shyamala's world

Published by Mango Books, The Strange Case of Nayantara is a middle-grade book that deals with the importance of consent. This book has been written by Vaishali Shroff, author of picture books - Ari and Raindrops . The Strange Case of Nayantara is Vaishali's first middle-grade book which can be used to deal with the importance of consent, a tricky issue to discuss with kids.                                     Why did you choose to set the story in a village instead of a city? Do you think Nayantara’s parents would have dealt with the issue differently if they were based in the city? Absolutely no! What happened to Nayantara could happen to any child, girl or boy, in any part of this world. This story just happens to be set in a small town/village in Gujarat. 2.     How did you think of creating Silly Baba? It is through his interventi...

Bhutan based author Evan Purcell is out with a new book on monsters. Published by Duckbill, this  middle grade book is a part of a series.Evan shared a few thoughts on his new creation, Karma Fights a Monster. You have been writing romances and horror for adults in the past. This is your first middle grade book. Why did you choose to write for a young audience instead of adults ? First of all, writing for grown-ups is a lot of fun. There are fewer rules, and there’s no limit to the content or tone. It’s really freeing. For me, though, I prefer writing YA and middle grade. Deep down, maybe I’m still a twelve-year-old. I find it easier to write about monsters and creatures than about more grown-up problems. Plus, I’m a teacher. I spend time with kids every day. I see the issues they face and the choices they make. I want them to have literature that they can learn from and relate to, literature that’s scary and funny, but always relatable. (Plus, I really like monsters.) ...

  MultistoryLearning have instituted BICW awards to recognise the best Indian authors writing for children.   Naresh R, director of Multistory learning, shared more details about the awards. Naresh carries a large black bag everywhere he goes. Some say that it contains strange artefacts, broken phrases, and forgotten songs. He sleeps while he moves. He trades his stories for bread and soup. Why were the BICW AWARDS instituted? Tell us a bit about the people/institution who conceptualised the awards. The Best of Indian Children’s Writing (BICW) – Contemporary Awards grew from the need to curate a set of stand-out, age-appropriate books to distribute in schools. In 2017, we (the team from Multistory Learning Private Limited) reached out to a variety of Indian publishers to ask if we could procure the titles that we thought worked best for the themes and age groups that were a part of the reading list of the Book Lovers’ Program for Schools (BLPS). We c...

Children’s Literature:  A Curious Case was the title of the two day symposium held by the Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai . Ingratubun Gudrun, was the first speaker of the day.   She spoke about Topics and Aesthetics of German Children’s and Youth Literature by adults and children. Mumbai based children's author Katie Bagli shares her notes from the session. Germany publishes around 8000 titles of children’s literature in a year.  What kind of subject are they portraying?  Kids want something more than reality.  Something beyond mythology and preaching. The focus is on intercultural topics so that children get to know about other countries.  One of their titles on this aspect is the recently published ‘Frau Bengali’.   Also, many of their books bring out the lives of refugees. For the very young, there are picture books that encourage children to come up with their own stories.  As an example a page from a picture book containing ...