Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

A case of inheritance of loss

Everyone complains that children don't read anymore. But if parents read, children will be inspired to

The first person I mentioned International Children's Book Day (April 2) to, predictably repeated the usual line about children and reading: "Children don't read anymore".

If you look a little deeper, you'll find that this generalisation is spread too thin; "children" is an enormous compartment which includes sponge-like two-year-olds, eager four, five, six and seven-year-olds, adventurous eight, nine, ten and eleven-year-olds, all of who do read, as well as teens, who are the ones that are "not reading anymore."

Worldwide initiative

If you are a parent who worries that children don't read any more and that no one is doing anything about it, the idea of International Children's Book Day should gladden your heart because it is organised annually by member countries (including India) of IBBY, The International Board on Books for Young People, to "inspire a love of reading and call attention to children's books" as part of a worldwide initiative committed to bringing books and children together.

This year, New Zealand-sponsored Children's Book Day celebrations included a celebratory poster based on the theme "Stories Ring the World", a Message to the Children of the World and an anthology of short stories for children titled "Out of the Deep and Other Stories" from New Zealand and the Pacific, brought out by Reed Publishing and Storylines/IBBY NZ, apart from readings and other activities. If children are not reading, it may not be either for lack of good reading material or of interest, but simply because they have not become accustomed to reading, as they have been to TV watching! Says Jayan Krishnan, a 40-year-old businessman, who feels restless without a book to read, "When I was a child, my parents read every day, so did we and they bought books for themselves as well as for us; books were like groceries, continually used and replenished!" His two children read everyday too and he says he and his wife rarely have problems finding good books.

Many parents are able to order/get books from the U.K. and the U.S., where children's bookmaking is an older, better-organised, better-funded industry; many of these books are available here too now. India has an ancient, but broken tradition of children's storytelling, especially the writing, making and distributing/selling of such books, which is now getting to its feet.

According to Gita Wolf, publisher, Tara Publishing, "This is a dynamic time for children's book publishing in India and exciting things are happening across the country." Gita Wolf talks of the need "... . to see children's writing taken seriously as a category, and not merely cute tales that anyone can write."

KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail