The Why of 'Where's that Cat'?

Ever since the time I worked on a textless, illustrated book, I've been wanting to do a second one. That was in 1986 and the book, published by the National Book Trust, was called Visit to the City Market. That book marked an important milestone for me as an illustrator: it was the first one for which I was both the author and illustrator.

City Market doesn't have much of a story: a mother and her two children take a walk to the market, buying things along the way – and that's all that happens. But as they go from one shop to the next, the reader gets to look at the different kinds of shops they go to, the shopkeepers they talk to and the things that they buy. As it happens, I don't like going shopping! At the same time I realize that we all need to go now and then. So my reason for drawing a visit to the market was to try to make it seem like fun. Drawing something is a bit like getting to know it very well. And when you know something well, it's easier to like it.

Twenty years later, I STILL don't like going shopping! So maybe that's the reason I still wanted to draw a similar book. This time, however, I wanted to look at the whole street, not just separate shops and I wanted to show more people than I had in the first book. Actually, at the time I was working on the drawings for City Market, that was my original plan: I had drawn the whole street and all the buildings with dozens of different activities taking place on each page. But in order to do that, I had to draw the people very small, which made it hard to see them – and harder still for me to draw and colour them. So I abandoned that earlier idea and drew the book with larger figures and just a few shops.

While preparing to draw Where's that Cat? I had an idea about a child searching for a pet cat. The reason is simple: cats are very independent minded creatures, and they DO wander away from their homes to go on short adventures. Of course we don't usually get to see where they go and what they do … but if I could show a child looking for the cat, not only would that give us a chance to look at all the places the child goes to, but we might also catch a glimpse of where the cat goes.

Right until the time I began working on this book, I had thought of the child as a little boy. Somehow, just after I had talked to Tulika about the idea for the book the little boy turned into a little girl. There is no explanation for things like that! They just happen.

- Manjula Padmanabhan, Author and Artist

Thumbthing to make reading fun!

Publishing and distributing books in English Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati and Bangla have opened up opportunities for us to work with groups involved in promoting reading literacy. We are, therefore, constantly aware of their concerns about the poor reading skills of children who have had little exposure to books and have always tried to address them in different ways in our books.

Being part of a committee set up by the NCERT for developing graded readers in Hindi – the Barkha series – to build the child’s reading skills was a learning experience. The committee had reading experts, government school teachers, children’s writers in Hindi, and illustrators. Their experience and inputs were very insightful. And this was the inspiration for Tulika’s beginner reading series, the Thumb Thumb Books – a series that combines the requirements of beginner readers with the creativity and vibrancy of imaginative children’s books.

The series has as its central characters Thumb Thumb Thangi and Thumb Thumb Thambi inspired by visuals using the thumbprint. As Arvind Gupta, the well-known scientist and children’s writer puts it in his book of thumbprints, “Print your thumb... you might find in it a clown, a bird, a lion, a crawling snail...a snorting whale!” It is this sense of a world of possibilities that the Thumb Thumb books convey to young readers through words and pictures.

The handy-sized, brightly produced books are designed to be inviting to children who are just beginning to read. The language and style of the texts are intentionally minimalist. It is simple but not simplistic. Short sentences, bold typography set in lots of white space and vibrant illustrations make the books friendly and accessible. A lot of care has been taken to keep the text and visuals free of class, caste, language and gender biases – always a big challenge in creating a series that can work multilingually across a multicultural country like India.

At the end of each book, the child is encouraged to make a thumbprint-based drawing inspired by the story. The idea is to help children make personal connections with Thambi and Thangi, and feel at home inside the pages of the books they read. The slogan on the last page declaring 'I Can Read this Book' affirms the young reader's freedom and independence, while at the same time acknowledging the achievement. It also underlines the fact that the series is designed for individual readers, each going at her or his own pace, with or without help.

