shyamala's world

This  © article was created exclusively for the November 2016 issue of Kahani Takbak, a newsletter for children authors in India.)  Poet of little children: Kuzha Kathiresan, Bala Sahitya Puraskar winner 2016                                                                                 He passes off as a bureaucrat with his quiet demeanor and gentle voice. It is  only when he settles down  in his office surrounded by bookshelves that he shows his real talent by reciting poems close to his heart. Kuzha Kathiresan, winner of Bala Sahitya Academi award (2016) for total contribution to children’s literature is a rare gem in the world of children’s poetry.  His adventure with poetry started in his late teens while he was pursuing his graduation in tamil literature.  He began his career as a manager for a publishing house learning all aspects of publishing.  He also started taking poetry seriously and participated in poetry fo

(This  © article was created by author and poet, Santhini Govindan exclusively for the October,2016 issue of Kahani Takbak, a newsletter by authors for children authors.)                                            When I first started writing for children, I did not imagine that the stories and poems that I wrote would be used in text books (academic) books.  Initially, only a few of my stories were included in primary school English literature readers, but this increased over the years, and eventually, I started compiling English language readers myself, (with original and public domain content) for several major academic book publishers in India. It was during this exercise that I learnt how important it is, for a writer, to have a basic understanding of copyright and copyright laws, and what ‘public domain’ means.        Copyright is the legal protection given to the author or creator of an original creative work. The work, which may be literary, musical, artistic, or

( This piece was created exclusively for the October 2016 issue of Kahani Takbak, a newsletter by authors for children authors. www.kahanitakbak.com )                                          Roopa Pai's children's pictorial book , How old is Muttaji (Pratham Books) is a unique Indian book which blends mathematics, local history with national history. It was shortlisted for Publishing Next’s The digital book of the year award.  Kahani Takbak interviewed Roopa Pai to know more. 1.  Is the book based on a real person? Do you know anyone who is as old as Muttaji? The book is not based on a real person but my children's Muttajji certainly provided a lot of the inspiration. She is my husband's grandmother, and she turned 100 years old in June this year. Her memory is not like Muttajji's - she remembers EVERYTHING from her childhood and younger days! 2 .      How long did Muttaji take to write? A couple of days at most... This story was conceived a

(This interview is a piece from the November, 2016 issue of Kahani Takbak, a newsletter written by authors for children authors.  To subscribe to the newsletter click here  ) 1.What has prompted Duckbill to start this initiative now? Does the excellent performance by our sport stars in the recent Para Olympics have anything to do with it? At Duckbill, we believe in doing fun books which kids will want to read for pleasure, but we also like it if these books talk about dilemmas or problems that kids face. We believe that literature is one of the primary means through which we learn empathy and how to deal with the challenges that the world holds. So we have books where the themes, for example, of single parenthood, class, sexuality, bullying etc are also present. So, kids with special needs or problems was something else we are interested in. We published two books which feature protagonists with special needs--Zainab Sulaiman's  Simply Nanju-- or some kind of physic