A sea prayer - for children at sea

Khaled Hosseini's book for children, Sea Prayer, was an appropriate book to read as this year slowly draws to an end. This slim children's book is a requiem to loss - the loss of home, homeland, security, identity, relationships, a way of life - the annihilating, bewildering, confounding loss faced by refugees everywhere. It is also a prayer - not for oneself but for one's child, for "the most precious cargo there ever was". Hosseini sums up the refugee's fate "unwanted, unwelcome" wherever they go, their hearts unhinged, their future as unstable and threatening as the stormy sea.   

Dan Williams, the illustrator, has transformed the emotions evoked by Hosseini's words into images that are a visual delight. There are the warm yellow tones of sunlit afternoons drenched in nostalgia, the blue-black hues that capture the uncertainty and fear in the hearts of the refugees as they wait for a perilous sea-journey to take them to safety, the bright bursts of red poppies like the laughter of children playing in the garden. 

This children's book brings the focus on an aspect of childhood that is rarely in the limelight - children at peril and in exile. 

Getting your child to read

Do children read these days? Never having done a survey, I can't say for sure, but going by the sales of books, and the increasing occurrence of children's literature festivals, either the kids are reading a lot, or someone out there is hoping and praying and working really hard to make sure they do!

How does one ensure that children read regularly and enjoy the act of reading? After teaching kids of all ages to love literature, here are a few tips that I know work for sure -

1. Remember they are watching you! Your child may not listen to all that you say, but she is certainly watching you as you go about your day. If you spend a lot of time on the phone, she will wish to do the same, if you like to walk around the park, she will want to go cycling there, and if you spend some time reading every day, she will pick up a book too! Do spend some time reading every day, and talk to your child about the book she is reading.

What if you aren't a reader? Well, become one. Kids love to imitate their parents and so try to read something every day. It can be the newspaper, magazines, recipe books, the atlas, or your prayer book. The point is, that you should be spending some time with your child with a book in your hand.

2. Keep some books lying around the house - That might not be welcome advice if you are the kind of parent who's obsessive about everything being in its rightful place, but, hey, you can ensure you have a little bookshelf in every room or a little basket in which nestle the books you and your child are reading currently.

3. Get to know the books that are available in the market - especially books by Indian writers. Don't get caught in the trap of buying only retold folktales, moral stories, educational books or Enid Blyton - because that's what YOU grew up with! There's nothing wrong with them, but the children's book market today has an exciting range of genres and offerings, and I am sure you'd like your child to benefit from it. Become a part of FB groups that discuss children's books and keep yourself updated with the latest and most recommended publications. 

4. Choose diverse books - read across genres and authors. don't try to stick to one sort of book. Your child may have tastes that are different from yours. Remember that a children's book serves as a window and a mirror - it offers the child a mirror to her world, and gives her an opportunity to look out into other worlds.

There's lots and lots of other ways to raise a reader - you will find out for yourself, and I will share more tips in another post. Until then, open a book ... those squiggles on the page are the password into a wacky and wild world!

Reading children's books from Japan

THE BARBER’S DILEMMA AND OTHER STORIES FROM MANMARU STREET

By Koki Oguma and Gita Wolf, illustrations by the author, Tara Books, 2017, pp. 44, Rs. 450.

Young children play in the most unstructured manner. A child holding a ladle may decide it is a mike and begin to sing a song. Moments later, the ladle becomes an umbrella, or a bus, or a spoon to stir her mother's coffee. A game of pretend swordsmanship transforms into one playing with fallen flowers and seeds, or a classroom game. There is a marvellous sense of fluidity in the way children negotiate their way through a world that seems infinitely wondrous and ever-changing.



Koki Oguma's stories and illustrations attempt this unstructured, even stream-of-consciousness method of negotiating with the world. He is an art teacher in Tokyo and created this book when he was artist-in-residence at Tara Books, Chennai, a couple of years ago. Oguma writes about the people who live and work and play on Manmaru Street. 

There's Ms. Oda who made a giant candy which reminds her of a slide, and so she and her friend slide down the candy, licking it as they go along.

And there's Mr. Tuchida who wants to build a house on his head. As the house takes shape, his neck begins to hurt with the weight of the bricks. A kind builder gently puts a compress on it. 






Mr. Isoda, a fisherman, listens to the river and begins to speak its language. HeMr. is so good at it, that a shoal of fish mistake his mouth for the river and enter it. Oguma writes, "Mr. Isoda didn't mind at all."

