I am very fond
of Ruskin Bond.
His poems I am reading
I have seen his granny’s proverbs, their meanings I am heeding
A tiny fish
is better than an empty dish
and have you read the panther’s moon ?
in which the panther caught a postman at noon
of Ruskin Bond I am very fond.
Contributed by Uday Ahuja, Age: 7
Give the tree a book and it will give you one back.
It all started with a photograph circulating on Facebook. It was the picture of a Christmas Tree made out of books. For us at Eureka!, it seemed like a great idea. What could be more ideal than a book-Christmas-Tree for a bookstore? Building on that idea, we decided to ask our friends to donate a book of their choice (with a message in it) for the tree.
The idea was to share these books with others. So for every book donated, one book was given back to the donor. Simply put, you give a book that you think someone else should have and read. During the three days before Christmas, you came and chose a book of your liking and reserved it. After Christmas, you could come and pick up that book. There was just one condition: all the books had to be children’s books. But then you couldn’t stop the parents who wanted to give books they grew up, could you. Thanks to whoever started sharing that photograph on Facebook.
The response was quite overwhelming. And you can imagine the surprise and fun that children had receiving a unique gift this Christmas.
All decked up and waiting
All the books that were left from the tree were finally donated to a school for the underprivileged in Charmwood Village, Surajkund. This school is run by a bunch of teachers to help children of house-helps to complete their schoolwork after school hours. Another wonderful idea.
So thanks Diya, Anya, Vineet, Akaash… for helping us make this tree for real. We hope that the Eureka! tree grows even bigger next year. And that we will have as merry a Christmas next year too.
The children are ready. The session takes off
Date: August 20, 2011
Venue: BumbleBees School, GK 2
Five minutes into a conversation with Leila Seth and what strikes you most is her unflappable temperament.
Anyone else – celeb or not – would have thrown a fit when she walked into a venue that was supposedly ready for an event with everyone in their seats. Not an eyelid did Ms Seth bat when even we – the organisers – reached just about the time her car drew up at the gate at 11 am sharp after a 17 km drive from Noida.
Horror of horrors. We weren’t fully ready. A sudden traffic jam that morning had held up most of the visitors. When Ms Seth walked in, there was just one young man who had turned up. Unflappable as ever, she engaged him skillfully in conversation waiting patiently for the rest to negotiate their way out of the jam and get in.
We the Children of India is the title of Leila Seth’s book. Published by Puffin, it is an introduction to the Preamble of the Constitution of India explained in simple terms for children. As the room filled up, Ms Seth was ready with her reading as were the children – and the few parents who elected to stay behind to watch – with their questions. Ms Seth, the former judge, became Leila Seth the storyteller.
What followed was 45 minutes of an unforgettable lesson in justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Not one minute of it was boring. No fidgety children. They gazed on as the lady ran them through the Preamble interspersed with examples that will have probably helped the listener much more than any classroom could have.
As the session gathered pace, Ms Seth – by popular demand – abandoned the chair she was sitting and joined the children on the floor. She just had one question before that: “Do you know how old I am?” The children were mesmerized after that.
What's the answer?
To explain Justice, Ms Seth she narrated the story of a wooden flute that is claimed by three people. The maker, the person who could play it really well and a third, who said that he did not have any toys to play with. ‘Who should the flute go to?” she asked the audience.
Almost everyone wanted to give it to the third person. Ms Seth explained this response saying that Indians have a sense of sharing with have-nots as opposed to, say, the Americans who would have chosen the first one (since their sense of ownership is very strong). The Europeans, she pointed out, would have chosen person No 2, as they believe in merit.
Explaining Liberty she advised the children to state their point of view if they felt that they were right even if no one else supported it, at first. She cited Rabindranath Tagore’s song “Ekla cholo re” to show how important it is to stand by one’s decision even if no one is supporting him. Each example had the audience nodding in agreement.
What India means to us: A child's view
Ms Seth also touched upon the concept of secret vote and open vote. “What would you opt for?” she asked the audience. The children explained how a secret vote is better as the person you have not chosen would feel bad otherwise. As the session ended, the children queued up to get their books signed and have another quiet chat with the lady.
Gracious and dignified – that’s Ms Seth. And also a good sport.
All about Husain from Anjali Raghbeer's book
11 AM, Saturday, July 2, 2011
Bamboo House, Colour Maths Studio
The mood was just right with one of M F Husain’s paintings forming the backdrop in the semi-darkened Bamboo House of the Colour Maths Studio. Swati Roy and Rinchen Ghosh kicked off the proceedings with a reading of Anjali Raghbeer’s wonderful book about one of India’s best artists.
Barefoot Husain is a hilarious – and informative – story of how Husain has lost his shoes and enlists the young boy, Jai, to help him look for them. The trail takes them on a wild horse-ride (Husain just paints the pictures and they come to life) through a man perched high on a hoarding (how Husain started off and how he taught himself to paint) to a film set – where Madhuri Dixit is the star – and even a dhaba.
