Country School Sisters Encourage Children to Bring Out “Inner Author”
New Canaan Country School students, Sushmita and Himani Narayan, two sisters who have always loved writing and illustrating stories, wanted to share their passion with other children. Last year, they created The Pen-Stars series, an interactive book series that aims to bring children from around the world and from different backgrounds together to create their own stories.
“We believe that every child has a story to tell,” said Sushmita, a ninth grader. “We want to help them bring out their inner authors and artists.”
The first book of The Pen-Star series, “Happy Celebrations!” is a collection of three stories, The First Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Birthday New Year, written and hand illustrated by the sisters. Each page has keywords to help enhance vocabulary. The stories are followed by “My Creative Corner,” a section where children are encouraged to come up with their own stories and keywords. Children can then upload their stories to The Pen Stars website, www.thepenstars.com, where they will be reviewed, published and shared. If children prefer only drawing or only writing, The Pen Stars helps to pair up kids to work on stories together. “We want kids to feel a sense of accomplishment, like they are published authors.” said Sushmita. So far, children from as far away as Canada and Thailand have submitted stories.
While The Pen Stars uses technology to help children connect and publish stories, the sisters emphasized that this project is a “low-tech” effort. “We are using technology to share and not to create,” said Sushmita. “All you need is pen, paper and your imagination.”
“When you are a child, you have a crazy imagination,” said Himani, a sixth grader. “This is the time to use it, to express it.”
The girls have held Pen Stars workshops at local libraries, schools and bookshops. They were featured at New Canaan Country School’s Festival of Books last week and Elm Street Books last month. Recently, they designed a program around the book, added a few additional creative elements to it, and launched it as an after school program in Connecticut schools.
“Other children really connect with us,” said Sushmita. “They like that The Pen Stars is for kids, by kids.”
New Canaan Country School
New Canaan Country School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin and are afforded all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, or disability in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, financial aid policies or any other school-administered programs.
