Books to order

Ponytale Books gives Indian children what they want.

Six years ago Pranav Kumar Singh helped carry out a pioneering survey of Delhi schoolchildren’s reading habits. Today he has a small publishing house called Ponytale Books, where the survey data helps him produce books that he thinks urban children will actually want to read.

Singh and a few friends formed Bridging Borders, whose 2004 survey asked 500 schoolchildren, boys and girls aged 8-13 and 14-18, what they liked to read. The younger girls said comics and detective stories; the younger boys agreed, and added books on sports. The adolescent girls picked “fiction”, and the boys settled on adventure and sports books.

Unsurprising results, one might say. But how does one cater to this youthful demographic, for whom Indian publishers produce mainly textbooks? The big multinational publishers are now wading in to grab a share of this market. HarperCollins, for example, is working on a “young adult” list, and so is Penguin with a new imprint led by Shobhaa De.

One surprising result of the survey was that, J K Rowling and Enid Blyton aside, these children’s favourite authors included Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand and R K Narayan. Ponytale Books was quick to focus on this taste for the flavours of home. Its dozen or so titles so far are all by Indian authors and set in India. What’s more, most take their cue from history — one of Singh’s chief interests, and a subject he says is badly taught in India.

Kesariya Bana by Nimish Dubey is a collection of eight tales of warrior valour. Its heroes are relatively obscure characters from history, like Lachit Barphukan, a great general of 17th-century Assam. Ira Saxena’s Curse of Grass is about an 18th-century Chipko-style movement in Rajasthan. Sunil Gangopadhyay has contributed a handful of his famous Kakababu books, originally in Bengali, about an adventurous archaeologist and his young nephew.

There is sports: tales of sporting heroism against the odds in Not Out, also by Nimish Dubey. Some titles combine adventure with detective story, such as Rajdhani Express Mystery by Samaresh Basu. Thus the range of children’s reading tastes is covered, at a price of Rs 99-150 — slightly high, says Singh, by the standards of Indian children’s fiction, but not too high.

None of the books is perfectly produced (there are language niggles), but they do entertain. None has a short shelf life, so may help Ponytale’s list in the long run.

Singh says children even help him judge manuscripts. “Each manuscript gets read by eight or 10 kids,” including his 9-year-old daughter. A book is a dud if, feedback apart, “one senses that they are not reading, or by the pace of their reading”. That is an exacting test. Ponytale’s continued survival in a difficult market suggests that Singh has his methods right.

There are books for adults and books for children, but not enough for those in the 12-18 age group. That’s what the publisher of these books for young adults believes. One is Body Talk (see main story). These are the other three.

Two — Extreme American Makeover and How to Salsa in a Sari — were published in North America. Makeover’s Mitali Perkins writes about teenager Sameera, whose father James Righton is standing for election as US President. And Salsa’s Dona Sarkar writes of teenager Issa Mazumder whose mother is about to marry the father of Issa’s “worst enemy” at school. Standard teenage fare, with an intercultural flavour.

The third is 15-year-old Anshuman Mohan’s Potato Chips. It is home-grown fare, featuring Aman Malhotra, a teenager who changes schools and has difficulty adjusting.

Lots of juvenile humour, friends and enemies, with hints about the big issues of real life outside school. Nice, but will this really fill that troublesome 12-18 gap?

— Rrishi Raote