Almost all of us fall in love with books early, while we are still labouring over impossibly long words and dog-earing pages and asking for bedtime stories. So really, apart from all the other sensible, practical reasons that make children’s literature so important, there is this simple one — we need books we can easily love, when our grasp on language is still new and our ability to read a story all on our own still feels a bit like magic.
A few decades ago, this honour in India went to stacks and stacks of Enid Blytons and Roald Dahls and Francine Pascals, punctuated by thin volumes of Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha . With a few exceptions (R.K. Narayan and Ruskin Bond, to name a couple), we grew up on a regular dose of stories from contemporary America and historical England. And then there were those beautiful picture books, lugged down by favourite relatives or imported by distributors; fascinating, but also just a little inaccessible in their slightly foreign, slightly baffling references. Of course, most of them were also weighed down by hefty price tags.
Our options were limited back then, and Indian authors writing children’s fiction were not just fewer, they also had fewer publishing houses to turn to. I remember stocking up on nearly every English and Hindi novel by Children’s Book Trust, and rereading them until they would begin to fall apart, savouring the slightly moralising but infinitely relatable quality they had, thrilled that I could recognise not just places and names, but also the very atmosphere of the story. I was easily satisfied, because I had no idea how things would change, and so, I couldn’t envy the children who’d grow up here, decades later, with books that would speak right to them, and catch not just their world, but also their voice. I definitely didn’t know that there could be children’s stories on special needs and disabilities, or that A wasn’t just for Apple, but also Aardvark.
The two examples above, taken from two very different books published by Duckbill, illustrate how far children’s literature in India has come. In Simply Nanju , Zainab Suleiman writes a book that is immensely important for children, of course, but perhaps even more so for every adult who is willing to give children’s fiction a chance.
She sets her story in a school for the disabled, handling what we’d assume is a difficult issue with surprising ease and deftness, so that the result is stripped of pity, but complete with both understanding and a sense of joy and poignancy, and entirely accessible to children.
Suleiman doesn’t shy away from details, so you are left with no doubt about the reality the young people in her books live with, but at the same time, she gives centre-stage to the story itself, allowing the children in her book to be just that — children. Nanju, born with a spinal defect that affects his walk, has a lot on his plate — the smart, pretty girl in class who doesn’t notice him, the bullies who tease him, and the grades on which his father’s temper depends. Of course, to further complicate things, Nanju also has the case of the disappearing books to solve, helped along by his best friend Mahesh, and what emerges is both beautiful and unique — a whodunnit set in a special needs school, with its students as protagonists.
While Suleiman’s is a book every adult should ideally read, the next of Duckbill’s new releases is a book they’d find hard to resist. An alphabet book titled Book of Beasts: An A to Z Rhyming Bestiary , written and illustrated by one of India’s best known naturalists, M. Krishnan. Krishnan first began this project in the 1990s, as a way of amusing his granddaughter, Asha Harikrishnan. For three consecutive birthdays, Asha received a set of these verses, arranged in alphabetical order, till Krishnan had completed the set, all the way from A to Z.
On the suggestion of her cousin, Asha decided to turn the manuscripts, slim binders with Krishnan’s original verses and drawings, into a book. The manuscript reached Duckbill, and editors Sayoni Basu and Anushka Ravishankar were immediately enchanted. “It was so lovely, we had to publish it. It works just as well for both children and adults,” says Basu.
Labels aside, Krishnan’s book is a delight. Filled with colourful, whimsical illustrations and accompanied by clever verses, the book follows the style of a simple ABC primer, but gives it that unique twist, which both surprises and educates — A for Aardvark, B for Binturong, C for Coyote — each animal starring in his own little ode, accompanied with a single paragraph of basic information covering its habitat, diet, and so on. Krishnan’s book stands right on that already blurry line between adult and children’s books, and is definitely not the only one there. Already, as both the scope and ambit of children’s literature grows, more and more adults find themselves gravitating towards shelves they’d have previously ignored.
After all, a good book is just a good book.
Duckbill’s new releases are just two examples, pulled out from shelves fast filling with more options by more publishers — books experimenting with both style and content, so that now you can find one that teaches children how to draw a fish in eight different Indian folk and tribal styles ( 8 Ways to Draw Fish by Luisa Martelo and various artists, Tara Books), or choose a boarding school series by an Indian author ( Horrid High by Payal Kapadia, Puffin).
Duckbill will soon publish another book that pushes the boundaries of what children can, and should read. Tentatively titled Invisible People and written by Harsh Mander, the book is a collection of stories, accompanied by Mander’s own commentary. “The stories in the book take a look at the growing complacency of middle-class India, and issues that children in difficult situations face,” says Basu. Whether it is abuse and violence, death and disease, or sexuality and politics; issues previously taboo are finding more place and space in books for children, encouraging both early understanding and independent thinking. While there are battles to fight and changes to be made, the distance that children’s literature has travelled is clearly immense, and immensely heartening.