In the end, the painter finds his shoes but discovers that he can’t paint if he wears them. Published by Chennai-based Tulika Books, Barefoot Husain is part of the four-part series that talks about Jamini Roy, Raja Ravi Varma and Amrita Pritam.
The storytelling was enough to warm up the children gathered there to try their hand at painting. And give a little nudge to their imagination before getting down with their paints and brush. It was followed by a slideshow of many of Husain’s famous works of art – Mother Teresa, the Goddesses, a map of our country and other beautiful ones.
The slideshow begins in all of Husain's glory
Husain’s exile was top-of-mind for most children and some of their came up with drawings of what they imagined Husain’s house would have looked like.
Horses came next. Known for his dramatic paintings of horses (inspired mainly by Duldul, the steed that belonged to Prophet Mohammad’s grandson as well as the horses used in Aswamedha Yajnas), Husain’s work found an echo in Saturday’s event. The lantern (another Husain special) motif too cropped up. Rinchen moved among the children giving out the odd tip or two.
Well, I can Paint too
Take a look at some of the pictures. It was a visual delight. What stood out were the brilliant colours used. Husain would have been proud of the work that came out of the one-hour session.
The great painter has often been described as free-spirited. So were our young participants that day.
The Journey Begins
11 AM, Saturday, June 11, 2011
“Nobody will speak. Only Sachin will speak,” Rinchen would raise her voice every now and then as the Pop-up Workshop kicked off. All of us were probably waiting for Sachin Sebastian George to quell the noise levels that were rising steadily.
‘Sachin Sir’, as the children would refer to him, remained quiet, very quiet. As it turned out, he didn’t have any admonishing to do. When he got into his stride, calmly explaining the procedures and steps to get that perfect picture popping up, a hush descended. What seemed to be a bunch of uncontrollable children became engrossed in bringing off their best.
Questions like, “Can I put in an elephant?”, “Can I have fireflies in the jungle?” “How do it cut this tree out?” kept flying thick and fast at Sachin, as he moved between the children pointing out a helpful hint here and a word of caution there.
"Yes, that's exactly how to do it," Sachin seems to be saying
Eureka! Bookstore, Colour Maths and Sachin got together at the Colour Maths studio in CR Park to host a Pop-up Workshop. The book Swati and Rinchen chose to read out was One Lonely Unicorn. It set the theme – the Jungle – for the workshop that followed. Splendidly illustrated, though the editing could have been improved upon, One Lonely Unicorn lends itself to creative expression in the form of activities.
Coming back to the workshop, every move of Sachin’s (he is a self-confessed, unabashed admirer of Robert Sabuda, the master pop-up artist from the US) drew gasps of recognition as the sheet of paper in his hands transformed into something or the other. As his soft voice rolled on, the children got into the spirit. A couple of ladies, who couldn’t drive the 20-km trip back home and again to pick up their children, volunteered to help out too.
What emerged (see pictures) was fun and magic. And a very satisfied bunch of 29 children who – to put it in adult terms – got their money’s worth (pardon the pun, it was a paid workshop).
It went off quite well, didn't it? (front, Swati and Sachin; standing Rinchen and Raghav)
In the matrilineal society to which Othenan belonged, the maternal uncle and not the father maintained the children.
It is a little asterisk in the text that leads to this footnote – if you have read Tachcholi Othenan, an Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) title.
It wasn’t just knowledge about mythology that ACK brought to its readers like me. And it wasn’t just mythological titles that one waited for impatiently every fortnight. History, social drama, the freedom movement, humour and epics or plays filled the colourfully illustrated pages of one of India’s most phenomenal movements in the past 44 years.
The hero from Kerala
Back in the 1980s, we would line up as eagerly for a Sant Jnaneshwar release as a Syamantaka Gem at the small pan shop (yes, he had vision) in small-town Bhubaneswar. Twenty six to 30 pages would fly by in no time. Reading and re-reading them slowly would give rise to more discoveries like the example mentioned at the beginning. A special bumper issue like a Dasha Avatar (released sparingly back then) would be cause for special joy though priced at a royal Rs 10.
Anant Pai did not probably believe in putting together a bundle of comic book pages and string a story through them. His research was painstaking and he shared that with his readers. The editor in him made sure that the children he spoke had the background and understood it too.
A veena is a lute-like instrument, the friendly asterisk would explain. Or, that Vidushaka meant a court jester. And that Rajputana was called Rajasthan later would be another helpful tip. Each ACK title was rich with such invaluable commentary. History lessons – ancient, medieval or modern – in school were never so interesting and fun. Pai’s genius also lay in the fact that the essence – and the essentials – of a story was intact.
ACK became, to quote Lawrence Babb and Susan Wadley, the grandmother for kids. Pai – and ACK’s story – was one of the highlights of their study, Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia. But Pai wasn’t about religion alone. Babb and Wadley write about how Pai refused to bring out a title on Santoshi Maa since he considered the theology retrogade and undesirable.
