The Children’s Literature sector in India has seen many positive shifts in the last two decades. The market has grown, the work of the existing not-for-profit and for-profit publishers has strengthened, new voices and publishers have emerged, and efforts to strengthen the sector like children’s book awards have increased. While the volume of increase in children’s literature published is significant in languages such as English and Hindi, there is still much to do in other regional languages, both in terms of quantity and quality.
Parag, an initiative of the Tata Trusts, set up about two decades ago, supports the development of and access to good quality story books for children in Indian languages. It supports school and community libraries so that children have free access to books and an open and vibrant environment that supports reading for pleasure. Parag also works to nurture the children’s literature sector through awards, professional courses and linking various stakeholders together through events for teachers, librarians and facilitators.
Recognizing this sector gap, Parag instituted the Parag Honour List (PHL) in 2019. It is a first of its kind effort in India, of an annual independently curated list of outstanding books published in Hindi and English across genres and age-groups. An independent jury with a deep understanding of children’s literature reviews a number of entries and curates the PHL. The list aims to promote access to a comprehensive curated list of good quality children’s literature that librarians, teachers, parents and children can refer to and read. Previous jury members have been writers, poets and sector experts, the likes of Usha Mukunda, Mini Shrinivasan, Sandhya Rao, Arvind Gupta, Samina Mishra, Arun Kamal, Gurbachan Singh, Prachi Kalra, Manoj Kumar, Teji Grover, and so on.
The Parag Honour List, first launched in January 2020 at the New Delhi World Book Fair, has so far received books from 30+ publishers on various themes for the age group 0-16 years. The books comprise original writings in the category of picture books, young readers and young adults, in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The selection of the books is a year long process. A separate jury is constituted for both languages at the beginning of the year. The jury members review the books submitted by the publishers through the next 8 months, and arrive at a shortlist. They then meet for a deliberation and finalization of the Honour List in both languages. The list is then launched at the beginning of the next year and disseminated across schools, publishers, sector experts, book stores and government officials.
An important aspect of such an honour list of books is its relevance in shifting the larger discourse and understanding of creation, recognition, and thus readership of quality children’s literature. Its larger intent being that such a list inspires better quality books to be produced and read, and that parents and practitioners have easy access to quality literature on diverse, age appropriate and contemporary themes.
Now in its fourth year, the PHL has so far featured over 135+ books in Hindi and English. As a part of dissemination efforts and increasing readership of these books, Parag constituted the Parag Book Box initiative. Every year after the honour list is announced, a call for application is sent out to under-resourced schools and community libraries who avail of the PHL book box. So far over 480+ libraries have thus been able to add the most outstanding books of the year to their collection, in some of the most remote locations across the country. Parag also disseminates them through children’s literature festivals, by featuring the list in newspapers and magazines and engaging with practitioners/educators in building deeper understanding of recognizing and working with good books.
While PHL will continue to put out a carefully curated list of books every year, much effort needs to be made to help strengthen adaptation, especially in promoting such lists into schools and institution networks. Further, publishers need to invest in translating recognized books, helping good quality children’s literature travel between languages and reach a wider audience.
This needs to be a collective effort, and we hope that the larger eco-system of publishers, educators, library practitioners, creators, schools, parents and readers can come together to make good quality children’s literature accessible to all children.
Lakshmi Karunakaran, a telecom engineer, communication specialist and educator, leads the Parag Initiative at Tata Trusts. Over the past
decade, she has worked with children experiencing social exclusion in government schools, special needs schools, remedial schools, and in
disadvantaged communities, including the Buguri Children’s Program reaching 5000 children of waste-pickers in Karnataka and Andhra
Pradesh. In 2017, she was an artist in residence at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Warsaw, working on children from abandoned mines in
Poland. She writes regularly for Teacher Plus, a magazine for contemporary teachers.