3 Sisters Bring Books and Joy to 8,000 Indian Children

A teacher in rural Madhya Pradesh couldn't believe what she was seeing. Thirty children who could barely sit still a year ago were now completely silent, hanging on every word of her story.

"When Turning Pages Foundation first came, some children threw books around," she remembers. "Some walked out. But now they wait for story sessions."

This transformation is happening across 12 schools in four Indian states, thanks to three sisters who refused to let reading become another source of stress for struggling students. Bunty Pai, Madhuri Pai, and their cousin Nayana Pai founded Turning Pages Foundation in 2020 with a simple mission: make children fall in love with books before anyone tells them reading is hard work.

The sisters grew up in Mangaluru, where books meant comfort and conversation, never homework or pressure. Bunty became a journalist and education specialist. Madhuri spent 25 years in business while running neighborhood book clubs. Nayana left software engineering to teach phonics and read stories to children in her Mumbai community.

Their foundation now reaches nearly 8,000 students and 150 teachers across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Madhya Pradesh. They've placed almost 15,000 books in schools that often had zero children's literature before.

But the real change goes deeper than numbers. In classrooms where students once fidgeted and fled, children now question characters, act out scenes, draw their favorite moments, and call story time the best part of their day.

The Ripple Effect

The foundation targets a problem that test scores often miss. Across India, millions of children reach fifth grade unable to comfortably read second grade text. Many experts focus on teaching mechanics, but Turning Pages tackles something harder: the emotional shutdown that happens when reading becomes associated with correction and failure instead of pleasure.

"Children have an innate desire to read and listen to stories," says Madhuri, who left her corporate career to build the foundation. "The problem is that we turn reading into a forced activity instead of an enjoyable one."

Their approach works through classroom libraries, daily read-aloud sessions, teacher training, and school-wide reading programs. Teachers learn to pause mid-story for discussion, to let children debate and dramatize, to build what the foundation calls a "whole-school reading culture."

The results show up in unexpected ways. Children who once avoided books now carry them home. Teachers report students arriving early just to browse the shelves. Parents say their children are teaching younger siblings to love stories.

In one tribal school, the shift from chaos to pin-drop silence took just twelve months. Now those same students are leading the transformation, one story at a time.