We lived in a tiny flat for most of my childhood and it overflowed with my parents’ papers (they are both in professions that require the use of a lot of paper) and their books. If they were interested in something they bought the book.

While my father was the one who made up stories to tell us every night, I owe my love of books to my mother. My mother would receive cheques in the mail for her work, paltry sums, but the cheques would cause much excitement, because they meant a visit to the bookshop. Mum would open the envelope, do a little jig around the room with me ( I would already be hopping and down with excitement) and a couple of days later we would be off to Strand Book Stall whose redoubtable owner, Mr. Shanbag, recently passed away. My mother would give me a free run at the book shop and I would place a little pile on Mr. Shanbag’s desk to take home. I think she cut down on her selections to accomodate mine. Sometimes we would go to Book Point, a shop near Ballard Pier.

There is nothing I like better than telling people which children’s books I have enjoyed. A and I still do read a fair amount of children’s literature and though we aren’t up to speed with a lot of the newer authors, the authors mentioned below should still find a place in a child’s library. The list below concentrates on non-Indian writers and books available in English and is not at all comprehensive. Hopefully one day I will be able to do a list that includes Indian literature.

Many books I read fervently and occasionally re-read now, but do not consider essential, have been left out, such as the Chalet School series. Aishwarya blogs about this series as well as children’s writers and the pitfalls of such advice as giving your hair a good, hard brushing until your scalp tingles.The more recent and well-known series such as Harry Potter do not feature in this list either.

I haven’t mentioned what age which book is appropriate for-that research can be left to the parents who can decide what they think is appropriate. Also, deciding on “age appropriateness” is often a highly subjective process, both for parents and children.

Here are some books/authors I think a children’s library MUST have:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If you’re an adult and haven’t read it, read it now. My sister R2 identified strongly with Scout, as she also used to sit on my father’s knee, behind the newspaper.

2. ALL of Diana Wynne-Jones. She was around much before JK Rowling and really understands magic and the way it works-without wands. In particular I’d recommend the Chrestomanci Series (start with The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1: Charmed Life / The Lives of Christopher Chant), Dogsbody, Archer’s Goon, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Merlin Conspiracy.

3. Noel Streatfield who wrote wonderful books about children on the stage. I think her most popular book is Ballet Shoes, but my favourite is Curtain Up (later published under the not so appealing title of “Theatre Shoes“).

4. Gerald Durrell-for a love of animals, nature, and his sense of humour.

5. James Herriot-essential for the same reason as above, but told from the point of view of a vet or a naturalist.

6. The Moomin series.

7. The Lord of the Rings. I am not a fan but A would be very unhappy if I did not include it on any “must have” list.

8. Asterix comics. I prefer those by Goscinny, i.e. the older ones.

9. Tin Tin comics(not a fan again, but appreciate it from a distance).

10.The The Anne of Green Gables series (Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne’s House of Dreams, … Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside) by L.M Montgomery is well known and well recommended but the Emily of New Moon series is well worth reading too.

11. Everything by Garth Nix. His books have a lot to do with death, especially the The Abhorsen Trilogy Box Setseries, and can be quite frightening, but ultimately they are about overcoming fear. I think you should be over ten or eleven to read them. Start with Sabriel, she’s lovely.

12. Everything by Philip Pullman, though you/your child needs someome to hug after reading the The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3), the last book in theHis Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass). They are available in one volume or separately.

13. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Was delighted when I met Chox recently for all of twenty minutes and her two precious girls and the elder one had her nose buried in this book. Please READ THE BOOK FIRST before watching the film! I received a second-hand copy from friends of my parents who lived in the US, whose son had read it. Read it ’til the pages fell out. It’s all about a bored little boy called Milo, who gets a magic tollbooth as a present and enters a world that isn’t so boring after all. This is a book that reveals something new after each re-reading-it’s full of puns and wordplay and mathematical fun.

