This is Poocha, the cat, and he is annoyed with Eecha, the fly. I’m going to show how you can make the characters move,” says author and illustrator Ashok Rajagopalan, who created the Gajapati Kulapati series by Tulika Publishers, as he demonstrates flip animation on his notebook, sitting on his couch, in a video. The publishing house has come up with several such short videos, in which authors and storytellers including Jeeva Raghunath, Lavanya Srinivas, Priya Narayanan and Sandhya Rao, among others, read out stories for pint-sized readers in different languages including English, Tamil, Gujarati and Telugu, and in some cases, share easy art ideas. Arunima Chatterjee, author of Maoo and the Moustaches, for instance, not only does an animated reading of the book, but also shows how to make a bookmark and a pop-up card using glue and paper at home. Although meant for kids, we found ourselves listening to three of the lively five-minute videos at a stretch. According to the website, more stories in Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi and Bengali are coming up to get you and your tot through long lockdown afternoons.

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