Excellent write up on the role of picture books in child development, by Lori Calabrese at The Children’s Book Review site.
Some points I could completely identify with:

-Picture books are multi-sensory, which aids a child’s growing mind and stimulates their imagination.
-The repetition in many picture books allows a child to participate in the story.
-Children love art.
-The illustrations of a picture book help children understand what they are reading and allow young readers to analyze the story.
-Chapter books are not necessarily more complex than picture books and in fact, their vocabulary …

Inventory of books bought from the Bangalore Book Festival 2010. We have read, read and read in the last couple of days. These books have been accompanying us everywhere, to the park, to friends house and to the school even! A handful of books already missing, apparently they have been given to their friends!
National Book trust
Pratham Books
Tulika Books
eAppu and some adhoc books
Thanks to SaffronTree, I had read a lot of reviews on NBT books. Obviously picked up a whole lot, luckily the walking talking encyclopedia happened to be there …

The eighth edition of the Bangalore Book Festival starts on November 12th @ Palace Grounds. It is a 10 day feast, with publishers and distributors from all over the country participating. The festival also claims to host entertainment programmes, book reading sessions and author meets.
 Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindonfire/3956865159/in/photostream/
 
via The Hindu

Over a million titles under various categories and languages will be displayed in more than 300 stalls during the 10-day Bangalore Book Festival (BBF). The fest is expected to attract more than two lakh people. The country’s biggest publishers, distributors, exporters …

If you haven’t visited

PrathamBooks is organizing a book reading event of their popular book Cauvery tomorrow @ 11 AM.
More details here..
Wish I could participate, but there is somewhere else I need to be at the same time. The dreaded PTM!

Hoo’s Tales is a week long carnival organized by Hippocampus. This past Saturday was their curtain raiser, a day long story telling and puppetry carnival at Cubbon Park. We went for the afternoon session, and the initial thought of the weather being insanely hot got swept over by Richard Martin’s story narration in just few minutes.
Every story teller had their own unique style. While Richard Martin’s narration was interactive with the children from the audience participating in the narration, Jeeva Raghunath’s narration was loud, animated in the form of …

The tech news room is flooding over the release of Apple’s tablet, with Steve Job claiming this is the most important thing he has done. If rumors are to be believed, this will bring a revolution in the textbooks and newspaper industry.

With the new tablet device that is debuting next week, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry

With some of us still adjusting to the e-book revolution, looks like it …

Khan Academy is a video library of how-to math and science videos, founded by a Harvard Business School MBA graduate Salman Khan. It is a non-profit organization aiming to provide free basic education across the globe. I am totally bowled over by this kind of social entrepreneurship. And I am puzzled with the variety of topics covered, from basic math to finance and credit crisis issues!
Their vision statement says “The goal of the Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org or http://youtube.com/khanacademy ) is to use technology to provide a free, world-class education to …

Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival in Delhi on the 28th and 29th November.
My favorite publishers are there, Pratham Books, Tulika Books, Karadi Tales. Are your’s there? Wish I could take couple of days off and fly to Delhi with my kids. Missing a golden opportunity to meet with the authors.
More details here , here and here.