Environmental crises, STEM subjects, gender bias, and more—children’s books are taking on tough topics
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Arun accidentally gets locked in an ancient palace with his pet skink in the book Arun in Ruins. His only way out is to build an electronic circuit. Bhura, a gigantic brown cloud, threatens to devastate Mumbai in A Cloud Called Bhura. So, four preteens get together to stop it.
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Children’s fiction lately is taking on everything from the climate crisis to STEM subjects, gender biases, and more. Stories are centred around the children’s world but what they manage to talk about at times goes beyond what textbook pages cover.
Children’s Books: An Indian Story, a book edited by Dr Shailaja Menon and Sandhya Rao uncovers the many chapters of India’s kid literature. It’s a comprehensive study of the evolution and trends that have been witnessed in the last four decades.
Priya Krishnan, Dr Shailaja Menon and CG Salamander
Earlier, children’s literature focused on mythology and stories of ancient India. In the early years following Independence, kid’s books were also used for national identity-building. Young readers who could afford to purchase books or access libraries could access Russian and Chinese fables as well. But post-liberalisation, India put its mark on kid-lit.
“We had very low quality printing presses and there were a lot of constraints on publishers and editors. It is around the time the economy opened up, in the late 1980s to the early 90s, publishers like Tulika, Tara, Katha, Eklavya Pitara and Karadi Tales started saying, ‘We need to find innovative ways to tell our stories’,” says Dr Menon, who also works as a consultant with the education theme at Tata Trusts.
As India’s independent publishers began to experiment, they breathed more life into children’s literature by experimenting with illustrations, different ways of printing, and bringing traditional Indian art forms to the mix. “It’s a period of experimentation and rediscovering the Indian ways of exploring the world of children’s literature,” says Dr Menon.
Children’s Books: An Indian Story maps the evolution and trends in children’s literature
Children’s writer and graphic novelist C G Salamander points out that apart from formats and beautifully illustrated books, independent publishers like Tulika and Pratham are also responsible for experimenting with modern contemporary storytelling. “These publishers pushed Indian contemporary stories. You could read and get to know different parts of the country. And, they moved towards more character-driven stories. With comics too, there was a power shift. We moved away from Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle towards more modern comics,” he says, citing more examples.
The Songs of Freedom series by Duckbill, Penguin, for example, puts children at the heart of historic events and the freedom movement. The series reimagines history while still being authentic at the core, fictionalising stories where children play protagonists. For instance, A Conspiracy in Calcutta by Lesley D Biswas transports us to 1928, where 10-year-old Bithi grapples with multiple layers of injustice. As a girl child, her going to school is looked down upon, and she witnesses British oppression. Inspired by her freedom-fighter grandfather, she courageously stands up against police brutality, often finding herself in dangerous situations. Her journey from a feisty girl to a fearless fighter is an inspiring tale of resilience and inner strength.
More recently, children’s literature has become environmentally conscious. Picture books, modern fables, mysteries, adventure titles—all are seeing environmental themes. “With evolving trends in children’s literature and publishers exploring genres such as graphic tellings, children are keen to consume content that they haven’t come across before,” says Priya Krishnan, senior editor at Tulika Publishers. They also have a graphix series that includes Unknown Heroes of India’ Freedom Struggle, The Blockprinted Tiger, Boom Boom, and PNK Panicker’s Ghost Stories.
Stories for children are now centred around everything from environment to the freedom movement
Progressive themes have segued into brand marketing as well. Solar Square, a rooftop solar panel installation company, published a children’s book, Ravi, Savi & The Solar System as a marketing exercise but to also teach kids the importance of solar energy and how solar panels function.
Some other books, like Salamander’s Tiny Tales series in partnership with Scholastic India, prioritise language learning in emergent readers. Tiny Tales uses rhyme and rhythm to reinforce pre-reading skills and is set in the Indian environment. “They are written for an emergent reader, and focused on tier two and three cities,” he says.
Books lately are also discussing heavy-duty topics like manual scavenging. Puu, written by Salamander, is a tale about a girl who faces discrimination at school because of her parent’s occupation. But are children mature enough to understand such subjects? “If kids read about discrimination, they ask a lot of questions. All they need is a support system, so it’s always good to have a parent around,” says Salamander.
Curiosity must be encouraged in children, and books can help drive conversation around tough topics at home, says Salamander, adding that no topic is taboo when it comes to writing for children. But as a writer, he has to ensure that his biases don’t filter into his writing.
So are serious topics such as these drawing children towards reading? “Young readers have told me we do not have series books of the kind of Harry Potter. It’s one thing we have not cracked yet,” says Dr Menon, adding that that’s not all that’s missing from children’s bookshelves. “Parents also don’t spend time researching and understanding what is available. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of awareness. Parents seem to spend more time researching various other kinds of consumables for their children, rather than books,” she says. But as someone who works with rural children, she says that books from those and for those communities are missing, too.
“We still need to have books written by authors from those communities for those children. We need more voices from groups of people who have been historically marginalised, who represent their culture, for their children,” she says.
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