One of our interns, Niveditha Subramaniam, who has also written and illustrated one of the books, sums it up perfectly: Tulika envisages the Thumb Thumb series as a rolling stone, something that different artists and writers can contribute to over time, each book stamped with their special creativity. We begin with Thumb Thumb Thambi and Thumb Thumb Thangi, but the thumbprint on the move takes on personalities, its lines and whorls form things not one quite like the other, leaping in and out of pages and wandering into the lives of children. Tulika hopes, through the series, to evolve a dynamic and inexhaustible creative space for children to learn to read.

- Radhika Menon, Publisher

Tulika's Tamil stories: Bridging the spoken and the written

Some time ago, a lively local radio jockey called to ask what I thought was special about Tamil. Words, I replied. Original and borrowed and the way people used them. In different places, in different ways. All amazingly creative.

Tamil is such a versatile language, but what happens when we write for children? It’s the Full Missyamma Mode: didactic, prescriptive, and correct at the cost of resonance, mood and elegance and if Tamil doesn’t have resonance, mood and elegance, what does it have?All this and more. That’s why it was so much fun the other evening with the irrepressible Jeeva Raghunath, a born storyteller. The event was a celebration of Tulika’s Tamil books in the spirit of Madras Week. Come on, she said, TuliKAKAvin kathai kelunga… listen to Tulikaka’s stories. She went from the mad verse of Aavilirundu Akkvarai to the peculiar sounds of Gasa Gasa Para Para’s ‘jnya-jnyaa-jnyi-jnyii’ to the great merriment of children and adults present at the Madras Terrace House. It didn’t matter even if you didn’t understand all of it… fun and laughter go beyond words.

She told the stories through the frame story of her popular Malli, capturing the flavour of place and tongue with her warmly amusing imitations. Once past her own books, she then went on to Cathy Spagnoli’s classic Priyavin Oru Naal, giving it full sound and tune with old Tamil film melodies, and Muthu’s story of the magic vessels… and lots more, each rendered in a special and different Tamil accent, all spoken and heard on the streets of Namma Chennai. Kamaal Hassan, you got competition machi!

Jeeva has a fresh, new approach to Tamil and she is completely convinced that when children read, they must connect. So, not for her the tongue-twisting chasteness of high literature (beautiful though it is, she always says; she loves her mozhi, she always says). Her tongue twisters leave the reader gasping for more.

But there are always naysayers and recently we went on a critical appraisal of Tamil for children’s books. As always, we went to our friend, philosopher and guide, Cre-A Ramakrishnan. His considered opinion: there are some things that are sacrosanct, but the effort must be to bridge the gap between the spoken and the written. Go on, he said, you’re heading the right way.

So, adjust the mindset light-a for a wonderful journey through Jeeva’s stories, written and told. Piragu you will understand what I mean… Semma Tamil, Namma Tamil!

- Sandhya Rao, Author and Editor

Points of view and imagining possibilities in 'The Lights Changed''

This workshop was one of the 10 sessions of a Reading Club Workshop held in a school in Matunga called Shishuvan. I rate this school as one of the better schools in Mumbai, where the stress is on the process and not the end. There are no exams till Class 8.

I liked nearly all the stories in the collection titled Sorry, Best Friend!. The Lights Changed is a personal favourite. Given the fact that it was very short I chose it for the session so that the children could read it fast and we would have lots of time to discuss and do activities based on it.

Some of the questions we discussed after the children read the story were:
• Why was the story titled The Lights Changed? Just because the lights changed at each meeting, or could there be some other reason as well?
• Tell the story from Sameer do’s point of view.
• Enact each of the four meetings
• Suppose Sameer do met Sameer ek after the riots, i.e. for the 5th time, what would their conversation be?
• If you were Sameer ek what kind of help would you offer? (The children came up with a host of practical, liberal, secular suggestions. From giving an ad in the newspaper, to contacting some one in the Police in Meerut to track Sameer do’s parents to offering Sameer do some education or vocational guidance, it was a plethora of wonderful ideas.)
• Are there any other names which are common to both Hindu and Muslim children?
• Try and explain in your words what subject means to someone who has never been to school.

