shyamala's world

Festival Stories Through The Year  is Rachna Chhabria's first release with Harper Collins (India). Rachna shares her experiences while writing this book. Rachna Chhabria is a columnist with The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle. She writes for many newspapers, her stories have been published in several anthologies. She is the author of Lazy Worm Goes on a Journey, The Lion Who Wanted to Sing and Bunny in Search of a Name. In the second week of July, Harper Collin’s Children’s Editor Tina Narang emailed me asking if I was willing to work on a book based on festivals. Tina was my editor at Scholastic. I was initially hesitant as this was a non-fiction project and also because of the time crunch, I had to submit the book by the end of the month. Nevertheless, I took it up as a challenge. After brainstorming, Tina and I decided to create a group of characters who would celebrate all the festivals. Luckily for me, two years back I had written an article on few festivals for an O...

Chennai based Tulika Books is about to launch a book club for children. Aneesha Vijay Kumar, Promotions and Marketing Manager of Tulika Books, shares some details about the  bookclub. 1. What do kids stand to benefit by joining  the book club? The Tulika Book Club, we hope, will be THE space for eight- to twelve-year-olds to meet like-minded peers and create their own community of readers and book lovers!  2.  How often will the bookclub meet? Twice a month. 3.  Will there be a theme for every meet? As of now the sessions are planned by theme.  4. I s there any fee/purchase to be made to join the bookclub? Yes, it will be Rs 1200 for four sessions over two months. The fee will include two books.  5.  Will there be any guided writing/drawing activities/workshops in the bookclub? Absolutely! The children will dabble with writing, play word games, discuss genres, writers,  illustrators, etc. ...

Illustration notes are guidelines shared by the author to a book's illustrator. Not all picture books need illustration notes. The text is enough to bring a book to life. Nonfiction books on specific topics  may need  illustration notes as accuracy is important.  Some fiction books may have one or two illustration notes to comunicate the twist in the story through an illustration. Shruti Rao's engaging picture book, Look Again!(Pratham Books) relies heavily on illustration notes. Artist    Kalyani Ganapathy has done a wonderful job bringing Shruthi's imagination to life.  About the book, Shruthi says,"I got this idea one morning,in those hazy moments before I completely woke up from sleep. It was just the seed of the idea. Over the next couple of days, I thought up some appropriate situations, and wrote them down." Do browse through the ebook before you scroll down to read the illustration notes.  Look Again!(Pratham Books) ...

Nandini Nayar is India's leading writers for children. She is one of the few authors who has successfully written fiction and nonfiction for children of all ages.  Her wide range of writing has made her a respected name in the world of Indian literature. Kahani Takbak quizzed her about books, writing and life. How did you become a writer? I became a writer when I stopped simply dreaming about being a writer and did something. I wrote a story which was published in the children’s pages of Deccan Herald. At that time I was teaching in a school and a student came up to tell me he had read my story and enjoyed it. This was a very positive and effective encouragement and it inspired me to continue writing. Oh, and getting paid for my story was hugely motivating too. I wrote several more stories that were published in the same newspaper. My first picture book happened when I began telling my son stories and sent two of these to Tulika. Tulika accepted both the stories. I ...

There has been an unusual flooding of Karadi book titles in the market recently.  Kahani Takbak interacted with Mrs Shobha Vishwanath, editor of Karadi Tales, to know more. There are different versions of Babban Hajjam existing in the market. What aspect of author Ira Saxena’s version appealed to you for considering it fit for publication? Yes, I am told that there are several versions of the story. But when I received Ira’s manuscript, it was a story that I had not read before. Not only was it well written, it had all the ingredients for a story that could also be ‘told’. It was an easy enough decision then to consider it for publication. You have written and published The Insect Boy , Fetch That Colour ! Let’s Roll Out A Circle. Which avatar do you enjoy the most- Author or Editor?                                        ...