There’s a reason we’ve been looking forward to Fridays lately, and it’s not because the weekend is so close we can almost reach out and grab it. (Well, there’s that too.) But really, we’ve been waiting to get our hands on the latest installment of Pratham Books’ PhoneStories, and to be transported straight to the jungle again, just as we have every Friday for the past three weeks. 

Through Watch Out! The Tiger is Here, we learned about how animals react when a predator is on the move in the forest. In Did You Hear?, we turned our attention to birds and the different calls they make. Then, with Wild Cat! Wild Cat! we were introduced to a bevy of cats beyond tigers and lions.

Today, it’s finally time to stream the fourth (and alas, last) of the PhoneStories, “Who Ate All That Up?” on our mobile devices. 

Have you ever wondered why garbage doesn’t pile up in our wild spaces, even though our cities overflow with trash? Where does the waste go, when there are no recycle bins or composters deep in the jungle? In this story, we learn how clever animals are, and why they don’t need lectures about waste segregation and recycling. We see how leopards are connected to vultures, and how vultures are connected to maggots, and how all the animals, birds and trees in the forest work together to ensure that nothing is wasted.

This PhoneStory, like the others in the series, has been written by Sejal Mehta (Ed-in-Chief at Nature inFocus), and illustrated by Rohan Chakravarty (creator of Green Humour). It has been narrated by stand-up comic Rohan Joshi.


You can read, watch and listen to the book by streaming or downloading it on your phone or tablet. The PhoneStories are available in English and Hindi in an audio-visual format, and in multiple languages on StoryWeaver