Writing 125 Children’s Picture Books on StoryWeaver

Are you looking for a website where you can create your own children’s picture books in many languages, have your name as the author of the book, and include images from award-winning artists in your book? Then, check out the Pratham Books StoryWeaver website.

I first heard about the StoryWeaver website in 2015. But, got interest to explore the website only in September 2020. It has been a very interesting hobby and I have so far written 125+ children’s picture books – 40 original stories, 74 translations, and 12 re-levels. 

 

To start with, you can register your details on the website and select a display name or user name. You can include a short profile of yourself if needed. Then you are ready to create stories in StoryWeaver.

Creating Stories: It is good to write down your story first in a Word document. You can plan the arrangement and sequence of screens. Then, you can create a new story in StoryWeaver in a horizontal or vertical format. There are many layouts available for the image and text arrangement for the pages of the book. You can choose the one that is most suitable for your story.

The website has more than 47165 images drawn by famous artists, cartoonists, amateurs, and professionals. So, you can select a suitable image for each screen of your story from the existing image bank. Alternatively, you can ask an illustrator you know to draw images based on the storyboard you write in Word. Sometimes, I have drawn images and also taken photographs for the story. You can upload your images in PNG or JPEG format.

Sometimes, you get ideas for a story when you look at the existing images. One method is to select an illustrator and look at all the images they have drawn. Then you can combine a set of similar images and make a new story. I created few stories like Mala and Nila, and Arun goes to the market like that. 

 

Once you publish a story, it will appear under your name on the website and will also be seen under New Arrivals when you select Read stories. The books are from Level 1 to Level 4 based on the number of words and difficulty of concepts. A new level for emergent readers also has been introduced.

A few of my popular stories are Chef Meena makes vegetable salad, A Giving Christmas, What Colour is this? and New Year Resolutions. I have written two gamebooks and my friend's son played the games with her for few weeks.

Few of my stories have been translated by others into Hindi, Gujrathi, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, and Esperanto. 

To read all my stories, click here. 

Translations: You can translate stories. If a translation already exists, you will get a message that a translation exists. But, you can continue to create your version of the translation. To translate from English to Tamil, for example, you can use transliteration of changathi.com website. You can type the sound of the Tamil word in English and you get the actual Tamil word as the output. Alternatively, you can use Google Translate. But, in Google Translate sometimes there is confusion between he and she. The meanings of some words are wrong and do not fit the context of the story. So, you have to rework the text that you translate. There are in-built translation suggestions in StoryWeaver.  

I have translated books from English to Tamil and Tamil to English. A few of my popular translations are Good Habits, Will a Lion Brush its Teeth, and Natural Foods. 

To read all my translations, click here. 

Re-Level: You can re-level an existing story to a higher or lower level. You can retain the essence of the original story. Or you can change the story when you re-level. You will be using the image sequence of the original story but will give your twist to each page/screen.

A few of my popular re-levels are Buttermilk or Nimbu Pani and Zoya’s First Letter. 

To read all my re-levels, click here. 

Audio-Visual format of my stories: I have joined hands with Funtist Mani to make the audio-visual versions of my stories. I’m one of the voice artists and another voice artist is Archana Annampedu, a school student from the United States. You can view all the videos here.

Children’s Picture Book WhatsApp Group: I have a small whatsapp group for sharing my stories. I have joined hands with a few of the child illustrators in the group to create new stories. Two of the young illustrators are 9-year-old Julakanti Ishitha Sree and 8-year-old Aanya Guntupalli. The children were very enthusiastic and completed the drawings quickly and I was very happy working with them. The children have also gone on to create their own stories in StoryWeaver. 

My Book in the BookSpring Website: My picture book, "Why you need a Job" has been featured in the BookSpring website of Austin, Texas, US for a weekly theme of 'When I Grow Up' for 6 to 8 year olds. So happy about it.

https://www.bookspring.org/en/2021/04/weekly-themes-35-when-i-grow-up-for-6-8-year-olds/

https://www.bookspring.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/207412-why-you-need-a-job-1.pdf

 

  

 

De-activated Stories: There are some copyrighted images on the website. If you accidentally use a copyrighted image in your story, during the review process the image and your story will be pulled down. But, they give you an option to change the image and re-publish your story again. If an image does not meet the standards of the website, the stories using the image are de-activated. You get mail from them whenever your story is translated or your story is pulled down. 

CC BY 4.0 License: The stories and images created in StoryWeaver have the Creative Commons CC B Y 4.0 license. The license allows users to share, remix, transform, and re-distribute even for commercial purposes. The attribution to the source from StoryWeaver has to be mentioned. You get the attribution text when you download a story from StoryWeaver.

The news of StoryWeaver has spread far and wide and my friends in Ireland Muthamizh Mandram are exploring the website to teach Tamil to Indian kids in Ireland. With 33380 stories, 11176568 reads, and 289 languages, StoryWeaver is no wonder going places.

I have few regular and eager readers and that motivates me to continue creating new books. If you would like to draw illustrations for my books, please send your samples to annieblogs74@gmail.com. I can send you a storyboard that suits your style. Happy Reading!

Happy Ugadi

Happy Ugadi, to all those who celebrate. The audio-visual of the children's picture book 'Happy Ugadi' is shared below. The illustrations for this book was by nine-year-old Ishitha Sree. While writing this book, I learnt about the significance of the Ugadi Pachadi and a life lesson out of this dish. Are you curious to know? Listen and view the story. 

