shyamala's world

Deepa Agarwal is an award winning writer who has written over 50 books in various genres and for different age groups.  She is one of the rare , enthusiastic children authors who is comfortable promoting her books through school visits and internet.  The Scholastic Book of Hindu Gods and Goddesses  is her forthcoming title. Caravan to Tibet ,  Go Girl  and  Listen O King  are some of her middle grade books. To know about her visit  www.deepaagarwal.com Since virtual author visits are one of the convenient ways to promote a book from home, Kahani  Takbak interviewed Deepa to know more details. 1.What should be the ideal duration of a  virtual author visit? I think 30-45 minutes are enough. 2.                    What should be the criteria for selecting a school for a visitor author visit? The schools approached me directly for the Skype call so I have not thought too much about this. However, if I had to ask a school I would expect that the children should h

Abhijeet Kini is a creative professional specializing in illustrations, graphic designs, animations and copywriting. Butterfingers is one of his popular creations.   So is Angry Maushi.  Abhijeet is one of the few Indian artists who has successfully managed to use merchandising to create a buzz around his books and comic characters.  Kahani Takbak approached him to delve into the world of author merchandising. Merchandising Manager Diksha with  Artist Abhijeet Kini 1.       What made you create merchandise for your books? We started off the merchandising project with the first Mumbai comic con. And we saw the response we got to these and decided to keep this going. Diksha handles all the merchandising we do, and I handle the art. We noticed that when our own comic characters like Angry Maushi, etc are featured on collectibles, the recall value goes up. It also leads to more sales of the comics. So that's when we have actively featured our comic characters on coasters,fr

1.Do you love hockey a lot? The last picture book you wrote for Pratham books was centred around Hockey. A Tsunami Called Naani also has a bit of hockey. I love all sports and enjoy writing about them.  Three novels and several award winning short stories of mine have sports as the central theme. 2.                   Apart, from writing books, conducting parenting workshops has been one of your priorities? Why? During the time of our parents and grandparents parenting was no big deal. In fact in almost all cases it was a shared responsibility. Since then the onslaught of change has created a new society, a new culture and a new value system.   The responsibility of bringing up the child now rests squarely on the parents with little support available from paid help or family. This apart, the expectations of the parents from the child and vice versa have increased phenomenally.  All these changes put together have turned every concept, ideal and principle of parenting on