Nurturing Ecosystem of Children’s Literature and Reading for Pleasure in India

Libraries, Children’s Literature and the Reading Ecosystem

Children’s literature and the library ecosystem in India have come a long way, over the years. Government of India, by setting up National Book Trust (NBT) in 1957, and Nehru Bal Pustakalay division for children’s publishing, did signal the young nation’s seriousness about promoting reading. It has contributed towards publishing of affordable books in multiple Indian languages and promotion of books through book fairs and other activities.

Children’s Book Trust (CBT), also set up in the same year with the leadership of wellknown cartoonist Shankar, became a center of publishing, professional development courses, especially focused on children. Despite this early start, followed by the promise of National Centre for Children’s Literature at NBT in the early 1990s, as well as the earliest education commissions highlighting the importance of libraries for children, the ecosystem stagnated over the years.

The last two decades, however, have seen the resurgence of new players. This has contributed to the evolution of multiple dimensions of children’s literature and the reading promotion ecosystem. This includes independent publishers focusing on children such as Tulika, Eklavya, Pratham Books and Jugnoo. Initiatives to promote libraries for children, like Room to Read and Tata Trusts, have also emerged. Professional development efforts, such as the Library Educator’s Course (LEC) in Hindi and English, are slowly and steadily building a much needed cadre of trained library educators. Finally, there is a widening pool of players recognizing books, authors and illustrators through awards in the space of children’s literature, providing much needed visibility.

To develop the field of children’s books and reading for pleasure, we need quality of collection, and ease of access to good books. We also need trained educators who help bring books alive to children, and avenues to disseminate books. All these are interconnected features.

This makes all these diverse and yet connected efforts critical elements for the ecosystem to grow and thrive. We have taken a few steps in the direction through combined efforts of many players. However, we still have a very long way to go in making reading for pleasure a reality for the majority of children in the country.

The Parag Initiative

Tata Trusts’ Parag initiative has made a small contribution in identifying sectoral gaps in children’s literature and reading promotion. It has tried to address them through work done in partnership with multiple stakeholders. These include publishers, non-profit organizations and academic institutions.

Work has focused on multiple strands. The initiative supports development of quality books in different Indian languages. It offers professional development courses for librarians, teachers, educators and illustrators. It has instituted awards and curated booklists in the form of the Parag Honour List. The work has also involved setting up and activating thousands of school and community libraries in some of the most remote regions in the country.

Supporting Book Development:

Promoting Diversity and Equity In the book development space, the Parag initiative has mostly worked with non-profit publishers such as Eklavya. The focus has been on developing their publication wing with a focus on books in Hindi. It has also tried to foster collaborative publications in a few other Indian languages, including non-scheduled languages.

It has partnered with Centre for Learning Resources with a focus on bi-lingual books and early readers. With Pratham Books, Muskaan and Anveshi it has worked on the ‘Different Tales’ series with a focus on childhoods of marginalized communities. With Tulika, the initiative has focused on select non-fiction books, and books on disability, among others.

Important collaborations have also taken place with Jyotsna Prakashan and Nav Karnataka on re-imagining classics from Marathi and Kannada in children’s books. Similarly the initiative has worked with Moolagami Prakashan on early readers in tribal languages.

All this work has made us realize the need and challenges of working in multiple languages. Our effort has been to bring in a diversity in themes and representations of childhood, languages, and formats in children’s books. Another important goal has been to keep the prices affordable through book development support.

Developing Capacities, Enhancing Access

Professional development has been done through courses for library educators. These programs include the ‘Library Educator’s Course’ (LEC) and ‘Children’s Library Course’ (CLC) and the ‘E-course on Introduction to Children’s Libraries.’ The initiative has also run a yearlong blended course for young illustrators through Riyaaz Academy with Ektara, Bhopal. The goal is to equip them to illustrate for children. Sustained investments in strengthening collections and professional development are central to activating library spaces in schools and communities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw sudden and prolonged closure of schools. Several efforts were made by many to explore online and digital means of reaching children.

We realized limitations of these formats both with respect to effectiveness and reach. The problems were especially compounded for young children in remote areas, where face to face local contact was most effective in engaging with children. We saw many ways in which partners and communities reached out to children.

Community volunteers in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, the Kumao region of Uttarakhand, and in South Odisha, took books through mobile libraries to children in their hamlets. These volunteers traveled on foot, cycle or scooter once a week.

Home libraries were set up by active School Management Committee members in Khunti district of Jharkhand in their veranda. In Pali district of Rajasthan and Yadgir in north Karnataka, children, who were members of their schools’ children’s library committees, set up libraries.

Open access, locally made bookshelves were set up in Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh. These became places for children and adults to pick a book of their choice and return it on the shelf after reading.

All these adaptations in library access and work were possible due to prior investments in developing good collections of books in the school libraries which were opened up at the community level. Building a cadre of educators and community volunteers who believed in the power of books, open access and meaningful activities around books was also critical. It was these investments, done prior to the pandemic, which helped in running various forms of libraries during the pandemic. This highlights the importance of professional development efforts.

To aid this process of development, Parag has worked on a first-of-its kind, blended, Library Educator’s Course. It has been developed and offered by Tata Trusts in Hindi and Bookworm in English. This course is building a cadre of library educators. The alumni of this course now run libraries in schools and communities in diverse settings in multiple states of India.

Grooming a community of practitioners bound by a vision about vibrant libraries and the role these can play in transforming the reading experiences of children, teachers, schools and communities is critical. However, this is also a slow and difficult process. We need to work in this area to energize library spaces across the country.

Libraries, the Culture of Reading and Learning

Education Commissions and policies have repeatedly highlighted the need and provisioning of libraries. However, our education system, and the society at large, do not have easy access to functional, vibrant libraries for all children. We do not even miss not having such access. This is to do with our education system, which is dominated by recall-based examinations. Krishna Kumar, well known educationist, elaborates this phenomenon and why we have struggled to build a culture of reading and reasons why reading for pleasure has remained undermined in the country.

These challenges are real and need to be addressed. However, there are a number of emerging examples that give us hope. The post-pandemic world reminds us of the need to have multiple learning spaces for children. These spaces may be in schools, homes and in communities.

Libraries can potentially function as open, inclusive, safe and guided spaces for children. They can help them expand their skills, knowledge and motivation to learn and make sense of the world around. We have a growing number of professionals, organizations and networks who are championing this at multiple levels.

One of the key recommendations of National Education Policy 2020 is on building foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) skills in children. This has now taken the form of NIPUN Bharat mission. This policy goal is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve without functional libraries in schools and classrooms.

Learning to read with understanding, and being able to express one’s thoughts and emotions through writing, is fundamental to FLN. Meaningful use of literature in class will go a long way in building desire, interest and competence in children. This will also help them become independent readers and writers. It will fuel overall development of children as well, through the world that literature opens up for its readers.

It is my firm believe that a cadre of trained library educators, who can select diverse reading material for children, help children connect their lived experiences with books, become examples of adults who draw joy and purpose though reading literature, will transform the landscape of reading for pleasure, one library at a time!