Between tigers and monsters

Writing children's books is an unpretentious act for Anushka Ravishankar

Anushka Ravishankar's craft is defined by a lucid philosophy. The well-known children's author and playwright, when writing for her young readers, cordons off her mind to narrow down only “on the characters and how they will behave.” There is no ache to preach, serve out a moral or the dreaded flaw — sounding false. “With children when the tone is false, it really sounds false and they see through. What they want to know, you have to write without making it too simplified. One can challenge them by leaving gaps,” says the author.

The Capital got a whiff of Anushka's works over the past couple of weeks. The play “Coat Tales” authored by her was staged a few times and her latest book, “At least a Fish” from Scholastic was launched.

At the Imperial Hotel, Anushka settles for lunch at the aesthetic restaurant The Spice Route where a Sri Lankan food fest is on.

Full report here Hindu

I know what you read this summer

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series, the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan: the names trip easily off their tongues. But ask them about Young Adult (YA) books written by Indian authors that rolled off the presses this past summer and you hear a studied silence.

“I generally don’t read books by Indian authors,” says Kinnisha Michellin Andrew, a third-year student of Mount Carmel college.

Andrew, a voracious reader, gets most of her recommendations for books from her college peer group or from social networks for bookworms (Shelfari, Goodreads). She is currently reading the latest in the Hunger Games series (Mockingjay) and Name of the Wind, the first book in yet another fantasy series The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss.

The hyper-success of Twilight was supposed to draw all these young readers into bookstores and into exploring the burgeoning YA literature from India. This past summer, a large number of young Indian writers have published their books; among them are Samit Basu with his Terror on the Titanic: A Morningstar Agency Adventure, star blogger Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan with The Confessions of a Listmaniac, Vodafone-Crossword book award winner Siddhartha Sarma with The Grasshopper’s Run (all three published by Scholastic India), Giti Chandra with The Fang of Summoning (Hachette India) and Tushar Raheja with Run Romi Run (Roli).

Full report here DNA

The song of birds

Among the many things Delhi-based Mehran Zaidi enjoys doing is birdwatching. He is a birder. And a keen one at that. The proof? His two books on birds. The author of Bird By Bird (Scholastic India, 2006), a young ornithology enthusiast like none other, recently came out with his second book Birds and Butterflies of Delhi: A Field Guide.

The book, a veritable treat for the bird (and nature) lovers, equips you with everything you need to know about the types of birds (water and non-water, resident as well as migratory) and butterflies that lend our city its birdsong and colour.

“I have been into wildlife since childhood. My uncle is a birdwatcher and when I was a kid, he used to take me out for bird walks. So, gradually the interest grew,” says Zaidi about his passion. If your love for birds and butterflies is new-found, you can count on Zaidi for a tip or two. He tells you about the birdwatching e-group on Yahoo, Delhibird, whose members go out for bird walks every weekend and also conduct talks etc.

Out of the many names that figure in the book, Zaidi’s own favourites include the golden oriole and the sarus crane among birds and the peacock pansy and the common castor among butterflies.

Full report here Asian Age

The day of the Grasshopper

As Siddhartha Sarma claimed the first Crossword Award for the Best Children’s Book in Mumbai this week, a bunch of writers at the Jumpstart festival were asking a key question: Should adults read books for children?

Technically, The Grasshopper’s Run is a children’s book — published by Scholastic last year in the emerging category of fiction for young adults. This is a growing segment of readers in India, and an important one: historically, despite the wide variety of literature for children, we haven’t had much literature for teenagers and young adults, across most Indian languages. But as writers from Paro Anand to Samit Basu know, writing for children or young adults effectively consigns the author to invisibility on the book-review pages. This means that kids, and teens, will read Sarma’s book — but adults will miss out.

