Lucknow Publishing Party

Once our Lucknow students understood how to compose and illustrate their own stories, they took the idea and ran with it! Each child had a writing folder in which s/he kept all drafts and all illustrations, no matter how rough. When the time came for "publishing", each was asked to choose a favorite piece to be edited and copied into a final, bound book (more on the bookmaking process to come). In this setting, the editing process was the most difficult teaching task for me and Tiffani (my colleague). There were several reasons for this. First, the kids were working in English, a second language for them. This meant more grammatical and spelling errors than we would have faced if the books had been composed in Hindi (a project I would love to take on in future). Second, we faced a time crunch. Our own Urdu language program ended in late August and we were determined to have the kids' book project complete before then. Finally, the editing process required intense one-on-one conferencing with each student. We were working in crowded classrooms and had about 40 stories to edit, but with a bit of chaos, a lot of hard work and the cooperation of the Acharya Narendra Deva Academy faculty, we managed to be prepared for the publishing party we had planned at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). Invitations were prepared and delivered to the AIIS professors, to our fellow Urdu students and to members of the educational and literary community from throughout Lucknow. Over 50 guests attended and our program was a great success. Six students read their books to the entire group (one girl and one boy from each class, chosen at random) and then each child had the chance to share his/her book informally with the party guests.


There were refreshments of course, photographs and flowers for our chief guests. We even had an article published in one of Lucknow's Urdu newspapers (The Daily Aag) the following day. The students were proud of themselves and of each other and I was thrilled!

I'm including the text of one student's story below:

HOLI
by Sandeep

One day I celebrated Holi. I was running away and my brother hit me with water balloons.
I fell down in wet mud. I was looking like a ghost. After this I took a bath and my brother hit me with water balloons again.
We danced with my friend. Our favourite song was Rang Barre. We enjoyed the song. We went to Imambara. We saw the place where prayer was offered, a wall and big gate.
After that we came back home. My mother made chips, barfi and gajra. We ate the chips, barfi and gajra.
After that I was wearing new clothes. I went to the temple and to the cinema. I met my friends and relatives.
After I went to sleep and I dreamed I played cricket and I made a century.
After I got up, I had lunch and my brother served khir for me.
I went to the temple and I prayed to God.
I came back home. I watched T.V. I had dinner.
I went to sleep and I said, "Every day should be such a lovely day."

Next blog post: cloth, cardboard, glue and the bookmaking process.

-Beth