A Giving Christmas - Children's Picture Book

Planned to write a Children’s picture book for Christmas titled “A Giving Christmas.” After writing the storyboard, I pinged my friend Malathi who is in the USA and asked her if she can draw the pictures. She readily agreed. Malathi has used oil pastels, watercolors, crayons, photos, and digital art to draw and paint.

Synopsis: Alex is excited about the upcoming Christmas season. He got a red car-shaped backpack as a gift from his father for Christmas. What did he do next? Did he live up to the Christmas spirit of loving, giving, and sharing? Read to know.

The story is a Level 2 book and has simple concepts. It is suitable for children between the ages of 5 and 10. The story has a total of 11 pages or screens including the cover.

Link to the Story: https://storyweaver.org.in/stories/223293-a-giving-christmas

Some of the sample images of the story are here. Happy Reading. Please share to spread the joy of reading :)

 

 

Chef Meena makes Vegetable Salad - A Children's Picture Book

I wrote a children’s story titled “Chef Meena makes Vegetable Salad". The story was created in the StoryWeaver website. After writing the story, I was able to pick and choose beautiful images drawn by different illustrators in the website.

Synopsis: Chef Meena wants to make a healthy dish for her kids. She decides to make a vegetable salad and opens the fridge. The vegetables like Cathy Carrot and Otto Onion introduce themselves to Meena and tell about their nutritional values and benefits to the body. What all vegetables did Chef Meena choose and why? Read the story to know more.

The story is a Level 2 book and has simple concepts. It is suitable for children between the ages of 5 and 10. The story has a total of 12 pages or screens including the cover.

Link of the Story: https://storyweaver.org.in/stories/189907-chef-meena-makes-vegetable-salad

Some of the sample screens of the story are here. Happy Reading. Please share to spread the joy of reading :)

How to Be a Writer by Ruskin Bond - Book Review

When I first saw the book, “How to Be a Writer” by Ruskin Bond, I bought the book online. I was curious to know what a person with seventy years of writing experience was going to say. 

Ruskin starts the book by describing the common complaint against all writers – writers repeat themselves. He tells that while painters, artists, and musicians are allowed to repeat their work, a writer is often criticized. One of the examples he gives is of Turner who painted so many sunsets. He concludes by saying, it is inevitable that a writer will occasionally repeat himself.

To be a good writer, Ruskin suggests that you must have a love of books, love of language, a love of life, an observant eye, a good memory, enthusiasm, optimism, and persistence. Ruskin encourages us to read a lot. He was influenced as a boy by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. 

Ruskin asks you to choose a place or city that you know well enough for your story. Then you are familiar with the sights, sounds, people, creatures’ tame or wild, forest or factories, high roads or little-town pathways of the place. So, you can bring out the beauty of the place in your writing. He gives examples of Dickens who always wrote about London and R.K. Narayan about Malgudi.

You need to create characters that are immortal. For Conan Doyle, it was Sherlock Holmes. For Agatha Christie, it was Hercule Poirot. Sherlock Holmes also lived permanently in Baker Street in the stories. And your popular characters should not age or grow old. That person is the strongest who stands alone. Create such a hero or heroine, and you might create another Huck Finn or Harry Potter.

Ruskin Bond asks us to choose a suitable title for the story. You will be surprised to know the initial titles for some of the popular books. The Mill on the floss was Sister Maggie; Jaws was The Summer of the Shark; Gone with the wind was Ba! Ba! Black Sheep.

He writes – As a writer, I have known hope and despair, success and failure, some recognition, but also long periods of neglect and critical dismissal.

Ruskin says one writes best when one is alone. You need not go to a mountain top to achieve that. If you have a quiet place for yourself inside a house, it would be great to write alone. A notebook is very essential. Whenever you get an idea or observe something, you can immediately note it down. Ruskin sometimes gets up in the middle of the night to note down an idea.

To be a good writer or a successful writer, you must be original. Put words together so they make meaningful or beautiful sentences. Cultivate your style. If you have a writer’s block, put your work aside for some time. Write a travelogue or poetry and then come back to your masterpiece.

Every writer must be prepared for some criticism. The greatest of writers haven’t escaped it. If it’s constructive criticism, pay attention to it. If it’s just plain nasty, laugh it off.

On publishing, he says you may have to wait for weeks, months, sometimes more than a year to find a publisher for your book. Publishers are extremely wary of first-time authors. There may be rejections, but if you are a good writer, your work will finally get published. Never despair. Never stop writing. And never give up.

There is a chapter that describes in detail the popular themes for writing such as Humour, Political Satire, Horror, Ghost stories, homes, families, and the individual, and school stories.

The book ends with a list of book recommendations by Ruskin Bond. There is a very beautiful postcard at the end that is addressed to Mr. Bond.

When you open the book and browse, you will be happy to see the big font and catchy illustrations. The illustrations are by Shamika Chaves and Chaaya Prabhat.

Apart from the nuggets of writing wisdom, it’s the observation and examples about the writings of other authors and his writing that are quite interesting.

The book is published by Harper Collins and there are 124 pages. It takes about 2 hours to read the book. The book is priced at Rs.299.