And that would be a shame. Sarma’s real audience, as he says on his blog, is “all you closet Commando readers” — or anyone interested in the almost-forgotten Japanese siege of Kohima in 1944. “The (Second World) war touched India in many places, but the only region invaded on the mainland was the North-east,” Sarma writes. “It was a time of great misery, great courage and remarkable events. But if you expect much fiction about India and the war, forget it. Mostly it is because a couple of years after the war we began a bigger adventure: Independence and the rest of the jing-bang. People weren’t really into what their soldiers did fighting for another country in some far-off place.”

Full report here Business Standard

Ya, Mowgli son is on!

The 30-something author, who published his first book eight years ago, is now a veteran of a three-book fantasy series, some cool comics, a couple of screenplays and now a new series of “Young Adult” fiction, called YA. The YA list of Scholastic has kicked off with Basu’s ‘Morningstar Agency’ adventure series with the first title Terror on the Titanic just out on the shelf.

The book, launched at the South City Mall Starmark on Thursday, is about Nathaniel Brown, a Morningstar agent, who is on the Titanic to prevent a jewel from reaching America. He is Mowgli’s son.

Samit spoke on Indian publishing opening up to young readers and the may genres. “The world over it has been a golden age for children’s literature since 2001 with Harry Potter, Lisbeth Salander, the Percy Jackson series and so on.” But in India, there were only RK Narayan and Ruskin Bond, nothing contemporary. Kalpana Swaminathan was appreciated abroad but not in India, feels Samit.

The reason is not far to seek. “With poor marketing budgets, books weren’t getting visibility.” Except a Vikram Seth or someone with a million-pound advance. Samit was interested in writing a book for children. “But I write to make a living. I wouldn’t really be interested in something that wouldn’t sell. Besides, publishers didn’t want to touch anything unless they were sure of numbers.”
 
Full report here Telegraph

Coming of age

Indian publishing boasts of a thriving children’s market, but it has remained limited in scope...

Worldwide, readers of young adult (YA) fiction have never had it so good. That trend is now gathering steam in India. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, House of Night, Twilight, Princess Diaries — young adult (YA) readers have never had it so good. But while shelves overflow with YA books of every genre, if you go looking for home-grown fare, the view is rather more dismal.

Indian publishing boasts of a thriving children’s market, but it has remained limited in scope. Classics, folk tales and mythology have been rehashed and regurgitated innumerable times, suiting both publishers who are largely content to stick with the tried and tested, and parents who decide what children ought to read. And while there is a fair amount of original writing for younger children, it is slim pickings in the YA segment. In fact, YA itself is a category difficult to pin down, more so since young people trying to find their place in the larger scheme of things are near impossible to slot into convenient “types”. One thing is clear: while the term might be “a snappy shorthand for a global phenomenon”, as Anita Roy of the YA publisher Young Zubaan puts it, there’s no doubt that pre-20 age group is hungry for good literature.

Globally, the crossover market to which YA belongs, comprising books that appeal to youngsters as well as adults, has taken off in a big way. The trend has not escaped the notice of Indian publishers. So far only a handful — Young Zubaan, Puffin, Hachette, Scholastic and HarperCollins, to name a few — are actively exploring it, but it is early days yet.

In India YA publishing has gotten the cold shoulder. A well-rounded exploration of adolescence hasn’t been a strength, says Vatsala Kaul Banerjee, editorial director (children’s and reference books) at Hachette India. Reaching out to this category of readers is not simple: “Ever tried being interesting to a 16-year-old?” she asks. Not easy, since young people are discerning readers.

Full report here Business Standard

Children's books do well at WBF

So you think children these days are simply not reading as much as they did in the past? The publishing industry doesn’t seem to think so. They say the recession period saw the sale of children’s books go up and make profits.

Shantanu Duttagupta of Scholastic India Pvt Ltd said: “It’s a misconception that children these days are losing interest in books. If that were true, we wouldn’t have published the number of books that we do every year and wouldn’t have made profits during the recession period last year!“

“We publish around 80 new books every year. Overall, there are roughly around 1,500—2,000 children’s books published every year in India. The children’s books publishing industry is thriving,” Duttagupta told IANS, while arranging a few books at Scholastic India’s stall in the ongoing New Delhi World Book Fair.

Full article here

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