Tell Me a Story

Ahaana enters the giant gate festooned with colourful buntings with her mother, father, her little brother and her dadi. They have planned the whole day out here, at the children's literature festival. She’s registered for three author sessions and her mom has registered herself for a panel discussion. Their lunch is in a picnic basket they are carrying but more than anything else Ahaana is waiting to meet her favourite authors. She wants to buy their books, she wants to line up for their autographs, she wants to take a selfie with them. 

Children’s literature in India has grown and changed many times over in the last few decades. A lot of work has been put in to sustain the excitement of books and to keep children reading. Post covid, the number of literature festivals, the number of author sessions being conducted in public spaces and in individual schools, the pop-up bookstores and mobile libraries, have simply tripled. 

It is partly to do with the noble task that stakeholders from the children’s literature microcosm seem to have taken upon themselves to do in order to wrench children away from their devices. But it could also be that in a country with over 400 million readers under 18 years of age, we still struggle to sell 2,000 copies of a book. If you sell 5000 copies of a book then that book can be deemed as “bestseller”. This despite the pre-launch posts, the excitement created online, the fan base and reader-engagement contests that are run pre and post a book launch; this despite the awards and festivals that strive to glamorize authors and illustrators and celebrity-ize them.

“We talk of children’s literature in India as if this is a phenomenon of recent times,” says early literacy expert Dr Shailaja Menon who leads the Centre of Excellence in Early Literacy (CoEEL) at Tata Trusts and the founder of the bilingual children’s literature festival KathaVana. “But children’s literature has been in play since the late 19th century as an off shoot of all the rest that Indians were creating in the form of short stories and plays. Post independence, wonderful work was done by NBT and the CBT which were created in 1957. Mimicking and contextualising are the two words I’d use to describe literature in India—we mimicked the genres and the format that the west did and we contextualised it for our audiences. What did happen post-liberalization is that with more spending money among the middle-class, children’s literature took off and independent children’s publishing house like Tulika and Tara were set up.”

What has happened in the last 30 years, though has been that with India’s growing economy the sheer volume of publishing for children expanded. Not just that more people— editors, authors, translators, illustrators, proofreaders, storytellers—became part of this organically growing network. Pre-covid and post-covid literature festivals quite like the one Ahaana and her family are in, have burgeoned and have become well publicised events covered by media partners and of course are part of the Instagram universe feed.

On the outside everything look buoyant. What is beneath the veneer, beneath all the celebration?  

Last year Neev Literature festival worked for a year to get current data on children's literature in India. According to this report, nearly 50 per cent of all books published in India are either in English or Hindi. Of this, approximately 71 per cent of all books printed are schoolbooks, and only 4 per cent of total print publications is for entertainment and enjoyment. Twenty five percent of this 4 percent are for children and young adults. Which means, that all that we print and publish in India in the name of literature for children amounts to around 1 per cent of the total print publications. 

Says an Indian publisher under anonymity, “If children’s literature needs new brave stories or just stories that are unpretentious literature material then the whole ecosystem needs to be worked with. The biggest gatekeeps or children’s literature are the school boards and parents. If ISCE mandatory reading in schools is Sudha Murthy and the lower than mediocre drivel she writes, then these are the numbers that show up as bestsellers. In a stock and share like bookstore space, bestseller status drive up sales and if you are churning out easy “bestsellers” like Sudha Murthy then how can you blame publishers for not reinventing this wheel?”

Of course, not all is grim. A few small, independent publishing houses and some larger international ones started doing some interesting books on thought-provoking subjects. “The good part is that now, children’s literature is making space for multiple perspectives and voices to write their stories; be it feminist literature, Dalit, Adivasi and marginalised groups,” says artists and library consultant Kripa B. “We are also taking into consideration the disparity in reading levels in children in private schools and public schools. Keeping this in mind, we are creating more visual heavy books which do not impose and burden the children with barriers that language can create.”

Despite noticeable strides that are being made through picture books, literary non-fiction and young adult literature, and in spite of fact that there are now more people and agencies working hard to make these books accessible to children all over the country, the work is not enough. There are multiple Indias, the population is large, diverse and multilingual in character and the literature being created for these multiple Indias is virtually a drop in the ocean of actual needs.

“Much of children’s literature published in India today presumes the middle-class, urban child as its reader. Including different realities in books is often a way to introduce middle-class children to the varied experiences of ‘other’ children in their country, or to sensitise them to issues related to inequity, injustice, indigenous art forms and so on, rather than to directly address the marginalised reader. Books that directly address children from marginalised sections of society are relatively rare. We are still telling moral stories,” adds Dr Menon. “but it is issue-based moralising without seeming so.”

