Reading as doing

At the bookaroo children’s book festival, a multitude of activities

If you’re a regular visitor to bookshops you will have noticed something big happening in the world of children’s publishing. From a low-key section containing Enid Blyton and Hardy Boys paperbacks, the children’s shelves have grown magically to walls full of colourful and slickly produced books in a wide range of formats, many written by Indian authors.

The market has also segmented. There are books for various ages, and within each age group there may be books aimed at either sex. There are adventure books, historical fiction, school tales, retold or reworked myths and legends, new editions of old classics by writers like Rabindranath Tagore, graphic fiction, hard-luck fiction, poetry, activity books, how-to books, and even novels by child authors.

To top off this profusion, there is an annual children’s books festival, now in its third year in Delhi: the Aviva Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival. It has moved from its former site on Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road to the centre of town: the grounds of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) next to Rajpath.

At eight venues within IGNCA, there is a range of events and activities for children, parents and readers. During November 14-25, Bookaroo brought authors to events in NCR schools. Yesterday schools visited IGNCA for more activities, and today, the concluding day, the events are open to all.

At 11 am, you could take your child (8-10 years) for a talk with Wendy Cooling, writer and UK books campaigner. If your child (12-16 years) likes fantasy, he might want to listen to Samit Basu. If drawing is to his taste, there is a workshop with illustrator Atanu Roy. You could learn how to make pop-ups from author Robert Sabuda, or hear teenager Arjun Vajpai, the youngest Indian to summit Mt Everest, describe his adventures. You could make your own graphic novel, or watch storytelling through puppetry with Dadi Pudumjee and the Ishara Puppet Theatre. And so on — quite a fearsome array of things to do.

Bookaroo is about reading as doing. Activities aimed at specific age groups and interests also reflect the segmentation of the market.

Participating authors include Anushka Ravishankar, Sampurna Chattarji, Paro Anand and Ranjit Lal, who took part in previous Bookaroos, as well as Ruskin Bond, Tapas Guha, Cindy Jefferies, Roopa Pai, Subhadra Sen Gupta, Ken Spillman and others. Bookaroo is supported by children’s publishers including Pratham Books, which organises it, Hachette, HarperCollins, the National Book Trust, Puffin, Young Zubaan and more.