups and non-profits around asking us to add a new language to the platform so that they can translate and create stories for children. These aren’t just mainstream languages, but also tribal languages, minority and classical languages. It’s wonderful to know that we are playing a small but important part in preserving languages for future generations.
RJ: Parents often hesitate when it comes to buying e-books. The reasoning often given is that children are addicted to gadgets as is and books should not be read in electronic form. What are your thoughts on this?
TSW: Unfortunately, only 26% of children in this country have access to school and public libraries, and the cost of buying books is also a huge barrier to reading, especially if you are from a marginalised or underserved community. StoryWeaver was envisioned as a digital tool that would help take content to children otherwise have little or no access to mother tongue literacy material. The combined power of technology, open licensing and a collaborative community has helped scale the creation and dissemination of content. Thanks to technology, someone in Birbhum is able to translate stories to Kora, and a teacher in Himachal Pradesh can translate and share stories in Tibetan. Adding a digital component to our work has helped create content in minority and tribal languages, where they may not be enough children’s books being published. Plus, with so many non-profit organisations having a digital focus and with mobile phone penetration on the rise, we believe that digital books are another way to take books to children where physical books cannot reach. We believe that the combined lens of print and digital books can go a long way in addressing the learning gap in India.
The combined power of technology, open licensing and a collaborative community has helped scale the creation and dissemination of content. Thanks to technology, someone in Birbhum is able to translate stories to Kora, and a teacher in Himachal Pradesh can translate and share stories in Tibetan. Adding a digital component to our work. has helped create content in minority and tribal languages, where they may not be enough children’s books being published. Plus, with so many non-profit organisations having a digital focus and with mobile phone penetration on the rise, we believe that digital books are another way to take books to children where physical books cannot reach.
From an urban perspective, we understand that some parents are concerned about regulating screen time. However, if your child is going to spend a little time once in a while on a gadget,then we can’t help but think that books are a wonderful option to engage them.
RJ: StoryWeaver I understand strives to reach every child and give them the opportunity to enjoy the joy of reading. Does it make a difference to have books in electronic form? Do some of them even get printed? How do poorer sections access these very beautiful e-books?
TSW: Keeping in mind lack of infrastructure in many communities, StoryWeaver follows an offline – online model, where content creation happens online but content consumption can take place offline. All the stories on the platform can be downloaded in multiple formats for use digitally or to print and use.
This flexibility in how content can be used has enabled users around the world to use our content in ways that best suit their needs and the needs of their learners. Our content can be found on various global digital repositories. Educators and literacy organisations are using the platform to create resources and share stories in the classroom. Language enthusiasts are an integral part of our community, creating and translating stories to languages often overlooked by mainstream publishing while social entrepreneurs are gamifying our content for local language learning apps. All this is possible due to the open source, open format nature of the content.
Educators and literacy organisations are using the platform to create resources and share stories in the classroom. Language enthusiasts are an integral part of our community, creating and translating stories to languages often overlooked by mainstream publishing while social entrepreneurs are gamifying our content for local language learning apps.

Here are two stories on how our partners are using StoryWeaver to make stories accessible to children.
Suchana has been working with tribal children for the last decade in Birbhum, West Bengal. The organisation works with pre-school to class 10 children from the Kora and Santal communities through 3 resource centres and also runs a mobile library that reaches 25 villages. In the six Kora villages where Suchana is working, the language has never been written before. Without active intervention, it is very possible that the next generation would not use it as a first language. Suchana had found that the creation of mother tongue learning materials in Santali and Kora is a slow process, till they came across StoryWeaver and its easy to use, embedded translate tool. Suchana’s educator translators have translated over 60 books to Kora and Santali on StoryWeaver, and printed 10,000 copies of these books for distribution via a mobile library.
In the six Kora villages where Suchana is working, the language has never been written before. Without active intervention, it is very possible that the next generation would not use it as a first language. Suchana had found that the creation of mother tongue learning materials in Santali and Kora is a slow process, till they came across StoryWeaver and its easy to use, embedded translate tool. Suchana’s educator translators have translated over 60 books to Kora and Santali on StoryWeaver, and printed 10,000 copies of these books for distribution via a mobile library.
