Teaching children to be thankful, one ‘thank you’ at a time

Who do you want to say

thank you

to? The question was asked of the youngest audience at the Times Litfest — aged upto 9-10 years.

Hands shot up in the air and answers whizzed about: mother, parents, grandparents. From the thoughtful ones — “helpers like my cook”, “my driver”, “trees for giving us oxygen”, “everyone on Earth who cares for the Earth”. God certainly got his due, a “thank you God” on every

lip

in the sunny lawn. The day was almost custom-made for the reading from Tankful of Thankful, written by author-artist Trishla Jain with illustrations by Zach Wideman.

Tankful of Thankful is the latest in Jain’s

Mindfulness

series of four picture-books that aims to help parents start children early on modern spirituality and the power of living purposefully.

It is no mean feat to hold the attention of over a hundred kids but actor-businesswoman Shivani Wazir Pasrich, of pre-school The Study, captivated the audience with her performance-reading, even striking a kung-fu pose alongside kung-fu learners she invited from among the audience to the podium.

Wazir said of the book, “Trishla wrote these as a mother reading to her children at bedtime. That intimacy comes through.”

Tankful of Thankful tells the story of a baby train that wants to travel the world and is told by its mother that the magic fuel of gratitude would take it far. The little train travels long and far to conclude: “The more 'thank you' I said, the farther I travelled... and the farther I travelled, the more I had to be thankful for.”

Shivani engaged several children in the reading. As she said, “The idea of making children turn the pages was to tell parents to make kids hold books in their hands and explore them.”

She chugged along choo-choo-choo, only in her telling it the choo-choo-choo turned into throaty thank-yous to the delight of the audience. A page turned and with each country the baby train went, the choo choo became grazie and mahalo, dankie and shukran, arigato and dhanyawaad. Soon, the lawn was a chorus of thank-yous — speaking gratitude in multiple tongues.