Oguma's tales are more like slice-of-life renditions. The word 'stories' in the title may mislead you into expecting traditionally structured tales. But as you read further, you realise that these are tales of the everyday - of the ridiculous, the philosophical, the quirkiness, and the profundity in the quotidian.

The spare quality of the text is complemented by the rich creativity of the drawings. Oguma's paintings are full of whimsy and flights of fancy rendered in a pastel palette which gives it a dream-like feel. 

Bela Has Buck Teeth

By Mamta Nainy, Illustrated by Ankur Mitra, CBT, 2018, pp. 16, Rs. 40

This prize-winning story is a heart-warming tale of a little girl who dreads the annual Class Photo session at school as she is self-conscious about her buckteeth.  It touches lightly upon issues of body image and peer pressure. Bela finally faces the camera with a broad smile, as a compliment from a thoughtful teacher fills her with delight.  She still has her buckteeth, but that’s alright, for she now knows she has ‘the cutest smile’ ever. 

The illustrations and choice of colours are very professionally done, and the book is a delight to go through.

There are some issues however that I wish to highlight. Since these picture books are generally directed at beginner readers, it might be a good idea if the author does not use words like ‘stifle’ or ‘vigorous’. The editor also needs to check for grammar as the author tends to incorporate both past and present tense in a sentence, which is just plain wrong. 

This review originally appeared in The Book Review, November 2018.

Reading Dalit literature in translation - a gift that comes through many hands

After reading a whole bunch of children's books recently  - professional requirements, and just plain  fun - I picked up a book that had found its way to my TBR pile a few months ago. The book was one that was highly recommended and boy, this was one of those times when the expectations created by the hype were fully met!

Reading #kusumabale by #devanooramahadeva was a novel experience (pun intended). 

The translator #susandaniel has done a marvellous job, bending the English language to suit the rhythms of Kannada as #devanooramahadeva uses it, and creating a strange new beauty with it. 

How I long to #translate like that! 

But what was even more wonderful was the way Devanoora Mahadeva disregards the form of the novel as we know it, and defying linear time and plot strictures takes us on a journey into a world shaped by Dalit perspectives. I found the last couple of chapters most moving and mind-boggling. I don't often cry when I read books, but this was one time that I did. 

#translated #indianliterature #kannadabooks #dalitliterature #intranslation

A return to childhood - Kampung Boy

It amazes me at times that while we share a cultural and social history with several nations in Asia, one would never guess it going by the popular culture and social media that form a large part of our lives. Our bookstores, for instance, display tons of European, American as well as African books, but almost nothing from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam or China.

On a recent trip to Malaysia, therefore, I was on the lookout for children's books by local authors. It wasn't easy, for most bookstores (like the ones in India) displayed American and British children's titles or some Malaysian titles in Bahasa. After some questioning and prodding of the staff at the stores, I was delighted to find children's books by Malaysian and Chinese authors. I bought six and began reading them on returning home.

Lat published his first book for children, Kampung Boy, in 1979. It's an autobiographical narrative in which he attempts to recreate the days of his childhood living in a traditional Malay house called a kampung while growing up on a rubber plantation. 

Two years later, he followed it up with Town Boy, which describes the years he spent in Ipoh where he went to live when he was eleven. A decade later, he published Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today juxtaposing contemporary and earlier Malay childhood using the same format of brilliantly illustrated pages, largely in black and white, and accompanying text.

  

Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today by Lat - whose real name is Mohammed Nor - is an absolute delight to read. Lat takes us down memory lane, through homes that were full of love and inventiveness, and playgrounds where every toy had to be created by the children and their parents. The games they played included equal participation by ants, pangolins, cows, angry honeybees and sleepy pythons. Rural life is presented as exciting rather than bucolic, full of adventure and, at times, danger.

Of course, there's a lot of nostalgia and a lot of idealisation of childhood. But there's also a subtle plea to parents to cease being over-protective, helicoptering, competitive mums and dads. 






The artwork of Kampung Boy - a mixture of caricature and evocative detailing - is wonderfully expressive, enabling the author-illustrator to say a lot without using too many words. Lat doesn't follow the graphic novel format favoured by a number of contemporary writers, or the manga style that originated in Japan. Instead, moving as he does from being a newspaper cartoonist-columnist to one attempting an autobiographical narrative,  he uses the page as a canvas and fills it up with a single scene that captures the essence of the tale he wants to tell.   

