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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  How to pick a good book for children
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How to pick a good book for children

A look at some of the recent reading guides to children's writing, and what they tell us

Choose wisely and well.Premium
Choose wisely and well.

I am a little slow to warm up to a book that claims to have the answers to what a good children’s book should be about, and what children ought to read. It was with this feeling that I glanced through the introduction of Great Books For Children: A Guide, edited and compiled by Preeti Singh, until the last line loomed: “Listen to your instinct, and if a book calls out to you, pick it up to read it!" That decided it, and I went ahead.

Published by Red Turtle, an imprint of Rupa, this is the third, and most recent, of such “guides" in the last year. What is it about books that want to tell you what a good read is? How relevant are they for parents, teachers, librarians and, most of all, for children?

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Clubbing the quartet as just “signposts" of good reading may not be fair, however. Each is subtly different from the other—in some cases, very different. Take the Good Books Guide. For a start, it is not a list of recommended books. Subir Shukla, an educational quality improvement facilitator based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, who wrote and curated it, says it provides a “filter"—a set of key questions—that helps one eliminate inappropriate material.

“With the Right to Education (RTE) being implemented, states, districts and school managements are now mandated to order books. Often, these decisions need to be taken by those who have had little to do with children’s books," he says. “Such book selectors need easy-to-use criteria by which they can make a reasonably reliable selection for different age groups, in various genres and languages."

With the one-book-covers-all guides, there is a danger of important detailing, such as age-wise listings, becoming perfunctory. Then again, considering that all the information has to be packed into 100-odd pages, it may be difficult to avoid such situations.

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So does the answer lie in having separate books for various age groups? “No," says Priya Dhawan, lower primary coordinator, The British School, New Delhi. “I think book guides, if they have to be used widely, should offer a broad spectrum. Parents, librarians and teachers should be able to refer to them for a range of age-groups."

Shukla does not agree. “If someone is making a guide that is a list, it would perhaps be better to have separate guides," he says. However, there is no guarantee that a parent will buy the next specific age-wise guide once her child moves out of a particular age band.

“When I started my job as a literacy coordinator, book guides helped me gain perspectives, but I have always exercised my choice and researched further if I needed to," says Dhawan.

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Guides such as these may also prove to be an invaluable ace up the sleeve for beleaguered independent booksellers who are dying by the dozen in the discount wars. It gives them a talking point for their customers, allowing them to appear well-informed, and counter demands for discounts. It could lead to the customer making his way back to the store in search of more tips.

And what about guides for Indian-language books? Shukla points out that books are now being published in languages that did not have any books. Dhawan says, “My favourite book guides, The Ultimate First Book Guide: Over 500 Great Books For 0-7 and The Ultimate Book Guide: Over 600 Good Books for 8-12s, have a section on books from different European cultures. Our guides should include and have references to books written in different Indian languages."

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Another way of keeping popular interest in children’s literature alive is through awards. India has hardly any award for children’s writing in the class of the Red House Children’s Book Award, CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards, the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the “most distinguished American picture book for children", or the CILIP Kate Greenaway medal for illustrators that will make the reader sit up and take notice. Recognition through awards will nicely complement guides such as these, and encourage more children to read, more authors to write, and more illustrators to illustrate.

M. Venkatesh is the founder organizer of Bookaroo, a children’s literature festival.

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Published: 05 Jul 2014, 12:16 AM IST
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