The Monster and the Little Boy
Written by Rohit Medha (Class 7) | Illustrated by students of Grammangal school and curated by Ruchi Shah (LETS Project)
This book was done as a part of the art workshops that I was conducting at their school. This entire project was in
collaboration with the LETS - Learn English Through Stories project, IDC, IIT Bombay - funded by the TCTD centre.
While testing an English reading app in various regions we realized that there was a dearth of local Indian stories in schools. All the existing content was westernized in writing and accents. While facilitating the art workshops we thought of giving the children some time to write out stories they have heard at home, or stories which have been passed on verbally in tribal families,
From the stories collected this was one that stood out. What made this particular story unique was that it was written by a young tribal boy and was entirely illustrated by his friends at school.mThrough a series of workshops I worked with the children to help them create visuals, textures, patterns and characters for the storybook. Over time we built a small library of drawings which were more local and contextual given the fact that the children were drawing by observing things around them.
These were a few of the contextual stories we created with different schools from Dahanu - Maharashtra, Kuppam - Andhra Pradesh and Khun village - Himachal Pradesh.
Each element was drawn by a student. The monster, the men cutting wood, the trees and animals. I would collect these and build the visual.
I decided to explore different formats for the book. This is an accordion styled book which opens up to become longer. This was to emphasize the Monster'ness in the story.
