by Katie Day
September is #WorldKidLit month and this year the GLLI blog explored different aspects of #IndiaKidLit in the run-up to the 2022 Neev Literature Festival, a celebration of Indian children’s literature held Sept 24 and 25 in Bangalore.
Karthika Gopalakrishnan (Head of Reading at Neev Academy and the Director of the Neev Literature Festival) and Samantha Kokkat (the Reading Community Manager at Neev Academy) lined up most of the writers for this month’s amazing overview of Indian children’s literature — and wrote several of the blog posts themselves. They deserve so much credit for the breadth and depth that this month offers. (My contribution was mainly in following up with links, images, and polishing…) I also want to recognize the work of Karen Van Drie, the tireless Executive Director of GLLI – who orchestrates this blog and proofs each post before it goes out.
Re this month’s focus on India and children’s literature, we have made a Goodreads shelf of books mentioned in this month’s blog posts. It now has over 200 titles on it, including both children’s literature and adult literature (so we called the shelf: india-kid-lit-plus ) — and you’ll see it’s a very mixed bag (just as India is a very diverse country).
It’s hard to convey the atmosphere of a school-based free-to-all literature festival like the one at Neev Academy. Imagine: the sea of excited people, young and old, wandering from event to event — rubbing shoulders with so many authors and illustrators — and then hitting the book marketplace to browse and buy. (I definitely used up the maximum weight allowance with books in my luggage, flying back to Singapore.)
Go to the Neev Literature Festival Facebook page for links to photos and videos from the event.
Did you catch every article this month? If not, here is an index to all the posts and writers for this World Kid Lit month of focus on India in September 2022 .
September 1: #WORLDKIDLITMONTH – September 2022 – Slices of Indian Children’s Literature Served Up Over Time – #INDIAKIDLIT – by Karthika Gopalakrishnan
September 2: #INDIAKIDLIT – Why I retell old Indian stories for the young – by Roopa Pai
September 3: #INDIAKIDLIT – Why why? And other questions for Indian children’s books – by Shalini Srinivasan
September 4: #INDIAKIDLIT – Does India need its own Literary Canon? – by Maya Thiagarajan
September 5: #INDIAKIDLIT – Stories as a Brilliant Disguise – by Devashish Makhija
September 6: #INDIAKIDLIT – Strong, little known Indian women in history brought alive in contemporary literature – by Deepa Agarwal
September 8: #INDIAKIDLIT – The Invisible Visibles – Sikh Representation in Children’s Literature – by Rasil Kaur Ahuja
September 9: #INDIAKIDLIT – Inviting Children into the World of Books – by Gita Varadarajan
September 10: #INDIAKIDLIT – The Stories We Tell – by Samina Mishra
September 11: #INDIAKIDLIT – Many Languages, Many Voices – by Radhika Menon
September 12: #INDIAKIDLIT – Memories of Partition in Children’s Literature – by Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj
September 13: #INDIAKIDLIT – Pratham Books & StoryWeaver – by Jeremy Willette
September 15: #INDIAKIDLIT – The Case of the Fascinating Folktale – by Shobha Viswanath
September 16: #INDIAKIDLIT – Tara Books – a pilgrimage and homage – by Nadine Bailey
September 17: #INDIAKIDLIT – Anushka Ravishankar on Writing Wicked, Wacky Verse – Anushka Ravishankar interviewed by Samantha Kokkat
September 18: #INDIAKIDLIT – Ruskin Bond – The Writer in the Hills – by Samantha Kokkat
September 19: #INDIAKIDLIT – Opening the Gates: Paro Anand on Diversity in Indian Children’s Literature – Paro Anand interviewed by Samantha Kokkat
September 20: #INDIAKIDLIT – Amish Tripathi on Books, Balance, and Building Bridges to One’s Culture – Amish Tripathi interviewed by Karthika Gopalakrishnan
September 22: #INDIAKIDLIT – Breeding Readers – by Kavita Gupta Sabharwal
September 23: #INDIAKIDLIT – Looking Back, Looking Ahead at Indian Children’s Literature – by Karthika Gopalakrishnan
September 24: #INDIAKIDLIT – All the Places that Reading Takes You: the Neev Literature Festival – by Karthika Gopalakrishnan & Samantha Kokkat
September 25: #INDIAKIDLIT – Neev Book Award 2022: Early Years category – by Ann Lazim
September 26: #INDIAKIDLIT – Neev Book Award 2022: Emerging Readers category – by Ann Lazim
September 27: #INDIAKIDLIT – Neev Book Award 2022: Junior Readers Category – by Gita Varadarajan
September 29: #INDIAKIDLIT – Neev Book Award 2022: Young Adult Books – by Nadine Bailey & Colin Kelman
Katie Day is an international school teacher-librarian and one of the Jury Co-Chairs for the Neev Book Award. An American with a masters in children’s literature from the UK and a masters in library science from Australia, she has lived in Asia since 1997, including 15 years in Singapore, first at United World College of Southeast Asia and now at Tanglin Trust School. She has also lived and worked in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong and the UK. Her Twitter handle is librarianedge.
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 