Storytellers 3 - Gattu Tales

Orient BlackSwan in association with BookBox and Star Kids launched Gattu Tales, the next in the Storytellers series on 3 April 2009. The set aims to bring wholesome entertainment and education to children. The central character in the stories, Gattu, is based on a popular character from Baa Bahoo Aur Baby, a primetime show on Star Plus, telecast every Saturday and Sunday at 9.30 p.m. When a parakeet, squirrel, chameleon, mouse, and a langoor monkey enter Gattu’s world, the stories unfold in extraordinary ways. In the process, Gattu learns the art of sensitive human-animal interaction from his mother, Baa.

Each book in the set is available with an animated CD/VCD with the animated story, a print and paint colouring book and games. All five books are available in a value pack with an animated CD/VCD.

Evening of music and stories, The Telegraph, 6 May 2008

Schoolchildren thronged Oxford Junior bookstore for the launch of Storytellers on April 29. Veteran singer Usha Uthup’s presence jazzed up the event and brought out the creative best in the students.

Published by Orient Longman, Storytellers is a collection of more than 50 short stories compiled by BookBox. The compilation comprises two books and a CD that includes puzzles and quizzes. It is available in several languages.

The evening started with students from Apeejay School and Loretto House reading out stories from the collection.

An impressed Uthup claimed that she loved telling stories too. She also regaled the audience by mimicking her two grandchildren reciting nursery rhymes. The singer has opened a school in Cochin where she ensures that stories are read out to children in their mother tongue.

“People say I sing much better than I talk but music is not really my forte. It is communication. My singing teacher in school always threw me out of the class because I have a base voice,” confessed the singer to an amused audience.

And to prove her teacher wrong, Uthup brought the house down with songs like This Little Penny and her evergreen, Kolkata, Kolkata, amra tomari Kolkata, occasionally replacing ‘Kolkata’ with ‘Knight Riders.’ She even did the trademark Hare Ram Hare Krishna dance movement from the movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa. The audience could not stop cheering as she wrapped up her performance with the song Om Shanti Om.

A cake, in the shape of a book, was cut by Uthup and distributed among the students.

“There is no substitute for books. Television can never take the place of reading. I want my message to reach out to both children and their parents,” she told Young Metro.

Nandini Rao, director of Orient Longman, had come down from Hyderabad for the occasion. She said that given Uthup’s great rapport with children, “she was the right person to launch the book.”

Siblings Roshan and Atharva Rana Baig could not stop gushing after the event. They claimed books were their best friends and this musical launch had made their day. No wonder they were one of the first buyers of Storytellers.

Neil David, manager of Orient Longman said: “Storytellers has got an overwhelming response in south India and Mumbai. We will bring it out in more languages to reach out to a larger section of students. We want to catch students young and inculcate the habit of reading in them.”

Somrita Ganguly
Calcutta Girls’ High School

Usha Uthup to launch Storytellers in Kolkata

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 is going to be a very special day for the young readers. Usha Uthup is launching Storytellers in Kolkata. The venue is Oxford Bookstore, 17 Park Street, Kolkata, and the time, 4.00 pm.

Storytellers is a gift to young readers from Orient Longman—a name associated with creating a new world of reading for children across the country— in collaboration with BookBox, a global storyteller for children.

Storytellers is a collection of more than 50 stories that introduce the young reader to life in a refreshingly creative manner. Colourful, creative and entertaining, Storytellers teaches your child essential values in life, such as friendship, compassion, honour, love and integrity. India is a land of multiple cultures and languages, and Storytellers recognizes this beautifully. Therefore, apart from English, the books are also being published in several Indian languages.

The first ten stories are The Whispering Palms, Rosa Goes to the City, The Elves and the Shoemaker, Santa’s Christmas, The Boo in the Shoe, Tucket the Bucket, The Four Friends, The First Well, The Turtle’s Flute, and Symbiosis.

Storytellers is more than just a set of story books. An interactive and animated CD accompanies the books. We believe the books will inculcate a love and passion for both reading and learning in young children, and also nurture in them a fertile imagination. Reading, learning and enjoying, the child will experience the relevance of Same Language Subtitling (SLS), a new and award-winning concept conceived at Stanford University by experts. This concept helps a child relate phonetic sounds with visual sub-titles to accelerate the development of reading skills. The artistically animated stories or “smartoons” powered by SLS will make your children gain a stronger command over languages and read more fluently.

Gift the love for reading.
Your children will love you for it!

Six-pack wonder, Storytellers, The Telegraph, 9 April 2008

Storytellers is the closest kids can get to a six pack. Each volume, in a colourful cardboard box, comes with five storybooks and a VCD.

Storytellers is a product of an association between local publishers Orient Longman and Bookbox, an American company which has sourced stories from around the world. This means the stories are not the hackneyed ones served out to children over the generations.

When one takes up Turtle’s Flute, one may think of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. The premise is the same — the cheated turning the tables on the cheater. In the more famous story, the piper was refused his booty after being made to do a job. Here it is a happy-go-lucky turtle that falls victim to a man who capitalises on his gullibility.

The Pied Piper story carries an element of dread for young readers, as it is children who become pawns in the piper’s counter move, being led away from home and confined in the far mountains. Here, children are the agents of the turtle’s deliverance.

Tucket the Bucket reminds one of the autobiographies of objects that the English teacher asked one to write in junior school. Thankfully, this one has a happy ending.

And any child reading Symbiosis will never forget the meaning of the word, ending as the story does with the zebra thanking birds for pecking fleas off his coat and the birds thanking the zebra in turn for providing them a good meal.


The Elves and the Shoemaker tells a heart-warming story of a poor shoemaker turning around with help from elves who secretly crafted shoes for him. But it also teaches a great moral of reciprocating a favour when the shoemaker makes them dresses for Christmas, thereby releasing them from the bond of labour.

One could go on about the stories but the USP of the product is the VCD. It carries animated versions of the stories in the five books. While a narrator reads aloud the story, his words appear as subtitles too.

The read-along method helps a child relate phonetic sounds with visual subtitles, thereby accelerating the development of his reading skills.

The CD has other interactive parts, too — puzzles like Join The Dots and Sort The Jumbled Pieces, for instance. One can also take printouts of outlined pictures for colouring.

SUDESHNA BANERJEE

Storytellers 1 & 2 Launch

The first two sets of books in the series was launched in Mumbai with much fanfare by the acknowledged master of storytelling, actor/director Aamir Khan, on 1 March 2008 and in Kolkata by legendary singer Usha Uthup, on 29 April 2008.