Pratham Books Champion : Rijuta Maharjan

This story was sent by  Rijuta Maharjan.

Rijuta writes,

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela. It is one of my favorite quotes. And the story telling session of Pratham Books to spread the joy of reading on the occasion of International Literacy Day inspired me to participate in this program.

I teach in rural Nepal at Dalchoki, Lalitpur in Shree Goth Bhanjyang Higher Secondary School. I narrated the story on 13th of September 2013 to Grade 7 students. There were about 40 students.. I probably must be the last one to conduct the story telling session but I was as excited and nervous as everyone. The story telling session ran smoothly. The best part of the session was that children enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed narrating it to them. 

Firstly, I showed the word chart with difficult words and its meanings, list of different characters in the story then I showed pictures of Paplu and asked them to guess what it was all about. There were really interesting answers. Most of them thought Paplu was “Rakshesha” (evil). I just encouraged them to imagine more and some others thought it was about a young boy with some great powers. Then I started the narration. I asked different questions related to the story time and again and kids answered enthusiastically. I narrated the story mostly in Nepali and read the dialogues in English. When I asked them what have they learnt or what is the moral of the story. Kids amazingly gave powerful morals. Some few are: “Unity is power”, “One should never panic when the problem arises”, “There are always more than one solution to a problem”. “We should help each other in whatever we can” etc. 

Then I divided the students into three groups where Group 1 would do role-play, Group 2 would make the dress for Paplu with the help of the chart-papers & crayons and Group 3 would make a tree for Paplu to hide. I have given them dialogues of each character and in about 30 minutes we were ready to play different roles. I was happy to see kids enjoying what they were doing. And the result was satisfying.

I would like to congratulate Pratham Books for such a pleasant initiative and I feel fortunate to be part of it. I hope the joy of reading keeps on spreading and will work my best to spread.

Thank you Rijuta for spreading the joy of reading!

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This International Literacy Day, Pratham Books has taken a 1000 steps towards a 'Reading India'

What started as a small step by Pratham Books to spread the joy of reading has become a movement. Last year Pratham Books initiated the One Day-One Story initiative on the occasion of International Literacy Day and we conducted over 250 storytelling sessions. This year we are delighted that over a 1000 sessions are happening across the length and breadth of the country.We will be sharing the stories of all our champions through our blog.

View more pictures from the International Literacy Day Celebrations.

This blog contains stories sent in by all our champions. Browse through the blog for more stories. You can also go through the tags on the right side of the blog to find stories happening in your own city.

Note : If any of you want to be a Pratham Books Champion and join us on our journey of getting 'a book in every child's hand', write to us at web(at)prathambooks(dot)org.