Trained as a dentist, Dr. Shweta Singh is now a full-time storyteller to children in the age group of 3 to 15 years. Unlike many others who follow the straight and beaten path in their lives, Shweta has taken a complete U-turn. Through her venture, Tickling Tales (earlier – Booknook), she is completely committed to ‘raising readers’ with the help of stunning picture books, complemented by audio stories, puppet shows, interactive storytelling events, and teacher training and intensive parenting sessions.
In short, Dr. Shweta Singh promotes anything and everything that can convert today’s gadget-addicted couch potatoes into eager-beavers, happy to traverse the bewitching landscape of imaginary sorcerers, elves, fairies, mice, poodles, witches and what have you!
The Tickling Tales team…
Working with a team of six ‘mommy-friends’ of different age groups – Harsha, another storyteller and content developer; Sanika, a puppeteer and event organizer; Ekta, a reading expert; Chand Verma, an audio recorder; and Archana Singh, the group’s guide and mentor; Shweta is promoting stories and more importantly reading among her young audience.
Tickling Tales’ six promoters firmly believe that a child’s impressionable mind is very receptive to ideas that get seeded in infancy. It is the value-pack of the formative years that the child carries with him/her through the rest of its life. His/her brain can be molded through storytelling in an intelligent, interactive way and put him/her on the right trajectory, where he/she can take mature decisions and make better choices in life based on a sense of personal ethics and responsibility.
Although Tickling Tales works with all genres – fiction, mythology, biographies, general awareness stories, and life stories of famous authors etc.- the selection of stories generally skews towards the ones with a happy ending to fill a child’s heart with optimism and hope. She has also authored four books, Mini the raindrop, Toilet in the jungle, Venu in the toy land and A walk in the zoo.
How the story started…
“As a child, I used to listen with rapt attention to the Panchatantra stories told by my grandparents. It was always fun and enticing to listen to those stories. Looking back on those days, I feel the stories helped in teaching me so many life skills,” she fondly recounts.
Shweta veered towards storytelling quite by chance and realized it could be her life’s calling. Her journey into storytelling started with her telling stories to her one-year-old son to keep him engaged. She realized that stories helped him build his imagination, vocabulary, and improve his pronunciation faster and better than his peer group. Seeing how stories helped improve her son’s language skills, she decided to take her craft beyond the four walls of her home to other toddlers and children.
One thing led to another…
Shweta found that she had a knack for wordplay. To take her story-telling initiative a step further, she also kicked off a parenting blog that became hugely popular. A few years later, she received an offer from a Pune-based friend to develop interactive stories for her online platform. With this, Shweta knew that story-telling was what she wanted to do!
She formally launched her venture in 2013 under the brand name, Booknook that’s now been rechristened to Tickling Tales. The team operates out of two modest offices in Bapu Nagar and Vaishali Nagar in Jaipur. Initially, there was a lot of hue and cry from her family. “No one understood what I wished to do, and wondered how could anyone want storytelling as a profession? But I dug my heels in, and eventually, won!” she exclaims.”
Opinion on the current generation…
Hailing from an army background, Shweta is very liberal in her thinking. She is not wary of Western influences’ negative impact on young minds, or unnecessarily worried about the impact of violent media on the present generation. “These children are definitely more exposed to the world around them, but it’s great to see that they have every kind of learning material available to them at the click of a mouse. They know how to differentiate. I think the present generation is very practical and hands-on.”, she says sharing her view on the current generation. Her audience gets immersed in her stories from the word go. Shweta ensures she involves all their senses during her workshops with the help of reading, listening, and writing and a bit of puppetry too.
How does Ticking Tales work?
Depending on the age of the children, they divide their audience into 3 different groups and design their sessions according to the needs of each age group. The six-year-olds attend storytelling sessions; six to nine-year-olds take reading lessons, while 9 to 15-year-olds take lessons in public speaking from her. “I take one class a week. The team takes multiple sessions every week from storytelling to reading under the brand name Tickling Tales.
For me, every day is different, depending on my schedule and requirement. There could be a day where we are all traveling for an event, or are conducting back to back interactive sessions with children; or a day when I am behind closed doors working furiously on my next book project,” she says while talking about her schedule.
Stories help children develop a thought process…
“Stories go deep in developing logical thinking. We cannot protect our children from violent media. But through stories, we can surely put out the message about what is good content and what can be avoided”, Shweta explains. “This kind of discretion, in her view, can evolve in the children from the study of good content that Tickling Tales is trying to produce. “As original content creators, we expose them to all formats and genres, whatever we feel will enlighten, make them laugh, smile, or cry in empathy, the idea is to awaken their consciousness.”, Shweta says while stressing the need for good and original content.
“Through the audio format, we want to work on their listening skills, pronunciation, narration, imagination, and introduce them to music,” she remarks. Therefore, all her books come with audio files, which are either e-mailed or sent on WhatsApp for quick distribution. When time permits, Shweta and her team also conduct free sessions for the inmates of Mahaveer Cancer Hospital and AIDS Foundation. That’s quite a load full of stories to tell!.
You can know more about Tickling Tales here
Website: http://ticklingtales.com/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/ticklingtales
Media Coverage: http://ticklingtales.com/media/
Leave a Reply Cancel reply