Two days of Bookaroo, India’s first ever literary festival for children in Delhi, put paid to doomsayers’ declarations about how little the little ones are reading. As children made a beeline for interactive storytelling, comic-making, illustrating and verse-writing sessions, or simply crowded the lone bookstall, it was clear that you could not ask for better readers.
22 and 23 November: Around 3,000 children attend children’s literature festival Bookaroo in New Delhi.
Perhaps it is because all children are not, like every other 20-something you know, writing books of their own yet; or because children respond to writers as if they are simultaneously gods and partners-at-play. No child was heard clamouring for weekend afternoon TV, and the only tantrums parents dealt with had to do with book-buying budgets. Anyone could see that kids come to books with a natural keenness and a viewpoint—and it’s us grown-ups who skew or spoil that with adult agendas, aspirations and deathly dull books.
If your eyebrows are arching up and your mouth is an O, and there’s a little one by your side shooting little people into splats in a video game all day, it’s time for a quick, gratifying trip to the bookshop. This was the year when traditional myths and retellings were joined by a slew of self-help or life-skills books, such as the Berenstain Bears series for younger children and The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make and No Body’s Perfect for the teenagers.
It was also the year that the children’s and young adult book market threw up quite a few exciting titles—and trends. The battle between a slick city vampire and a fire-breathing dragon spilled over from international shelves to those in India as Brisingr (Random House), the long-awaited third instalment (after Eragon and Eldest) of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle series, arrived on the heels of the bestseller Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Young Reader). With fascinating gothic books like Cirque Du Freak (HarperCollins) by Darren Shan and the Power of Five supernatural series by Anthony Horowitz, fantasy rose to the top of the charts, helped also by paperback releases of Percy Jackson and the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan (Puffin) and the seventh Harry Potter title. Teen spy thrillers and detective dramas sustained their star power with Robert Muchamore’s CHERUB series (Hodder Children’s), and the Artemis Fowl and Young Bond series (both Puffin).