A moment from animated nursery rhyme album Hip Hip Hurray. (Below): Lyricist Javed Akhtar

It’s dawn. The first golden rays bathe the horizon. Three sparrows fly down and carry the young sun on their beaks up to the sky. Then they go chirping to windowsills, waking up children in bed. Chun chun gaati chiria/ Sabko roz jagati chiria, sings Kavita Krishnamurthy in the background.

Javed Akhtar’s pen wove vignettes of everyday life into eight endearing rhymes for children that were then set to tune. To give these songs a visual life was the task that city-based animation studio Arcs faced. They have come up with lively visuals that meld seamlessly with the music.

“It is a wonderful job,” says Akhtar over phone from Mumbai. He saw the animated face of his poetry after it was sent to him last week. “The challenge was to maintain a level of excellence that matched Javedsaab’s writing,” says project chief Rajesh Chakraborty, an NID graduate and a former assistant of Sekhar Kapur.

The album, called Hip Hip Hurray, is special for Akhtar, too, as this is the first time the lyricist has written for children. “It is very difficult to recall the innocence and simplicity of childhood. The writing has to have a message without being preachy,” he says.

The best of Bollywood have been roped in for the songs. If Sunidhi Chauhan sings Baarish, where leafs are shown to morph into children who leap into a rainbow at the end of a shower, Shaan urges animals and children into a train journey of national unity in the title track. But the surprise voice is that of Akhtar himself, in a story of two sisters, Khira and Bira. “Please do not call that singing. I was just speaking to a beat,” he modestly dismisses his effort. “In fact, I am so apprehensive that I have not told anyone, not even my wife (Shabana Azmi).”

The Calcutta boys at the Arc studio are gung-ho about the project. “We had four months in hand, which left little time for post-production. A team of 32 was divided to produce animation both in the classical style and by using Flash, a software,” says Rajesh, who worked on the storyboards of Kapur’s Elizabeth II and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti. “I learnt how to develop a script from Mehra, while Sekhar taught me how to feel for a shot,” he smiles, displaying the storyboards for Hip Hip Hurray.

The album, informs Kapil Shah of Manpari Cartoon Movies, the Ahmedabad-based producers, has been sent to the censor board for approval. “We plan to release the VCDs and DVDs in end-May.” Meanwhile, enthused with his first brush with a kid’s world, Akhtar is already on to the next collection of poems. “We have so little to offer to children,” he says. And Rajesh is sitting in wait at his Lake Gardens studio.