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MAGIC OF WORDS There’s a lot of children’s literature available these days

So imagine. We did, and, as a Children’s Day special, we decided to ask some mad-about-reading-friends (all doing well for themselves), what they read as kids, and see if we could spread the good word about reading.

“Oh, books! When I was a kid in the U.S., I read American authors. (‘much, better than Enid Blighty’). It was a way for me to understand and negotiate American society (and, in view of my sometimes frightening classmates, avoid society),” says journalist Latha Anantharaman.

“The fiction was gritty and painfully honest, whether about pioneers on the prairie or kids in a New York ghetto. It made me thorough in ideas of a work ethic, living within one’s means, being independent in terms of money and work. The message was usually that money didn’t matter as much as integrity,” she adds.

What about the others? Enid Blyton, despite Latha’s disdain, ruled. And, in The Telegraph, writer Mukul Kesavan says that almost everyone he knew as a child read Blyton.

That was because, “Our reading was closely connected to the unspoken contract our parents had with the schools they sent us to: we were to be socialised into English for all the reasons that Macaulay had specified more than a century ago.”

After all, he says, the English ruled us for around 200 years!

While Latha comes up with Beverly Cleary, (stories about kids short of pocket money who think of wild schemes to earn enough to buy a bike), Sydney Taylor (stories about an immigrant family of five girls), Louisa M. Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder as some of her clear favourites, Mukul lists Anthony Buckeridge (Jennings), Frank Richards (Billy Bunter stories), Richmal Compton (did you know he was a girl?) with the William stories, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and The ageless Biggles by W.E. Jones, as his childhood fare.

Of the younger lot, 12-year-old Tara lists Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), and Ann Brashares’ The sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, among her favourites.

Chinni, 15, has ‘finished’ Enid Blyton and outgrown the Goosebump series.

She is now in love with Rebecca Gripping. Of course, along with her brother, she loves Roald Dahl. Curious about what her mom was reading, she picked up Alexander McGall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series that is “quite funny”.

Teacher-turned-social worker Suryarekha’s favourites include Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, Gerald Durrell, Alexander Dumas’ immortal The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Daphne Du Maurier, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and Marie Corelli among others.

Bookstore owner Rajeev Kamineni’s favourite is, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “Though I would not readily classify it as a kid’s book…it started a quest in my mind that could only be completed by visiting Robben Island and the Martin Luther King Jr memorial. I would definitely recommend it to all young adults.” Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan, and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, are his other must-reads. He says, “We should prohibit any kid from growing up without reading The Jungle Book.” Or, any other book.

Thank God for Swami and Friends, and of course, the Amar Chitra Kathas which is all one can remember off hand when thinking of Indian writing for kids. One does read the review of an odd book here or there, but nothing that lingers.

Still, there is a lot of children’s literature out there. And, Latha speaks for every responsible grown-up when she says: “Along with food and shelter, I would wish every Indian child access to that kind of literature.”

PANKAJA SRINIVASAN

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