‘Children’s lit requires no kidding around’

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 3

A storyteller, who appeals to the child in each one of us, author Padmini Mongia is not afraid to use unconventional themes like war and absence of parents in her stories for children. At Majha House in the city, Padmini interacted with children and readers about her latest book ‘Baby Looking Out’.

A compilation of short stories, the book charts down different themes, sharing stories from across the globe. “The book has stories that will leave an impact on child, like innocence and talking about issues that children worldwide experience but not in way that scares then. Some of the stories are graphical illustrations while others talk about issues like single parent-household. My book also deals with the theme of separation, children across borders are experiencing a lot of such problems,” she said.

Her previous books, including the Pchak! Pchak! A Story of Crocodiles, is about a baby crocodile who won’t open her mouth. It was a book that stuck to the genre completely. But she says that her consecutive works have been a bit more spontaneous. She shared that she doesn’t write preachy stories. “That’s not what I intend to do. My stories are more relatable, for varied age groups like from a five years old to 10 or 12-year-old kids,” she said.

She also stressed that the genre was evolving into an industry that is open for innovation. “Children literature is a growing, expanding genre in India and a lot of writers are trying to break the conventional way of storytelling with innovative treatment and testing the readers with dark themes. Introducing war or refugee crisis to a child through stories is an effective way to inform them about issues that otherwise many kids are already going through.”