Bookshare
Bookshare is using the ePub format of the books on StoryWeaver and adapting them into. Audio and Braille books for print impaired children that they work with in the state of Maharashtra. Bookshare is working directly with a selection of schools in Pune, where a curated list of Marathi titles have. been chosen from StoryWeaver as part of the All Children Reading Project which promotes early grade reading with the help of technology.
RJ: Parents often complain that children have way too many distractions these days and reading for pleasure is not a habit that many children have. This is ironical as now we have so many beautiful books being written in different genres, more easily available than before and yet many children do not read for pleasure. What are your thoughts on this?
TSW: Discoverability is a big issue – being able to find all the wonderful books being written and published is something many parents struggle with. However there are some fantastic platforms working hard to answer this like Reading Raccoons – Discovering Children’s Literature. It’s a wonderfully collaborative group where there’s so much sharing of new books, recommendations and more. Duckbill also does a monthly round up of the latest books published in India from picture books to YA, and that’s a great resource for parents to look into. Also, there are some wonderful LitFests for children happening across the country where readers can discover new books and interact with authors and illustrators.
RJ: Children being reluctant to read for pleasure, would you say that it is an urban phenomenon? How has your experience been in rural areas?
TSW: Contrary to popular notions that children no longer enjoy reading, Scholastic India’s report on Kids & Family Reading, revealed that of the families they interviewed, more than three-quarters of children aged 6 – 17 (77%) believe reading books for fun is extremely or very important. Eight in ten children aged 6 – 17 (81%) say they love reading books for fun or like it a lot.
In the context of the work Pratham Books does, and our mission of seeing ‘a book in every child’s hand’, we believe that providing children to joyful stories with characters and settings they can relate to, in a language he/she is fluent in is the first step in nurturing a new generation of readers.
Contrary to popular notions that children no longer enjoy reading, Scholastic India’s report on Kids & Family Reading, revealed that of the families they interviewed, more than three-quarters of children aged 6 – 17 (77%) believe reading books for fun is extremely or very important. Eight in ten children aged 6 – 17 (81%) say they love reading books for fun or like it a lot.

Conversations with outreach partners on the ground, have only confirmed our belief that when given access to engaging, fun and beautifully illustrated stories, children will naturally gravitate towards reading.
RJ: Does StoryWeaver have books to encourage children who are reluctant to read?
TSW: We don’t think that there is such a thing as a reluctant reader, rather there are readers who haven’t found ‘their’ kind of books yet. Also, children must have access to books in a language they speak, understand and dream in! We have over 9000 stories in 118 languages on StoryWeaver, and these are across reading levels, genres and themes. We have a growing collection of STEM books for children who love non-fiction, we have wordless stories and spotting books for emerging readers, environment themed stories for eco-warriors and much, much more. We also experiment with formats for delivery stories, for example, we launched two sets of PhoneStories in 2018: audio-visual stories best viewed on mobile devices. The first set of stories had a wildlife theme and were written by journalist Sejal Mehta and illustrated by the insanely popular Rohan Chakravarty of Green Humour fame. The second series followed a fun loving games teacher called Miss Laya who love to help people. It was written by Mala Kumar and illustrated by Abhishek Choudhry. We are also launching exciting new ideas in the months to come for young readers, so do keep your eyes open for that!
We don’t think that there is such a thing as a reluctant reader, rather there are readers who haven’t found ‘their’ kind of books yet. Also, children must have access to books in a language they speak, understand and dream in!
RJ: Is there any advice you would like to share with other parents who are just starting off on this lovely journey as well parents who are trying to encourage their reluctant children to read for pleasure?
TSW: Rather than us answer this question, we’d like to share a video of children’s book author Parinita Shetty where she talks about what parents and teachers can do to engage children with picture books.
RJ: Would you like to share any information that would be useful for parents to get updates of stories being published on storyweaver?
TSW: New books are being added to StoryWeaver all the time. You can discover these new titles in our ‘New Arrivals’ section on the home page. We also share new stories, author and illustrator interviews and much more on Social Media, so that’s another place to find out what’s new. Lastly, if you sign up for an account on StoryWeaver (so easy to do!) you get story recommendations on the homepage based on your preferences. You’ll also receive our monthly newsletter which has lots of exciting news you can use directly to your inbox.
For more such discussions on encouraging children to read for pleasure, please join THE READING JOURNEY GROUP on Facebook.
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