It was perhaps 2003 or 2004. I wrote a story about perspectives. About looking at things in a new way or perhaps for the first time. It was a funny story about a tortoise and how he had never seen the sky.
It was one of those stories that I had thrown away into the virtual drawer and had forgotten about it. When I registered on TES website to upload some stories for classroom use, I dusted this one out, added some free clipart and published it for teachers to use in classrooms.
The story took off. It got featured in the main pages as a popular story and many teachers downloaded it. When TES then moved everyone to their new site and wanted us to reevaluate our content, I decided to take down the story and submit it again to publishers.
The fact that the story was popular in classrooms, because it was short, it was easy to read, it had animal characters and it gave an important message – perspectives differ. When you see something for the first time, do evaluate whether you’re overreacting or not. So I decided to submit it to OUP, Pakistan who had just published one of my earlier stories too. (Read about that here).
In less than a month, OUP Pakistan came back with a Yes! And it also got included in their 70th anniversary celebrations this year as editor’s choice. The book is out now and the story of Upside Down seems all upside down to me and all about perspectives too.