Bondas, Birds and More:Shamim Padamsee at Bookaroo 2012

Writer and educationist Shamim Padamsee has published many books with Tulika. Her first, Dancing on Walls, a fantasy story on how Warli art may have been born, is hugely popular as is A Silly Story of Bondapalli. Birdywood Buzz: The Vulture Returns, a zippy take on filmdom, and its sequel, The Great Birdywood Games, a cool take on the Olympic Games, are together a wonderful introduction to birdlife. 

Keenly interested in early childhood education, the environment and wildlife, Shamim pursues all her passions with equal zeal and started Young India Books, a website which reviews and promotes Indian children's books.

Here is Shamim in action at Bookaroo 2012!

"Alongside evocative illustrations by Soumya Menon, Padamsee has woven nuggets of information into the narrative"

Time Out

"The book not only has an entertainment, but an educational value as well. Characteristics of the birds are subtly woven with the story, which only one with a good understanding of birds can write."

Udaipur Times

"The imagery is delightful and it keeps you hovering right above in the sky as each bird makes its entry... The text is plain and lucid, but each bird attribute researched by the author will definitely make the reader want to find out more about each bird she/he encounters."

Donna Reen

"....cleverly encompasses the issue of self esteem! A perfect edutainment book."

Buzzing Books on Birdywood Buzz

"Bondapalli celebrates being round and fat and happy...Awesome illustrations, low word count, cheerful narratives endeared these tales to my five year old."

Saffron Tree

"Reading A Silly Story of Bondapalli is a delight precisely because the teller of this story is not standing on a high pedestal and teaching the readers any moral lessons."

The Book Review


"Shamim Padamsee's 'The Silly Story of Bondapalli', published by Tulika, is a wonderful story not only for children but also for adults, who want to have a good laugh after a stressful day. Simply 'Bondastic'!"

Blogger Hema  

"Children wills enjoy the bouncy rhythm of the story and cheer at the slapstick war that culminates at the end of the tale."

Ruhi Gurjar

Woohoo, Bookaroo!

Writers Niveditha Subramaniam and Sowmya Rajendran took snow kings, sky monkeys and a merry rakshasa with them to Bookaroo. Sowmya shares notes on their sessions.

Who wouldn’t like to listen to stories in the shade of a big banyan tree? 

The stories we had chosen for our storytelling sessions were The Snow King’s Daughter and The Sky Monkey’s Beard. The Kahani Tree sessions are all 30-minute ones and are conducted for different age-groups. We had planned to do dramatized readings of the stories for the 6-8 age group. But when we actually got to see some of the sessions at the venue, we realized that despite the age-group indication, children of all ages were sitting in the audience, expecting to be entertained! 

Most of the storytellers for the Kahani Tree sessions chose to perform stories with songs and a lot of repetition – a smart move since it allowed the audience to participate and follow the story despite the distractions that an open space with thronging crowds offered. I was quite apprehensive of doing The Snow King’s Daughter – a story about a child living in exile – for this audience. 

The subject isn’t light and doesn’t lend itself to an if-you-are-happy-and-you-know-it kind of song and dance. The text is also rather subtle and layered in places and if the audience isn’t listening carefully, it’s likely to be lost on them. And an uninterested audience of children can really be merciless, especially since they don’t realize they are being so. 

Niveditha and I racked our brains to see what we could do. I had taken along a pair of hand puppets – a zebra and a monkey – and we decided to use them somehow. At least, it would give the really young kids something to look at! So, for The Snow King’s Daughter, I began the story by asking children where they went on their last trip and how they had travelled. Some had been to Indonesia, some to Darjeeling. Some had travelled by plane, some by car. But did they know how Keshav from the book travelled? With the help of his straw mat and atlas! He simply makes a huge red ‘X’ on the place he wants to visit and hey presto! He’s there! And on his last trip, Keshav went to Africa and made friends with this…this zebra! One of the kids in the audience named the zebra Avi and I told them that Avi was a very naughty zebra who had to be shushed now and then. They promised to take care of that and so we began!

Instead of doing the dramatized reading that Niveditha and I had originally planned, I simply ‘told’ the story in the language and words that came to me at that point. Niveditha showed them the pictures and the zebra made annoying interruptions (‘Where is this cold place?’ asked Amma; ‘Chennai! Chennai!’ said the zebra). The children shushed in the right places and were also obliging enough to answer the questions I asked them on what was an ‘independent country’ (‘a free country’), who ruled India previously, the location of Tibet and China and so on. The zebra shook hands with all those who answered. 

