Festival Stories Through The year : Guest Blog by Rachna Chhabria
Festival Stories Through The Year is Rachna Chhabria's first release with Harper Collins (India). Rachna shares her experiences while writing this book.
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.
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 Oxford University Press
textbook (the editor had emailed me some research links), and this year I had
written a small feature on festival myths and legends for a newspaper. All this
research came in handy when I started writing my book. I also spoke to people,
read few articles online, saw videos on YouTube and photographs on Pinterest
boards, to get a sense of each festival.
I completed the first draft
in 12 days. Over the next few weeks I revised and with Tina’s help polished the
book so that it could meet its publishing date. Tina held my hand throughout
the process.
 |
| Rayika Sen |
In between I sent Rayika Sen, the illustrator, notes on how I
wanted the illustrations to look. Rayika has done a brilliant job. And so has
Sandhya Prabhat who has designed the cover and the cover illustrations.
This is the fastest book I
have written, the toughest and the most fun. There are so many rituals in each
festival that I would need more books to do them justice. Many people I spoke
to had no clue why they performed a certain ritual. My mom follows a custom on
Akshaya Tritiya (you will have to read the book to know what it is) her reason
being, that when she got married my grandmother carried out this ritual and my
mom has continued it. I hope my book throws light on many unknown customs
behind festivals.
My book is different from
other books on festivals because readers will not just get factual information
but also celebrate an entire year of festivals with my protagonists: twins
Natasha and Nikhil in a unique way. I created stories around each festival. A
difficulty I faced was weaving in the festival details (the non-fiction part)
into the story (the fiction part). I was determined that no child should skip
the non-fiction element of the story. The festivals are celebrated differently throughout
India and there is lots of yummy food involved.
My brief was not to make the
book religious, but to describe the cultural aspects of festivals, the reason
it is celebrated, when it is celebrated and in which part of our country. And I
had a very tight word restriction. There are certain pan-Indian festivals
everyone knows about, but people living in different parts of India are not
very familiar with festivals celebrated in other parts of our country. My aim
was to give an interesting overall view of all the festivals we celebrate, this
makes the book relevant throughout the year. Every community finds a
representation in my book. Hope you all will enjoy reading Festival Stories
Through The Year.
Festival Stories Through The
Year (HarperCollins Children’s Books) releases on 10th November. To order a copy of my book, click here.
Hi Shyamala, its an honour to be on your wonderful blog. I enjoyed talking about how I wrote my book on Festivals. In many ways this was a blessed book, everything just fell into place quickly. I hope the readers enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it.
ReplyDeleteVery nice
DeleteShaik Amer
Now that was a fast first draft. I think the idea behind the book is brilliant and with a fictional story woven throughout, kids will really enjoy it. Just don't tell them they are learning...
ReplyDeleteHi Alex, thankyou for dropping by. Yes, it was a super quick first draft. My fingers are crossed that the kids will enjoy the fictional story as well as the non-fiction part.
DeleteNice post. Its admirable how Rachna Chhabria wrote the first draft in less than 2 weeks. Eager to read the book. It sounds very interesting. Have been reading her stories in Young world and her book reviews in Deccan Chronicle. Good luck to Rachna.
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Festivals Of India
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