Worldview in coloured blurbs
All ACK titles were abridged versions of tales or events. But the tale of Dasharatha as well as that of a Valmiki was all there. And it was just right for children who were growing up. People went about collecting titles and having the copies bound carefully for posterity. You never knew when the company would fold up.
It didn’t. You still get ACK, though the price has gone up to Rs 40 now (It was Rs 1.50 in the ‘80s). Tinkle was another of Pai’s gift to the children of India. With his ideas, Pai was to India what Walt Disney was to America. He also adapted and accepted the advance of technology without fuss. When ex-McKinsey man, Samir Patil took over ACK two years ago and wanted to digitalise ACK’s content as well as broadcast animated versions on television, he chose Pai as chief storyteller. And the grand old man agreed.
How one wishes it had been a longer stint.
via Times Of India
This Christms Delhi gets a special treat. The annual Delhi book fair starts on December 25 at Pagati Maidan. The fair which is organised by ITPO in collaboration with Federation of Indian Publishers will be on for nine days will have over 250 publishers.
There will also be a Stationery Fair along side.
A nine-day Thiruvananthapuram International Book Fair opened at Kanakakkunnu Palace on December 18.
According to The Hindu over 200 national and international publishing houses are expected to participate. A workshop for children’s writers and publishers, and a ‘creative workshop’ for children would also been organised. Awards would be given to the 10 best Malayalam books published in 2010.
The Indian Express reported that Education Minister M A Baby, who presided over the function, said that this Government had taken solid steps to cultivate a better reading culture among children.
The book fair will be on till Dec 26, 2010.
Found this interesting article online.
Scholastic, the largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, today released a list of 10 Trends in Children’s Books from 2010. The list was compiled by editors from Scholastic, including children’s literature experts from Scholastic Book Clubs and Scholastic Book Fairs, divisions of Scholastic that distribute books from all publishers through schools nationwide.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scholastic-experts-issue-list-of-ten-trends-in-childrens-books-from-2010-111523109.html
The numbers looked good. Sixty-eight authors, illustrators, speakers and performers would come together on the last weekend of November in front of an expected audience of 10,000. As it turned out, we got more visitors.
With India’s biggest children’s literature festival getting bigger and bigger a change of venue was indicated. And the sprawling grounds of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) were just what the doctor ordered for Aviva Bookaroo’s third edition. Seventy-six programmes went into eight strategically placed sub-venues across IGNCA.
Schools' Day at Bookaroo 2010
Well, Bookaroo is used to this kind of thing. We are known for the massively parallel multi-sessions that is a programmer coordinator’s nightmare and the audience’s delight. We are proud to announce that the number of sessions has gone up in each successive year – from 45 in 2008 to 76 now.
What was different this time was the huge venue (during the last two years Bookaroo was held in the compact, well-manicured Sanskriti Anandgram on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road). Also, this time, we had a Schools Day, adding an extra day to the previous two-day format. The third new angle was that for the first time, Bookaroo had some of India’s best-known illustrators exhibiting their original artwork (made for children’s books over the last 30 years or so) on all these days. Bookart 10, as it was christened, was one of the highlights of Bookaroo 2010.
Putting it all together this time was even more exciting. Sponsorships, identifying a venue (we had to scratch five options), visitor management, travel plans, last-minute changes in all possible aspects of the festival, spreading the word – the list is endless. This year onwards, the Bookaroo team has a new partner in Teamwork Productions, which rose wonderfully to the occasion.
To my mind, the biggest gamble we took was that, of the eight, only two sub-venues had a roof over them (one always has to keep an eye on the budget sheet). As everyone knows by now, it had been an unusually long, grey-and-wet November and these weather conditions continued right up to the 25th, a day before Bookaroo’s start date.
Robert Sabuda working his pop-up magic
Visions of Robert Sabuda, Wendy Orr, Samit Basu, Anthony Horowitz, Jeeva Raghunath, Anushka Ravishankar, Gulzar or Ruskin Bond (the last two couldn’t make it to the festival, to the disappointment of everyone who had something to do with Bookaroo) running for the cover of the authors’ lounge like cricketers caught in the rain were pushed ruthlessly to the back of the mind. We didn’t even want to think of how the children and their parents would react.
We just hoped for the best and sent up a collective little prayer. It seemed to have worked and on the 26th morning, the Bookaroo team witnessed what, to them, was the most wonderful sight in the world. The sun made an appearance and stayed on.
It is extremely difficult to choose a defining moment for a festival of this size. For me, it was when the parents started jostling and arguing for a place alongside the children for some of the events.
There were some things that didn’t go quite right (the feedback will point this out. If not, we seem to have got away with errors that weren’t spotted) but many other things went right. The children went home happy. That seemed to make their teachers and parents happy too. We were tired at the end of it, but quite satisfied. As Subhadra Sen Gupta messaged the other team members of Bookaroo on the evening of the 28th – “I went home smiling like an idiot.”
Jeeva Raghunath: Under the Kahani Tree
Like all good things, Bookaroo 2010 came to an end. It went off well, but the one thought that kept coming back was this: thank God, the sun shone.
