‘Children should be fed the best’

Author Suniti Namjoshi talks about switching from writing for adults to children’s books and the challenges

January 26, 2015 05:34 pm | Updated 05:34 pm IST - HYDERABAD:

Suniti Namjoshi. Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

Suniti Namjoshi. Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

She might be in her 70s but she’s just as feisty as any other youngster on the block. She has a sparkle in her eye and a strong opinion on what makes for a good book.

Conversations with her are seldom dull given she has no qualms about speaking her mind and making her point clear. With a writing career spanning several decades author Suniti Namjoshi has several successful books to her credit that include some brilliant pieces of feministic works, fables and poems.

At the Hyderabad Literary Festival to talk about writing children’s books, the author talks about what prompted her to make the switch from writing for adults to penning down child protagonists.

“I always thought writing for children was easy; but I was so ignorant. I got into it purely by accident and that’s when I realised that it was a rather challenging task; especially picture books,” says the author of the hugely popular Aditi series and Blue .

Interestingly, a lot of her works fictionalise characters in her real life. The Aditi series for instance portrays her niece Aditi as the protagonist in various fictional events, while with Saint Suniti and the Dragon she carries the story on her own shoulders.

The author, who is known for fable-style of writing and refuses to dumb down things for children, admits that what makes writing for children the hardest is the kind of censorship that goes into it. “You want to protect children from cruelty in books but you can’t protect them from cruelty in life. There has to be a balance. That said, I don’t want to dumb down my books in any way for children. I want to give them my absolutely best work — no matter how concentrated it is or however many layers of irony there are,” she says.

Suniti is currently looking forward to her next series of works titled The Boy and The Dragon with Tulika Publishers. Suniti, who shares a great working rapport with Radhika Menon, publisher of Tulika Books, says, “The series is harder than the Aditi books but not as hard as some of the other fables.”

One of the biggest challenges that both Suniti and Radhika face in terms of children’s books is distribution. “Stores and e-commerce websites don’t always update their collections. Also children’s writing is so spread out given the number of languages we cater to that distribution can be a challenge. There is also a need for better quality of writing. Only about five per cent of the works submitted to us ever get published, because most manuscripts just don’t measure up,” explains Radhika.

Suniti and Radhika are both upbeat about the kind of demand for children’s literature in the market today. “Back when we started there was no demand whatsoever for children’s books. Today though there is a definite demand, especially for Indian writers for children,” says Radhika, while Suniti pipes in, “I want to see some of the best writers in India write children’s books and give them the best there is. Even if they say that it isn’t their line of work, because it is children that should be fed the best.”

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