It’s a world that has an instinctive itch to change. It evolves even as it stays the same. And in its everlasting quest to reform and repeat the bygone, it needs its crusaders, it finds its crusaders.
Ayesha, is one such crusader, bearing the torch…
The world has worked overtime to distance its children from everything that’s wrong with it. Wars, for instance. News and literature about real life wars were a taboo for children, even young adults, except for a The Diary of a Young Girl occasionally thrown in. Recently, however, the plot has changed.
A kid with a book is an onlooker’s delight. However, it is not just that. A kid with a book is an affirmation of an alternate future, a future that is hard to predict. A future that may never materialise. A luminous, promising future.
Where would we all return if not to love? Why won’t we die, to live? Saikat Majumdar’s latest novel is about love, and sacrifice. It’s about Eklavya giving up his thumb to his guru. It’s about Megha returning to arrange a bookshelf with Poonam.
Superheroes are a common occurrence in children’s and YA stories. So Karma Tandin could be just another Batman or Spiderman next door. However, hold on! Evan Purcell, author of the Karma Tandin Monster Hunter series, planned this little superhero differently.
Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.
Each time a story is told for children, a little nugget of intellectual innocence and truthfulness is added to the world. It swerves humankind towards a more enlightened prospect. Arefa Tehsin has stirred us in this direction quite a few times with her handful of children’s books – The Chirmi Chasers, Amra and the Witch, Globetrotters, Steel of the Jungle God.