Storytelling for the young

US Ambassador Dan W. Mozena reads out to children at the event.

“Girisha is a girl from the hills. Her house is near the waterfall. The crowing of the wild rooster wakes her up every morning. She roams around in the hills, and plays with the clouds.” “Girisha from the Hills” is just one of the 25 books that 'Room to Read', an international award-winning NGO working for the development of education, is publishing this year, to reach out to the most beginner-level readers with enthralling stories, in the simplest form of their native language.
On a cool December afternoon, US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Dan W. Mozena read out parts of “Girisha from the Hills” to a small but interested audience, at Room to Read's book launching programme at Dhanmondi's Edward M. Kennedy Center on December 6. The ambassador termed the event “exciting”, to the extent that he said of all the work Bangladesh and the USA do together; this could be the most important of them all. To promote reading, acquiring of knowledge development of children by themselves was a very commendable job, he said, thanking the organisation for their efforts.
Author of one of the books, Nazia Jabeen, thanked Room to Read for their workshops in guiding and training the writers and illustrators, saying that it had taught all the writers under the programme to suit their writing to best reach out to their little readers.
Md. Rahamot Ullah, another writer who is publishing his second children's book with Room to Read this year, also said the workshops and sessions have helped them greatly to understand children's literature better, and also allowed them to work in synergy with the illustrators to complete the books.
Country director of the Room to Read Bangladesh Programme, Zaki Hasan, said he was very happy for the continuous support from all parties, especially the government, as one of the organisation's bigger projects is to set up libraries at government primary schools. On the books, he said extensive groundwork goes into the publications, with the manuscripts first sought from writers, orientation of the selected writers, seeking refined manuscripts from them, keeping in mind the reader-base of beginner-level readers from rural areas. The manuscripts are then field-tested with children, and their feedback plays a major role in editing of the manuscripts before the final book is written and illustrated. Zaki Hasan said the number of books that the programme has published has increased from 5 to 25 this year; there are plans of publishing an aggregate of 80 books by 2014. These books will go into the libraries in each classroom in 369 schools that the organisation has established all over the country, and the libraries that the Room to Read are going to establish in coming days.
Room to read also has a programme of instructing teachers of class 1 and 2 in rural government primary schools, so that children develop the habit of fluent reading of their own language. The programme, currently on a pilot basis in 30 schools, will be expanded to thousands more, if successful -- Zaki Hasan said, expressing hopes that this could entirely change the reading habits of the next generation, going along the motto of Room to Read -- “World Change Starts With Educated Children”.