Shrujana N Shridhar, artist, children’s illustrator and co-founder of The Dalit Panthers Archive and Mavelinadu Collective thinks that one of the reasons a certain kind of books are being created even in the woke space is that children's literature is not funded. “I also wonder why more is not being done to build visuals for children,” she says. “There is a certain aesthetics that is liked even within this alternative space. I think there ought to be a way to introduce to children more interesting, more challenging visuals which is certainly not being done.” 

The Neev Literature report remind us that of this 1 percent that is being created, international publishing houses still dominate the children's book market. The authors that continue to be best sellers in this space are Sudha Murthy and Ruskin Bond. The report adds that domestic mass market publishing houses continue to produce and sell retellings of traditional, mythological and moralistic tales, comic books, activity books, and often poorly produced adaptations and translations of English novels. These books attract the bulk of the consumers. Shridhar adds that with the political climate of the country, “We are going to see propaganda work getting more attention in film, music, literature. We'll need to keep building culture and no publisher will want to fund that.” As for Dalit literature Shridhar shrugs it off. “Obviously we don't have enough stories of children from marginalised castes written by people from the community.” 

Richi Sethi, founder of GetLitt, an e-library app for kids and who has worked to set up literacy and language-based programmes is still bullish about the children’s literature market in India. “The entire boom in EdTech has missed out on this latent need.” But she adds that to inculcate the habit of reading multiple elements are required to work together: good quality stories and books, easy discovery and access to these books, capability development of teachers, distribution channels etc. “And all the stakeholders need to work on this patiently,” Sethi says. “Considering the length and breadth of India we have to experiment with all these elements of discovery, accessibility, visibility, engagement, and leverage both physical and digital mediums of access." 

“The children and adult literature spaces are not entirely different,” says Dr Menon. “If you have to understand one you have to understand the other. I really do think that we are still very derivative in the work that we are producing for children. But, think of the books we were writing for adults in English 50 years ago. Look at the books we are doing now? I think in time children’s literature in India will also be able to get there. The form has not found its voice fully yet. We will tell our stories with authenticity and beauty.”

The consensus through the industry is that we can do more. Vidya Mani, one of the co-founders of Funky Rainbow, an independent children's bookstore and a travelling one, says in the context of the work they have been doing for a decade, “We have 15,500 different books in our collection. Out of these, 13,000 are by Indian creators. While these books straddle an impressive range of genres, themes and categories, perhaps our best work would be showcased by 100-200 books that could fit on one shelf.” Mani with her co-founders hosts an online book show called Book Buzzaar at Funky Rainbow, which was chosen as one of the six innovative pandemic initiatives undertaken by an independent children's bookseller from across the world by the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2021. “One of the biggest problems with children’s literature in India presently is that we have no critical element or a body that evaluates and critiques the books that are being published.” And who better than Mani who used to be the managing editor of the children’s book review site Goodbooks and who helped institute The Hindu Young World-Goodbooks Awards for children’s books, to acknowledge this. “We have reached a point where we have a lot of books coming out. A good critical mechanism can definitely support the growth that we have seen in the last ten years. It is time to look at the quality of what we are bringing out for young readers, in terms of content, design and production."

Sanya Podar founder of Daffodil Lane Books, a new entrant in the Indian children’s book space agrees, “In today's children's literature landscape, the market still leans heavily towards urban and middle-class demographics. While strides are being taken to broaden the range of published books, there's a pressing need for greater inclusivity, accessibility, and community building. This involves providing translation grants for regional languages, establishing libraries in rural areas, developing a more organized distributor network, and fostering support for local, independent publishers in bookstores. Despite progress by publishers and authors, the Indian kidlit community remains relatively small, underscoring the necessity for initiatives to inspire new writers and professionals to enter the children's publishing arena. We try to do our best to grow and build by working with emerging talent, even first time writers and illustrators, smaller local bookstores.”

The world of children's publishing is not a race, it’s a community says author and co-founder of the Neev Literature Festival, Rasil Ahuja who adds, “The market isn’t the primary challenge, it's getting to our readers. For this, our books need more promotion, shelf space (and visibility on those shelves), and progressive adults championing them. A book needs exposure. Most of all, we desperately need public libraries. If we want future generations to love reading, then we must create places for discovery. We must build a network of libraries crisscrossing this country as far and wide as the railways.”