Children Story Books
Modernise ‘old’ characters Manish Purohit of Authors Upfront (and ex-Publisher for Disney Publishing, India) points out, “Old stories can be told in a contemporary manner to engage children. Bheem and Hanuman have been retold in a new context — visually and textually.” In the new avatar, nine-yearold Chhota Bheem, modelled after his Pandava namesake, is blessed with extraordinary strength, and loves laddoos that give him a surge of energy.
In the New Adventures of Hanuman, as the bad guy-fighting superhero, Hanuman becomes an icon for the young. Both characters have become more real for children who love them. Competent voice India also has a rich oral and written tradition. Most retellings, however, do not manage to capture the sophisticated structure of this storytelling tradition. For instance, Panchatantra was written by Vishnusharma to drill sense into three young dissolute princes. Stories from the Panchatantra are multi-layered and full of delicious intrigue, yet most adaptations remain bland moral lessons. Gita Wolf of Tara Books says, “Myths are not seen as belonging to the past, so it is not accidental that retellings continue to be popular, in whatever form. Having said that, there are few contemporary voices in children’s literature (particularly in English) which are genuinely strong.� She is bang on.
Samhita Arni’s The Mahabharatha — A Child’s View is wonderfully told with a child’s eye for detail. No wonder, her version, published in seven languages, and sold 50,000 copies worldwide. Search for old-new content Devdutt Pattanaik tells mythological tales that haven’t been explored in this space. He explains, “The assumption here is we ‘know everything’ that the ‘old’ stories have to tell. That is human arrogance at work. For the Children Story Books, old stories are new.” In Pashu, Pattanaik weaves stories that reveal how our ancestors imagined the animal kingdom and the key role animals played in human lives. Vijay Sampath, CEO of ACK-Media says, “India has a rich trove of storytelling that we haven’t reached a stage at ACK-Media where we need to repeat the stories already told.”
Sales story Ventakesh shares, “There is a surge of Indian authors writing for children. If publishers were to market children’s books more aggressively, it would work wonders.” Regular book reviews would be a great help too. “I am not sure if publishers push children's books to reviewers in the media as well as they do for adult books,” he elaborates. Shome Ghosh feels that change can be driven by only the market leader ACK-Media, “...which has not significantly changed its visual medium or writing style for years. Publishers have tried different ways of retelling but the impact in terms of sales numbers continues to be with ACK.”
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