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Touch and tell
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A tactile picture book for visually-impaired children
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Photo: R. Shivaji Rao
Worthy attempt C. P. Viswanath and Shobha Viswanath
Can a visually-impaired child enjoy a picture book? That question has been answered – with an unequivocal ‘yes’ – by the folks behind Dreaming Fingers, who’ve brought out the first ever mass-produced tactile picture books for children with visual impairment.
“Although there have been a lot of books in Braille, the world of pictures has simply not been available to the child who can’t see,” says Shobha Viswanath, director of Karadi Tales (Dreaming Fingers is an imprint of the popular children’s publishing company).
But that has changed, thanks to one very hungry caterpillar, and one very dedicated lady. Eric Carle’s ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, one of the best-selling children’s picture books of all time, fittingly became Dreaming Fingers’ first attempt at an entirely tactile picture book last year.
That means that every picture in the storybook – whether it’s the fuzzy caterpillar or the leaves, strawberries and cupcakes it eats – is raised, textured and contoured so that it can be experienced through touch by a child with any degree of visual impairment. Plus, all the text is underscored with Braille.
“It all came from a chance meeting with Jean-Christophe, of the Dutch publishing house Lemniscaat at the Frankfurt book fair,” says Shobha. “We discussed how wonderful a fully tactile book would be for blind children, and realised that India would probably be the best place to create such a book, given all the labour involved.”
The rest, as they say, is history. The first 3,000 copies of the book produced by Dreaming Fingers for Denmark sold rapidly, with five euros being set aside with every sale for a book to be created in India. Through Lemniscaat, Shobha also approached publishers all over the world who had rights to the print version of the book.
“We’ve now sold almost 10,000 copies in different language editions in countries such as Norway, Germany, the U.S. Egypt, Japan etc.,” she says.
And now, finally, the book is all set to launch in Chennai at Apparao Gallery on October 4. The entirely handmade books come with a steep price tag of course! – Rs. 1,450 for ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and Rs. 950 for their second book ‘ABCD’ – but they hope it will still reach children with visual impairment through sponsors and charitable organisations and institutions.
Interestingly, it isn’t only visually impaired children who’re drawn to the book, says C.P. Viswanath, director, Karadi Tales: “In every country, about 50 to 60 per cent of the sales have been to perfectly normal children or even adults. I think they can help us all rediscover that rather neglected sense – our sense of touch.”
DIVYA KUMAR
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