- Loveleen Misra, Actor and Storyteller

Words and their associations in Sorry, Best Friend!

In the last week of March, I held a 5-day creative writing workshop for 8 to10-year-olds in Juhu, Mumbai.

On the 4th day, I focused on the use of adjectives, or descriptive words and phrases. The session began with each child coming forward, dipping his or her hand into a brown paper bag, feeling the object within and describing it to the rest of the class in evocative words or phrases. The class would try to identify the object through that child’s perception of it.

After this I tossed the kids a few adjectives and asked them to tell me what came to mind when they heard these: ‘fat’, ‘summer’, ‘black’, ‘slum’, ‘servant’, ‘ogre’, ‘god’ and ‘fair’. The children came up with plenty of associations – a mix of the innovative and stereotypical. ‘Slum’ and ‘servant’ evoked responses like ‘poor’, ‘unhygienic’, ‘stinky’, etc. While ‘god’ evoked ‘invisible’, ‘loving’, ‘hope’, ‘peace’ and ‘colourful’ and many more. After this, I told the 21 children how innovative associations can spark stories. I talked about Michael Heyman‘s It’s Hot (Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories), where Meena tries to beat the summer power cuts by going to a nearby park and pretending to be a dog, an ant, a deer, a lizard and even an elephant flapping its ears. She finally settles for lime juice and a happy soak in the bathtub.

For the innovative use of ‘black’ I told them the story, The Tunnel from Sorry, Best Friend!. ‘Black’ here, is the black burqa that Saeeda aunty wears. She emerges from under it, like magic, when Ankush, a little boy travelling without his parents on the long-distance train, is frightened by the darkness of a tunnel. Ankush and Saeeda aunty become great friends when he teases her about seeming like a mound of luggage when she slept on the berth draped in her black burqa. Black, here, is a symbol of initial misconception, later fun and shared laughs, and its silky fabric finally is, to the terrified boy, about mother-comfort. The children listened, laughed along and enjoyed the story.

Then I told them about Sorry, Best Friend!, to illustrate how the word ‘servant’ can mean many things aside of ‘poor’ and ‘unhygenic’, the associations they’d come up with. The story is about how the boy Sonu makes best-friends with Rahiman, his servant’s daughter. He understands, by the end that she lives in very different circumstances than him… and yet that they can be great friends, indeed, best friends. The children later wrote original, truly wonderful and sensitive stories based on the adjectives we had discussed.

On the fifth and last day of my workshop, I talked about points of view. How where you stand or the angle from which you look at things, determines your worldview. I read out Poile Sengupta’s The Lights Changed, again from the collection Sorry, Best Friend!.

To begin with, the children did not really understand what happened in the story. I explained: There are two children who meet everyday at a busy traffic signal. Both their names are Samir. One is a schoolboy on his way to school, who makes friends with the boy vending newspapers at the signal. They call themselves Samir Ek and Samir Do. Samir Do is a Muslim boy from Meerut, the younger of the two, poor and unschooled, but proud to be an earning member of his family since he was ‘just so high’. His family is in Meerut, he tells Samir Ek. Then a couple of days later, Samir Do is worried that there are communal riots taking place in Meerut. And then the next day, Samir Ek cannot find his friend at the signal. Not the next day, nor ever again. He is left wondering what happened to his friend, Samir Do.

The class comprised 15 Hindu children and five Muslim children. I asked them, what do you think happened to Samir Do? A couple of children said that he might have gone to Meerut and died in the riots there. I suggested that he went to help his family. Maybe he helped many people. The class cheered up at that.

