As a child there was no greater joy than going to school wearing coloured clothes. Come Children’s Day in November and everyone would have planned what they wanted to wear. Memories of walking onto campus with a Walkman clipped to your belt, and the latest title from the last school book fair are still fresh.
With age, Children’s Day takes on different connotations. We get caught up with life, and sometimes even joke that the 14th should be a holiday for us too! No wonder practitioners of mindfulness constantly remind us to chase that “childlike” feeling.
Fortunately for the rest of us, a bookshop can feel like Children’s Day every day! One certainly feels like that during opening time and especially during closing time when it gets dark and quiet.
To celebrate that feeling and this special day, here are some children’s books that we came across this year. These colourful, well-thought-out titles may help start the conversation with children around subjects that include the global environment crisis, talking to strangers, and coping with anger amongst other delightful reads.
When we were children and the conversation of rocket launches came up, culture demanded that we thought of NASA and Neil Armstrong. The moon landing has been etched in every child’s growing years. This year, I felt like that again when Topi Rockets from Thumba landed on my desk. Writer Menaka Raman and illustrator Annada Menon take me back to the history of India’s first ever rocket launch in the 1960s to the time of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Together with the impatient young Mary we explore the streets of sleepy Thumba in Kerala. Through her eyes, we learn about the initial days of our space program. In an online session with Raman, Menon, and 60-odd kids I felt compelled to draw my own rocket, and search for my own space dream. See what I mean when I say Children’s Day is every day at a bookshop?!
Last Night I saw a Dream is a book that would be an appropriate way to start your Calcutta morning. Rabindranath Tagore wrote this poem in Bengali for children.
“It is night-time, and as you go to sleep, all of a sudden the city comes to life. The Howrah Bridge was like a giant scorpion, Walking just beyond was the road Harrison. Our school was running at top speed too: There went our math, and our grammar books flew.”
The images dance in your head courtesy of translator Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, while illustrator Adrija Ghosh’s cartoon-style drawings keep up with Tagore’s free-flowing poetry. If you’re a fan of the city and love to day-dream, this is the book for you.
In May 2021 during the second wave when the news brought nothing but despair, I found myself going back to Jamlo Walks. Saminia Mishra, the author, brings her movie-making expertise to the story of a young girl who worked on the chilli-farm. As the first wave lockdown forced a migrant exodus across the country, Jamlo walks, hoping to make it home to her parents who would be proud of the harvest she brought back.
Concurrently, in another part of India, children awake to online classes and yet another day of lockdown rules. Mishra worked with the artist Tarique Aziz who is quite popular for his posts on Instagram. Together they bring to life a difficult topic. Children often read this and ask, did Jamlo make it home? Where did she go? What happened of her chilies? Read on to find out.
Aai and I is another such title which is the story of a young girl and her mother. The two are close and spend a lot of time together, even look “same to same”. Aai has a tumour which is malignant and needs to immediately be removed “like the weeds in the garden”, explains her grandmother.The story revolves around the mother’s return from hospital when the daughter starts to question why Aai has lost her hair? The tale ends with a delightful twist, and is a good starting point around the question of identity in children, and the big C — cancer.
In the myths and legends category, Sharanya Manivannan’s book Mermaids in the Moonlight comes to mind. This is Manivannan’s illustrating debut and she does not disappoint. In her own style, she tells the stories of mermaids from the seven seas. Nilavoli travels with her mother to the Mattakalappu lagoon and tells her about how a mermaid sings on a full moon night. What follows is a trip on Raju uncle’s boat to Kallady Lagoon. Listen to stories of mermaids from Luxembourg who married a nobleman but kept her true self a secret. Meet the Hawaiian Goddess Moana-Nui-Ka-Lehua who lived as a shark sometimes. You will also hear about women who dive for pearls in Japan and Rameshwaram for seaweed, and mermaids are full of power and are moody — just like the sea.
In the international category, All the Water in the World is a tribute to the very existence of life. “This wet wonder means grow, means life will flow, through tigers through trees, through you and through me.” The author George Ella Lyon grew up at the headwaters of the Cumberland River in eastern Kentucky, so it’s not hard to tell where the inspiration for this book could have come from.
Clem and Crab takes us to the beach in a book about cleaning beaches. The story is of Clem who cleans the beach with her elder sister and is collecting shells for her class show and tell. Along comes the Crab, who goes home with her under the shells. What follows is a dazzling story of the relationship between a young girl and a crab with a message at the end for an entire class.
Speaking of class, I Won’t Go with Strangers is the story of Lu who is waiting to be picked up from school. It starts to rain and one by one adults come to offer to take her home. They all known her in some capacity, but she refuses to go. This is an important title, one that starts the conversation around not speaking to strangers, and being safe, especially as regulations ease and everyone is easing back to normal life. At the end, the reader is treated to a surprise guest who Lu goes home with. Read on to find out more.
My Daddies is the story of a child with two fathers and the relationship she shares with them. The LGBTQ genre is one which is well explored in a Western context and is very well part of the conversation at home. The child narrates how she enjoys story time with her amazing dads. The book brings to mind Nandana Dev Sen’s title In My Heart which broached the topic of adoption.
Finally, a Swarm of Bees is unleashed and is angry! A sailor is running home to his mother after nine months at sea, don’t sting them! What follows is a dizzying story of the swarm of bees chasing the town and a young boy throwing tomatoes at everyone. It can feel good to be angry, it can feel better to stop. As the Children’s Day weekend passes us by, explore those feelings while you read and think back to those years — they never left us.
The author is a freelance journalist and runs the independently owned Storyteller Bookstore in Kolkata
Get your book recommendations on @storytellerkol on Instagram/ Twitter.