I come from a generation when we had few distractions – no TVs, no computers, not even phones to chat away with friends and no friends other than school friends. School was a good 10 kms away which by the standards of those times was pretty much in the ‘jungle’.So what did we do in the long summer vacations, Christmas breaks and weekends when we were stuck together – just the two of us, my sister and I? We read and we bonded, perfectly.
The other thing was that we went to a school run by strict Irish nuns who set high reading standards. The books we got were screened, I am sure. We had ‘age appropriate’ cupboards neatly labelled with the class they were suited to. We weren’t allowed comics till after class VI, not even Amar Chitra Kathas. We had to choose one book of fiction, one biography and one Hindi book each week. We had to have a book mark and a book cover failing which we weren’t allowed a book. All wonderful habits, I might add. Habits I cherish and I’m very proud of. Habits I wish I was better at inculcating in my children.
And so I grew up on Enid Blyton, Louisa Alcott, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and then – Georgette Heyers and Victoria Holts.
Later, I spent years at the news desk meticulously changing ‘color’ to ‘colour’, correcting grammar, following the ‘right’ way and getting more and more set in that right way, more sure than ever that I knew what was best when it came to reading.
I lost touch with kids’ books till I had kids of my own some two decades later.
What a rude shock that was!
Children’s books had undergone some kind of metamorphosis, and how! Peppered with pictures and illustrations, arrows and diagrams, doodles and drawings with coloured text jumping at you from unexpected places, with font that changed like a shape shifter! An unwarranted assault on my senses! What were these? Half-comic-half-book-half scribbled notes? Mongrelised reads, all.
I saw Midsummer Night’s Dream as a comic and I was devastated. Here I was, a purist, who had Shakespeare stamped upon her memory, who could recite Merchant of Venice at will.. “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes..”
Yeah, that was me and then there were George and Harold from Captain Underpants blasphemously dropping all sense of spelling and grammar. Sacrilege! How could I allow it?
I pushed forward my favourites. Noddy, Faraway Tree, Wishing Chair, Amelia Jane. As if in an act of rebellion, the children rejected the lot. Each of them. I was heartbroken and I gave up on my kids as non-readers.
Then then one day I saw my son all of six with his head stuck into Captain Underpants laughing out loud. He started to follow me around with a mama, ‘Listen to this, please, it’s so funny.’ And I was forced to re-evaluate my attitude. A book that held the power to not just get a six year old to sit quietly but also to make him laugh with such abandon couldn’t be all bad. Things had changed and I had to admit it.
Books are now not competing with other books. They are competing with television, the iPad, the PS-3 and the lure of friends at the door. They have to squeeze themselves between dance class and karate class, hold their own with Monopoly and Topple, fight off the Barbies and the Power rangers.
It cannot be easy.
What they need, desperately, are friends, friends not book racists, not heartless, judgmental critics. Friends, among parents, teachers and all sensible adults. Friends who would understand why they have had to change avatars, why they have to dress themselves up as graphic novels and comics.
Besides, wasn’t Enid Blyton banned in schools in her time? Isn’t Roald Dahl irreverent and gory and yes, rude? Who’s to judge the good and the bad? By all means ban the obscene, ban the bad language, ban the overtly violent but stop there. Rather than choosing just the best, reject just the worst. Let more of them make the cut.God knows our kids need them way more than they need our kids.