Then I asked each of them to pretend he was Samir Ek and make a card for his missing friend, Samir Do. Write a short letter, message, poem, story or song… anything that is a message of love and friendship to their missing friend. I suggested beginning the card with “Salaam-walekum”. About four children wrote that down as a greeting. A few wished Samir Do “Id Mubarak” and several children wrote, “Happy Birthday! Let’s celebrate your birthday together.” But all, overwhelmingly all, wrote, “Why did you go away without telling me? When will you come back? Come back soon. I miss you…” They made beautiful sketches of the two friends at the traffic signal, the friends celebrating Samir Do’s birthday and Id, and flowers, balloons and hearts.

I left the session with a full heart, not knowing if touching the kids’ lives with this story was the right thing to do, or the wrong one. It certainly called attention to the Muslim children in the class. Only one seemed perfectly comfortable with the discussion that followed the story. The cards they made were heartening. These spoke the language of love. Will exploring this story with children make them more sensitive and accepting of differences, or make the Muslim kids in the group uncomfortable and fearful? I really have no way to tell.

- Chatura Rao, Author

Writing creatively in the company of Tulika books

This was the first time I have ‘taught’ creative writing. I read voraciously and am at a loss if I don’t have a book on standby to read after my current one. Books open up worlds that I may never inhabit, with perspectives very different from my own. Words are used with such skill that I am under the spell of the author. How do I open up these worlds to young children so that they are never alone when there are books in this world? How do I nurture children’s curiosity and the urge to express themselves without fear and with joy?

These were my thoughts when I agreed to ‘teach’ creative writing to six mixed-age classrooms with second, third, and fourth standard children. I had noticed that these children were extremely articulate while speaking but were strangely reticent when they had to write. So I decided my goal, if you will, in this first year was to create spaces in the classroom where children were free to express themselves without the shadow of criticism, evaluation, or that looming demon – spelling mistakes.

I realized that one needs access to good quality writing in order to learn to recognize it and acquire the skills to write well. Of course, there is no dearth of good children’s literature. But I wanted the children to realize that well written books that are interesting to read, with thought provoking illustrations need not be from the West but published in India; that characters need not have exotic, English names to be interesting.

We read, It’s Only a Story by Cathy Spagnoli when we discussed where authors get their ideas from. Children loved the circular nature of the story and enjoyed predicting what was going to happen next. A couple of children even commented how it reminded them of Hen Sparrow Turns Purple. I used Snoring Shanmugam and Colour-Colour Kamini to illustrate how one uses characters and setting to tell stories. They welcomed the characters back in Colour-Colour Kamini as if they were reunited with old friends they thought they would never meet again.

My biggest surprise was with Mukand and Riaz by Nina Sabnani. It so happened that I read the story to some of the classes soon after the Bombay blasts. Class teachers were disturbed to hear some of the children talk and comment disparagingly about Muslims, especially as there were Muslim students in the classes. Mukand and Riaz made the whole situation real to the children, provided a historical context, and the children could identify with the characters. “Muslims” became real people, real children, just like them and not some demonised abstraction. They loved the surprise they got when they realized that Mukand was the author’s father and the ‘story’ really happened. The illustrations in all the books I used extended the children’s imagination and they remarked how they help in hooking their interest in making them want to read further.

Using Indian literature that the children could relate to made story writing accessible and possible in children’s minds, opening them up to the notion that they could write interesting, enjoyable stories set in familiar contexts, that they need not be exotic and ‘foreign’, that they too could write stories that others would want to read.

- Bharati Srinivasan, Special Educator and Creative Writing Facilitator

Responding to Tulika books

Away from the formal setting of a classroom and even inside a few of them, a few committed writers, educators and creative people are exploring books with children... their words and pictures, how and why authors and illustrators use them in the way they do. And in the process, get their minds to tick and take away from the reading experience. They have been filling us in... about the Tulika books they used, how they used them and how the kids responded. Of course this makes us happy. Not only because it demonstrates that Tulika's books work well in the classroom - doing what textbooks don't by offering creative ways to deal with subjects and issues arising from them - but also because they enable children to express themselves with freedom and originality.

- Priya Krishnan, Editor