Ms Mun Activity Book Series5 books · 560 pages
Five books. One system.
Five activity books that teach a child to read and count, in Bangla and English: the vowels, the consonants, Bangla numbers, the ABC and English numbers. My team and I designed all 560 inner pages and drew every picture in them.
The client
Learning that feels like play.
Ms Mun is an early-learning brand for young children: books, toys and videos in Bangla and English, built with an early-childhood-development team. It is created by Munzereen Shahid, whose first book, Ghore Boshe Spoken English, I designed the cover for in 2020.
The brief was a whole shelf at once: five books, two languages, letters and numbers, one launch. As art director and product manager I set the page system, planned every book and ran a team of six through 560 pages, so that the fifth book feels as calm and familiar as the first.
- 5books
- 560pages
- 600+activities
- 200+stickers
The page system
Same bones, five alphabets.
Every book opens a letter or number the same way. The top of the page is a sky in that letter’s own colour, a white cloud of paper rolls in under it, and the big character sits on the cloud line with numbered strokes and a talking tag. Under the cloud, rules to write on. A child who knows one book already knows how to use the next.
- 1SkyThe letter’s own colour, rotating so no two in a row look alike
- 2The characterBig, with numbered strokes and a start dot
- 3Picture wordsThings a child knows that start with it
- 4Talking tagআমাকে TRACE করো, TRACE ME, GETTING READY
- 5Cloud lineA scalloped paper edge between looking and doing
- 6Writing bandsGrey rules, traced first, then free
One box of crayons
The whole series is painted from one box of ten sky colours, taken straight from the print files, so a page from any book sits happily next to a page from any other.
- Coral
#F16256 - Orange
#F5844C - Amber
#EDA423 - Lime
#C7CF5C - Leaf
#64B07A - Aqua
#5EC0D8 - Sky
#4CADDE - Violet
#7A6FAA - Mauve
#9D86AD - Lilac
#B893C4
Sky and letter
A sky always gets a letter from the other side of the wheel, so the character jumps off the page.
- অ
#4CADDE
#E84830 - আ
#7A6FAA
#F09038 - ই
#C7CF5C
#882880 - ঈ
#F06257
#50A8D8 - ঐ
#67C07D
#F06050
Five books, five leads
Each book has one lead colour for its name and tab. The bars show how much of each sky it uses.
স্বরবর্ণShoroborno
#C7CF5Cব্যঞ্জনবর্ণBenjonborno
#7A6FAA১২৩Bangla Numbers
#63B07AABCEnglish ABC
#F26257123English Numbers
#B693C3
Pencil to print
All aboard, page by page.
Every spread in the series went through the same three stops. Here is one of them, the ছ play spread from Benjonborno: the whole book planned first, then a rough layout in grey, then the finished pages.
1 Plan the book
Every book was laid out as a flatplan before anything was drawn. This is Benjonborno: 168 pages in spreads, one row for each of its seven print formas. Every letter gets exactly two spreads, learn then play. The circled one is ছ’s play spread.
- Learn spread: trace it, colour it
- Play spread: games for the same letter
- Intro and finish
2 Rough it out
Grey boxes, no colour yet. Only where things go.
- One big scene, the whole page
- Letters on discs, hidden in it
- A box to write how many ছ
- The verse, this letter’s line circled
- A maze, then a sticker task
3 Make it real
The illustration team paints the goats in the meadow, the maze to school and the children under umbrellas, and the spread is ready for print.
The five books
One shelf, five worlds.
Same system, different worlds. Each book below has one page you can play or watch.
Book 1
স্বরবর্ণ
The vowels, অ to ঔ.
Book one sets the rules the other four follow. Each vowel gets a page to trace, a page to colour and two pages to play. Below is page 16, live: colour only the parts of the mouse that hold ই. The other letters are hiding too.
০ / ১৮ ই found
Book 2
ব্যঞ্জনবর্ণ
The consonants, ক to ঁ.
The biggest book: 39 letters, each with four picture words a child already knows. Page 39 is live below: five things changed on the second ship.
০ / ৫ found
- the sun
- the birds
- a second funnel
- a third porthole
- the dolphins
One rhyme, four letters
One verse runs across চ, ছ, জ and ঝ. Each of their play pages brings it back and asks the child to circle a different letter, so by ঝ the child can say the whole verse.
চ তে চড়ুই পাখি,চিকি চিকি করে উড়ে যায়।
ছ তে ছাগল ছানা,ম্যা ম্যা করে গান গায়।
জ তে জুতাটা আমার,সুন্দর লাগে আমার পায়ে।
ঝ তে ঝুমুর এর তালে,তা থৈ তা থৈ নাচা যায়।
Book 3
১২৩
Counting in Bangla, ১ to ২০.
Numbers are learnt by doing: trace ১০, write দশ, then count, match and find your way. Here is the treasure hunt spread, live: tap the stones from ১ to ২০ and the missing numbers write themselves in.
০ / ২০ stones
এবার ১
Book 4
ABC
The ABC, big and small.
English letters come in pairs, capital and small, each with two picture words. At the end of the book the whole alphabet becomes one jungle safari: the path to the exit is the alphabet, with gaps for the child to fill.
Book 5
123
Counting in English, 1 to 20.
The last book counts in English, from tracing 1 to writing Thirteen, and turns sums into games. On page 51 the number decides the colour. Watch the whale fill in by the key.
Stickers
Peel it, stick it.
Every book has a sticker sheet, and every sticker belongs to a page. In Benjonborno, Maya’s wardrobe is empty: the জামা-কাপড়, clothes, are on the sheet, so the letter জ is heard, peeled and pressed into place, three times over.
For the grown-ups
A guide that comes in the box.
The child gets the books; the parent gets a leaflet. It explains how to use the series at home, in the same soft colours and scalloped shapes as the books, so the whole set feels like one thing.
See the Parent Guide LeafletInside the books
Five shelves, forty pages.
The public preview pages of all five books, shelf by shelf. Tap any page to read it.
স্বরবর্ণShoroborno
ব্যঞ্জনবর্ণBenjonborno
১২৩Bangla Numbers
ABCEnglish ABC
123English Numbers
Get the set
Five books, one shelf.
All five are out now from Ms Mun. What you saw here are the public preview pages; the other 520 are in the books.