I introduced the book to a group of students who have learning differences and built a reading and writing activity around it. It was heartening to see that they liked the book a great deal, and would either stay back and try and read a few more pages or come in early the next day to continue with the story. The illustrations helped them make sense of the story and the minimal text and unusual fonts used by the author made it easier for them to read the narration. 

The one thing I did not like about Lat's work was that I detected a certain internalisation of colonial attitudes, though. As the children - depicted with 'non-human' expressions - leave their 'nature-phase' behind them and enter the world of schools and academia, their faces take on more human orientations. I shall probably have to examine the whole of the Kampung series before making very definitive statements.

All in all, a great addition to your library!

#femmeMarch – Indian YA Books and the Class Divide

A couple of years ago, I happened to listen to Andaleeb Wajid (at St. Joseph’s College where I was teaching then) talk about her books and the writing process. I hadn’t yet read any of her books - her first, Kite Strings, was published in 2009 – but was very impressed by the author herself -  warm, articulate and approachable. Dressed in a black abaya, a pastel hijab and an amused smile, she described how she managed to fit her writing into her busy life, and still have time for social media and friends. She explained that she focuses on the teen reader, for whom there aren’t too many options, and that her characters were invariably Muslim. That interested me for most Indian books for teenagers hardly ever featured Muslim or Christian or Buddhist characters, except as sidekicks.

In the last nine years, Andaleeb has published fifteen books (that’s right!) with the latest, titled Twenty Nine Going On Thirty out this month. Most of them are written for the Young Adult reader (14-24 years) and feature romance and food. Lately, she has experimented with the horror genre, which she says she enjoys reading. She works with several different publishers including Juggernaut Books who are changing the way people read (For the first time ever, I read a book on my phone with the Juggernaut app 😊). A single publisher probably wouldn't be able to keep up with her amazing output.

That afternoon, I went away telling myself I would soon read a book by Andaleeb but I didn’t (My bad). Not until this week, that is. As part of my #femmeMarch reading, I was keeping an eye out for women writers – global, local, writing for adults, teens or children. And that’s how I finally picked up Andaleeb’s Asmara’s Summer and kept my promise to myself 😊.

Asmara, the protagonist and the first-person narrator, is a pampered teenager who has had a privileged upbringing. To her absolute mortification, she is expected to spend a month of her summer holidays with her grandparents who live in an area perceived as shabby, down-market and conservative. All these years, she has not even let on to her best friends that her grandparents live there! Asmara dreads her ‘summer from hell’ with no air-conditioning, no cool stuff to do, and no Wi-Fi. But, no worries, for it’s a romance, and so good things loom ahead, including a new BFF and a neighbor who is a handsome hunk.

The best part of the book for me is that it looks at class issues in the face, at how we resort to stereotypes about ‘those’ people and ‘their style’ of dressing and the food ‘they’ like to eat. Asmara moves to Tannery Road with all these narrow labels firmly in place and even sets up a new Instagram account to bitch about ‘the bling’ and the ‘loud glitzy colours’ used by people living ‘there’. But luckily, Asmara is a thinking person, and soon, uses her critical faculties to understand others and herself better.

What did not work for me is that the narrative doesn’t take the critical gaze far enough – while Asmara makes friends in the neighbourhood, she doesn’t dwell on what underlying social structures set this area apart from posher areas in Bangalore. How do they manage with intermittent water supply? Why are the schools and college in the neighbourhood not great places to study in? Why do the Tannery Road residents have to be helped by someone from a posh part of the city? The book is a quick and easy read and contents itself by merely scratching the surface of the classist times we live in.  

It’s #femmeMarch! Have you read a book by a woman today?

March isn't only about the madness of the March hare, or exam fever. It's #femmemarch month and a time to celebrate women writers. And so, I spent this afternoon reading two very interesting books on Storyweaver. Not only are they written by women, they are about women too.

StoryWeaver is this amazing platform where at last count, 7313 stories have been published online in 109 languages! It is an offshoot of Pratham Books and seeks to ensure that every child in India can read a story in the language of her choice. The stories are not controlled by copyright, and children, teachers, parents and librarians anywhere in the world can read them online, download them, print them, make copies and circulate them. StoryWeaver allows you to contribute in terms of creating new stories, contributing artwork, translating or re-levelling existing stories. I cannot think of a more noble, wonderful, or applause-worthy venture.

