As always I daydream as much as I dream during the night. I was thinking about stories and how they started in Tamil. Here is a beautiful representation in popular culture from a Tamil movie.
And in response, people from across the world told me how stories start in their own cultures and languages including popular culture.
Teachers, storytellers and writers across the world got excited by this flurry of wonderful phrases that triggered our imaginations and set us off into a new journey.
Come and find the thread on Twitter https://twitter.com/csoundar/status/1114461222336913410
So I gathered all the bits of the thread as much as possible for all you story geeks to use. Click here to download the pdf.
Classroom / workshop resources based on story starters now available to download. Click here!
Want to know how I use story starters in my books? Read this post to find out more.
I write mainly stories that touch upon India in some way. Putting aside why that’s so, my stories bring tales from all parts of India.
Illustrated by Kanika Nair, Farmer Falgu series are great stories about positive thinking and making the most out of difficult situations.
Varsha’s Varanasi introduces the beautiful city of Varanasi.
Pattan’s Pumpkin brings a previously untold story of the Irular tribe. Illustrated by Frané Lessac
Prince Veera stories reimagine ancient trickster tales from India. Illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy
These stories are definitely for the Indians who live everywhere in the world. I witness the joy of children from Indian backgrounds in schools across the world when I bring these stories to them. They are undoubtedly a joy to the parents and grandparents who can relate to them and enrich the reading session with their own stories and tales from their own lives.
But is that all? Surely these stories appeal to everyone else? For a child who has no connections to India, these stories are exotic, magical and from a place where they had never been to. Perhaps they’d travel to India, inspired by these books. Perhaps they’d relate to their neighbour from India better.
Stories about someone other than our lived experience is a window to the outside world. It is a door to walk through and make friends, shake hands and embrace someone new. It’s a mirror that reflects how similar we are to others in this world, however far we seem.
“When the only images children see are white ones…as long as children are brought up on gentle doses of racism through their books… there seems to be little chance of developing the humility so urgently needed for world cooperation.” -Nancy Larrick, 1965
Sliding Doors for all…
Schools, libraries, parents, grandparents, booksellers, publishers and reviewers must therefore not brand these books as “Great for South Asian Kids”. Because they are universal in their appeal – both to South Asians and to the rest of the world. How else will a child find out about life outside their town, city and country?
Read about why we need public libraries and these must be curated by professionals who understand Equity in the Library.
Schools, libraries, parents, grandparents, booksellers, publishers and reviewers must not only embrace if they want diversity in their reading – but also if they don’t want it. What if your community or school or customer base is monochrome? Then how would you show your world that the universe is a bigger place than what they can see and perceive?
Absolutely make it available in communities where South Asian readers live. But don’t forget it to bring it to readers who have not ventured beyond safe reading choices.
As the fabulous John Burningham once said, "Children are not less intelligent, they’re just less experienced."
So let’s give our children a varied, rich and wide experience of things around the world. So they grow up to be citizens of the world embracing people from all backgrounds.
Elli Woollard wrote a poem to go with this post and she has given me permission to reproduce it here.
This is her first children’s book and what a remarkable achievement. Congratulations!
Poonam Mistry at the Shortlist announcement
If you’re shadowing the Kate Greenaway judges or inspired to pick up this book and read, then here are some wonderful resources to add to your experience.
In the first part of this series of blog posts, I talked about how to introduce creative writing in schools in a fun way. Then in the second part I talked about why it’s important to build an imagination muscle and flex it regularly.
In this final part, we will look at how to practice all these ideas in a busy and often assessment filled curriculum. Children will love reading and writing if there is much more of a self-invested motivation. So these are some ideas for both teachers to practice and practice in their classrooms with students.
Practice What You Preach
a) Start (or end) every day / lesson with a related prompt and a writing activity. Whether you’re going to be discussing mountains in a lesson about landforms or about adjectives in an English lesson, you can start with a poem or a story prompt related to the lesson. Get them to write a simple 4-line poem or a 6-line story about an adventure over a mountain using the terms they would have learnt in the previous session.
It’s a great way to revise and apply, improve comprehension because the concepts you taught have to be understood to be thrown and mixed into a story.
b) Start a writing journal – the teacher, the TAs and the students could keep a writing journal where they could write a few lines every day in one of the classes (and draw) to comment on, discuss, share their thoughts on the day or the lessons or their break-time. Whether you are an adult or a child, professional or an amateur writer, a topic or theme or a prompt would help initiate the writing process so they are not staring at a blank page.
c) Start class or school assemblies with word prompts – if the entire school is buzzing about a word – for example – umbrella – every child’s story would be different yet would have been triggered by the word umbrella.
d) Collaborative writing and drawing is a brilliant way to reduce the amount of writing each child has to bear and a great way to promote collaborative working within groups. Discuss stories, get children to work in groups to create a book, draw a cover, do the blurb, get inside writing and illustrations. It’s important that teachers take an active part in these activities to bring a sense of “we’re all in it together.”
A teacher’s drawingA child’s drawing of the same scene
e) Display teachers’ and children’s work alongside in classroom and school displays. Choose a topic and let everyone write a story or a poem or draw and pin it up. Be brave – the less children stress about sharing their work, less pressure to write. It increases joy and reduces the fear of criticism. And teachers should lead the way by displaying their work.
In 2018 alone, I’ve done over 200 workshops in schools across the UK and US. Often teachers ask me how to interest children in writing – without them groaning and moaning, whining and whinging.
As part of my school visits or in specialised sessions, I work with teachers to help them bring fun into creative writing in schools.
The first blog post with suggestions and ideas for activities is here.
In this post, let’s look at FLEXING THE IMAGINATION MUSCLE!
Please feel free to try them out in your schools and when it works, do send me photos, emails, tweets to share the news with me.
Like any other skill, tapping into your imagination is a skill that needs to be practiced. We need our brains and creative energy to be agile and supple to take what’s around us or given to us and make them into stories. Humans have been telling stories for millions of years. Good storytellers not only practice dipping into their inner subconscious but also keep their language and cognitive abilities honed and tuned for that one killer story they want to tell.
So here are ways by which teachers can keep the imagination muscles of their children flexed and ready for that day when you want them to write stories, poems and get going with the writing.
Word Association Games – this improves the vocabulary and at the same time can be fun and competitive in class. It can be played in groups or one to one, it can be a great tool not just to improve imagination, but also to build comprehension and spelling skills.
There are many ways to play this game – but my favourites are these two:
The first one – is simply to generate interesting nouns and verbs.
Pick a random word from a hat, from a book, or from around the room.
Now the group should come up with five different related nouns and verbs. If the associated words are not obvious, they should be able to explain why they chose it. Remember, there is nothing right or wrong about their choice – but we are flexing their imagination as to why they associated those words with the added benefit of comprehension.
The second one is a story-starter. Again it can be played individually or in groups
Open the dictionary to a random page, find a noun a
Ask the following questions:
Who owns this?
What does it look like?
Who wants to steal it?
The teams should write down the answers and start their story from here.
2. What-If: This is a great way to trigger the out of box ideas. This technique is also used by most professional writers.
In a classroom setting, you can start off with a prompt – either an image or a physical object or a word.
Here is an example.
What if my Grandma’s chair is a time travelling machine?
Once you have generated a question that has potential, the team should then dig further into the what-if and keep continuing until they see the story emerge.
So continuing from the above what if – here are my next three.
What if she sits and is transported to the Bronze Age?
What if she took my maths homework with her and I need it back?
What if I went after her and had to rescue her from the Bronze Age humans?
What if my Grandma’s chair is a time travelling machine?