Niveditha, too, chose to tell the story rather than doing a dramatized reading. I held up the book so the children could see the pictures. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that children love monkeys and so, from the start of the story, they were hooked. The floating sky monkeys with their bubble-like yellow eyes held their attention and when Niveditha’s naughty little sky monkey made faces and pulled the ears of the tiny members of the distinguished audience, there were happy giggles and smiles all around. 

And of course, when she asked them to wiggle their bums and pretend they were sitting on a cloud, there wasn’t a kid in the audience who didn’t want to do it. At the end of the story, Niveditha blew out bits of the grandfather’s beard (wads of cotton, inspired by storyteller Jeeva Raghunath’s take on it) into the crowd!

Neither of us is a storyteller (we’re more the type that sends out manuscripts and sits impatiently in a corner waiting for the publisher to get back), so this experience was quite challenging. But one lives and learns and I’m glad that we were able to manage the situation fairly well!

For The Pleasant Rakshasa, our new book together which I’ve written and Niveditha has illustrated, we had signed up to do a reading and activity at the ‘Crafty Corner’. The Crafty Corner is the arts and crafts section where children draw, paint, and make stuff. 

Since this was a registered session, there were about a million parents (okay, maybe not a million, but it sure felt like it) trying to get their kids in. Jo Williams of Bookaroo, the self-acknowledged bouncer of the Crafty Corner, finally managed to sort out the fifty who were to attend the session and we began the session by singing a silly rakshasa rhyme. The children were impatient to get their hands on all the lovely sketch pens and pencils but they were obliging enough to sing along and humour us. Karimuga’s hairy legs and big belly were a hit, as were his awesome yellow teeth. 

After the reading, Niveditha showed the children how to draw Karimuga and before you could say ‘rakshasa’, an avalanche of children fell over us, demanding paper, pens, sharpeners, and nuclear weapons. The volunteers handled the situation admirably and not before long, the fifty odd kids were settled at their desks, drawing away happily. We helped them cut out their masks, punch holes, and tie the threads. By the end of the hour, there were quite a few rakshasas romping around Bookaroo!

Two days, three sessions. Each with its own challenges and happy moments. The two of us had a whale of a time dealing with all of it and next November, we’d be sure to sit inside our respective straw mats with an atlas in hand, a huge red ‘X’ over Bookaroo on it!

Bookaroo in the City: Mayil Will Not Be Quiet

As part of Bookaroo in the City, we took Mayil Will Not Be Quiet to Satyug Darshan Vidyalaya, Faridabad. The auditorium was packed with 80 children (eight to twelve-year-olds) and we were excited and slightly nervous as the back rows filled up. 

How many of you write diaries, we asked.

Just two hands shot up – a girl and a boy. 

Why do you write?

The girl said she wrote about things she couldn’t talk about with other people. She wrote about her feelings, she wrote about things that happened every day, she wrote down secrets. The boy said writing was creative; it helped him write better and read better too. 

We introduced Mayil and read the first entry from her diary. There was a soft giggle or two as we read out the warning bit (“No sneaking, peeking, touching or EATING.”). But what got them thinking was Mayil’s question about Dasharata wanting a son to “carry” his name. Why didn’t Dasharata want a daughter, she wonders. Couldn’t she rule a kingdom too?

“Girls leave home and become part of another family,” said many. But when we asked if girls could rule a kingdom, neither the boys nor the girls responded, at least not at once.Then we spoke about a sporting star that came from their hometown. They all knew who she was, but some didn’t know that she was from Haryana. Did they know that Saina Nehwal’s grandmother hadn’t visited her at first when she was born? Could they guess why? “Because she was a girl,” came the replies. Saina Nehwal’s mother was a badminton player too and Saina is a champion today. 

So could girls and boys do the same things if they wanted to? They nodded their heads. 

The liveliest discussion – the one that really got them talking – was the one about heroes and heroines. Who was the perfect hero? Which heroine did they like the most? “Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan!” said one. “Dara Singh!” said another, as the others burst out laughing. “Edward Cullen and Bella Swan!” said another (those teenage vampires just get everywhere, don’t they). Why are they perfect, we asked. But they just smiled shyly. So we took another approach:

Tall or short? – TALL
Fair or dark? – FAIR
Thin or fat? – THIN
Big eyes or small eyes? – There were shouts of big, small and even medium!

Were all beautiful people tall? – NO!
Did they know dark people who were beautiful? –YES!