The two books I read were Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments with Weather by Nandita Jayaraj and illustrated by the extraordinary Priya Kurian, and The Cottonwool Doctor by Michelle Mathews and illustrated by Jean de Wet. The first is a Level 3 book and the second is a Level 2 book. Level 2 books deal with simple concepts and have upto 600 words, while Level 3 books make use of longer sentences and can be upto 1500 words long. Both books are biographies, based on real people and describe women’s accomplishments in the field of science and technology.

Anna’s Extraordinary Experiments is about Dr. Anna Mani, an Indian physicist and meteorologist who built almost a hundred weather gadgets. As a child, Anna loved books and spent all her free time reading. She cried when she was gifted diamonds on her birthday as she would have preferred to receive books. 

The Cottonwool Doctor traces the life of Margaret Bulkly who lived in the nineteenth century. Her parents spent all their money on their son’s education (sounds familiar?) and had nothing left for their daughter. With help from her uncle and a family friend, she dressed like a boy, changed her name and enrolled in medical school. 

Henceforth, she was known as Dr. James Barry and travelled all over the world with no one realizing that she was a woman until AFTER she DIED. What an amazing life this brave and determined woman must have led!

Do check out StoryWeaver.org.in for some interesting children’s books.

On meeting Vidya Mani

Last week, I was at a workshop at Christ, Bangalore, where I met an amazing person called Vidya Mani. She radiated positivity, energy and passion for children’s books, having made it her life’s mission to get children to read. And read some more. She calls herself a children’s books ‘writer-editor-bookclubber-bookshopper’ and leads an incredible life immersed in children’s books.

Vidya is behind several children’s magazines, including Chatterbox, Quest, Junior Quest, Hoot and Toot, a founding member of Bookalore, a children’s book club in Bangalore, managing editor of Goodbooks, a children’s book review site, and a co-owner of Funky Rainbow, a travelling children’s bookshop. Whew, she certainly sounds like she has packed the achievements of several lifetimes into one, doesn’t she?

What I love about Vidya (other than her infectious enthusiasm, her smile, and her vast collection of books) is her belief in and dedication to INDIAN children’s literature. She not only writes for children, she also promotes books by other Indian authors.

And the best thing I like best about her is that she thinks children should be FREE to decide what they want to read, and that adults should let children read for FUN, rather than information and improvement.

May her tribe increase!

Where are the children's books from non-English speaking countries?

It’s strange that while printed children’s literature in India had its origins in translation, today we rarely come across translated children’s books in bookshops. Many of the books first published in India for children in the 19^th or early 20^th century were well known English books such as Aesop’s Fables, Alice in Wonderland and stories from the Bible translated into Indian languages. In the second half of the twentieth century, along with a flood of books from UK and USA, Indian children also enjoyed perusing Russian stories translated into English and made available by the Soviets for throwaway prices. 

As a child, I remember reading the Bobbsey Twins series and being especially delighted with those books in which the twins travelled to other countries. Ironically, my introduction to Japan came through The Bobbsey Twins and the Goldfish Mystery in which the children visit Japan and learn several Japanese customs (heavily stereotyped and orientalized, no doubt), and I learnt to say Sayanora and Konnichiwa. I read the English translation of that most famous of Japanese children’s books, Toto-Chan only years and years later.

Ilan Stavans, a publisher of children’s books says, “It is precisely at a young age … when the strongest impact can be made in terms of exposing people to other cultures. A new sensibility can emerge”. However, if you visit a school library or the children’s section of a circulating library, you will probably find a large collection of books from USA and UK and a few from India, and almost nothing else. I do not recollect seeing books from any of our neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh or other Asian countries such as China, Singapore, Thailand or Vietnam. 

Just imagine, if three generations of Indian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi and Sinhalese children grow up reading books from each other’s cultures, South Asians could live without mutual hatred and suspicion. We fear that which is unknown. If we grow up reading stories from other countries, they will become as familiar and beloved to us as stories and people from our own country.

It is true that there has, in recent times, been some recognition of the need to expose our children to multicultural literature. Like Rudine Bishop said, children deserve to read both mirror and window books – books that reflect a culture and society that they are familiar with, and books that offer them a glimpse into other cultures. There have been some attempts on the part of enlightened publishers like Ekalavya, Pratham, Tulika and Tara to offer books that reflect the vast and rich multiple Indian cultures. However, this is not the case with translated books. Forget about translations from other countries, we rarely translate children’s books from one Indian language to another.   The problem is not with publishers alone, as the market reality is such that parents (if and when they buy books) would rather pay for a well-known ‘phoren’ (US/UK) author rather than venture to read an interesting book by an ‘unknown’ author from an ‘unknown’ country.

Sigh!