Comic Studio aims to rekindle parents reading stories to children

Children will be able to enact a scene from Suppandi

Even with our hectic schedules and lack of sleep, we manage to steal time for binge-watching - while all the books with pretty covers lie dormant in shelves. This transition echoes strongly with Savio Mascarenhas, art director of one of the most-loved comic magazines, Tinkle. "The habit of parents reading stories to their kids has largely dwindled today," he laments. And ahead of World Reading Day, which is celebrated on April 23, he and his colleagues decided to launch an initiative to rekindle this old tradition, uniting parents and children.

The Ukrainian folktale from Tinkle Holiday Special that will be discussed

Tomorrow, at the office of Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle, the staff will be hosting a workshop called #Readingisgood. "We'll be taking a story from Tinkle's holiday special, which is a Ukrainian folk tale. Our staff members will read and enact parts of the story along with cut-outs of the character faces to make it interactive. We'll then divide the kids into groups and ask them to enact a story, a Suppandi one, for instance," Mascarenhas says.

Savio Mascarenhas

Two more workshops of this kind will be organised next month, and the same is also being organised at the company's Bengaluru office. "Kids will also get a tour of our office space, so even they get an idea of how a magazine is produced," he adds. The suitable age group for this session is children aged between four and eight, and the presence of one parent at the event is necessary. Mascarenhas explains, "This is the ideal age to get children into reading. We will also be interacting with the parents on which books they read out to their kids and ask them to dwell upon when the last time was that they did that."

On April 17, 4.30 pm to 5.30 pm
At The Amar Chitra Katha Studio, Marol Maroshi Road, Andheri East.
Call 7738234566 (to register)

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