So what was beauty? Who decided who was beautiful and who was ugly? What did beauty have to do with who they were? These were some of the questions we raised. One boy said Johnny Lever was dark and not great to look at, but he was funny and entertaining so it didn’t matter. There were many who didn’t speak, but they were thinking and talking to each other. When we concluded the session, at least half the room wanted to start a diary!

Our second session was with The British School – and they had a lot of opinions! Their responses to the questions we raised were instinctive, often downright blunt and very decided! 

We read the same entry about Dasharata wanting a son. Some boys and girls said that they had their mother’s name as well as father’s. That led to another discussion – who was the head of the family? They had different answers:

“The person who brings home the money.”
“The person who earns the most.”
“The person who wins the argument.”
“The person who is older.”

One girl said, “I think my little sister is the head of the family. We all do what she wants!”

 

Another interesting discussion revolved around dolls – could boys play with them too? Lots of boys put their hands up – but many, after first clarifying if action figures counted. Does Ken (Barbie’s boyfriend) count as a toy, we asked. Someone said, “Ken is a doll. He doesn’t have weapons.” 

This naturally led to a conversation about sissies and tomboys:

“Tomboys hang out with the boys.”
“Tomboys have short hair.”
“Tomboys are hairy. I had this friend. She was a tomboy and she was really hairy.”
“Sissies are like… shy.”
“Sissies are scared.”
“Sissies are girly sort of boys.”

What were their definitions of sissies and tomboys based on? Appearance? Personality? Both? The teachers were also involved in the discussion. For instance, when one of the boys said women can't handle swiss knives, a teacher quipped that she won't be taking him along for camping trips then!


We read another entry from Mayil’s diary – where she meets a trans woman on a train. When we were writing this entry, we had wanted children to think about and understand the difference between sex and gender. But we were really happy that it also provoked thoughts and insights on identity, self-definition, recognizing and learning to accept differences and acknowledging and being able to talk about discomfort. 

When we finished reading this entry, one boy said he didn’t understand or think it was “natural” for a girl to want to be a boy or vice versa, but he would respect it, because it was that person’s choice. Others were less certain and said so. We heard quite a few say, “I don’t get it” and “It’s weird” and “Why would anybody do something like that?” 

And it was fitting that the session ended with some questions remaining unanswered.Because Mayil is about issues that remain unresolved, even if solutions have been found, for the moment. Mayil writes as she thinks. She has plenty to say and plenty to ask. She doesn’t always say or do the right things: she is embarrassed when she thinks that her friend, VS, is going to read out a poem in class, she thinks her brother doesn’t stand up for himself even when it’s not his fault. But she is not afraid to be wrong or say sorry. And she isn’t quiet!

Sowmya and Niveditha

A big thanks to Jo, Swati and Venkatesh for having us at Bookaroo and to the students and teachers of both schools – we loved being there!

Tulika at Bookaroo 2012

The 5th edition of the Bookaroo Festival of Children's Literature is around the corner and Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam are off to celebrate! They kickstart with Mayil Will Not Be Quiet which goes to Bookaroo in the City and finish with The Pleasant Rakshasa, their latest, which has its launch at the Main Festival. Set in Sanskriti Kendra, Anand Gram, MG Road, the Main Festival is open to all. Check out the full schedule below:

The Snow King’s Daughter
by Sowmya Rajendran
Pictures Proiti Roy
Keshav’s favourite game is to hide in a rolled up mat and pretend he is travelling to different places. He is delighted when he discovers that his neighbour, Lobsang, is really from a place that he has marked in his map – Tibet! Join Sowmya and Niveditha Subramaniam for an animated storytelling session.

Date: 24 Nov 2012 | Location: Kahani Tree
Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 16:30 to 17:00 pm

The Sky Monkey’s Beard
by Niveditha Subramaniam
Pictures Priyankar Ghosh

Sky monkeys like nothing better than to float for hours. Then one day, a naughty little sky monkey does something most unskymonkeylike and there is a huge hullabaloo up above! Join Niveditha and Sowmya for an animated storytelling session. 

Date: 25 Nov 2012 | Location: Kahani Tree
Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 11:00 - 11:30 am 

The Pleasant Rakshasa
by Sowmya Rajendran
Pictures Niveditha Subramaniam
Rakshasas are the life of this party! Join Sowmya and Niveditha for a dramatized reading of  The Pleasant Rakshasa. Meet Karimuga the rakshasa and his motley crew and make your own mad monsters.
Date: 25 Nov 2012 | Location: Crafty Corner

Age Group: 6-8 | Time: 13:30 to 14:30 pm