14. All of Astrid Lindgren. My favourite from the ones I read was Ronia the Robber’s Daughter. The most popular is the Pippi Longstocking series, my favourite is Ronia the Robber’s Daughter.

15. Roald Dahl. I’ve gone off him but he is a phenomenon.

16. Philippa Pearce wrote gems like TOM’ S MIDNIGHT GARDEN and The Way to Sattin Shore.

17. All of Nina Bawden. My favourite is Carrie’s War. The context is the time during WW2 when children in London were evacuated to the countryside. But Bawden has a way of understanding how a young person might see the world, an understanding that many may find universal.

18. All of Jane Austen, of course.

19. The Bronte sisters-particularly Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and perhaps Agnes Gray as well.

20. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women , Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys.

21. Edward Lear’s The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense.

22. T.S Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Essential to understand the feline mind.

23. All of E. Nesbitt, in particular The Railway Children.

24. Jane and the Kenilwood Occurrences. This book was picked up for me by my mother at Book Point, for Rs. 20. Loved it deeply. Some years later, someone borrowed it and never returned it. Fast forward to several years later, when A tracked it down second hand and gave me a copy for a birthday along with my first laptop. Now no one is allowed to borrow it. It’s out of print now, but I’ve seen it on ebay and Amazon. Buy it now if you can, before it disappears and becomes totally out of reach. It’s about a very special relationship between a girl, Jane, and her eccentric grandfather, who can make things happen with his “thoughts.” What these “thoughts” do to a quiet English village and Jane and her family forms the substance of the book, hilarious and tender at the same time.

25. Playing Beatie Bow, by Ruth Park an Australian writer. It is a romance but suitable for those aged around 12+. Very tenderly written book about growing up and friendships, but also includes time travel. I still read it often-there’s something about it that just stays with you, a certain warmth, that makes you want to keep going back to it.

26. Carbonel: The King of Cats The Kingdom of Carbonel and Carbonel and Calidor by Barbara Sleigh. Carbonel is a talking cat and “belongs” to a girl named Rosemary (or is it vice-versa? With cats one can never be sure). Written a long time ago, but magical even today.

27. Books by Helen Cresswell. I was much taken by the Bagthorpe Saga , but I don’t know how well that would go down today. The Piemakers and Lizzie Dripping remain perennial favourites. I wrote to Cresswell from India as a child, and she made my day (and year) by replying.

28. Betsy Byars: Haven’t kept up with all her books, and she’s written some new ones. She writes for all ages.

29. Margaret Storey’s (not the mystery writer) Melinda Farbright series. Melinda Farbright is a witch, and a very special part of the life of two children, Timothy and Ellen. The books are absolutely wonderful, haunting, scary and of course magical, but not too scary, because Melinda is a safe reassuring presence throughout.But they are out of print. Some are available second hand. I’d snap them up.

30. Another Margaret-Margaret Mahy from New Zealand. Lots of books to choose from.

31. Susan Cooper-The Dark Is Rising Series (The Dark Is Rising, Greenwitch, Over Sea, Under Stone, Silver on the Tree, The Grey King) is her most famous work.

Please do add your own favourites in the comments, especially if they aren’t Enid Blytons and Roald Dahls. Might feel inspired to do another post based on your recommendations (please add a few details about the books if you can), or feel free to take it up as a tag.

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The prologue introduces us to Siddharth and his father, at the point where Siddharth’s father has decided he’s had enough of making commercial Hindi cinema and walks out of a film set, abandoning a film before it is complete.

This decision means a move from Bombay to Pune, while Siddharth’s father works on his non-song and dance masterpeice. It also means an adjustment, for the whole family, to new circumstances in the quieter city. Siddharth’s mother is an expert reteller of myths; she uses these stories to help Siddharth answer the questions he has, and to reassure him, amidst the confusions and upsets the move brings.

Readers brought up in middle class homes in India, before the advent of liberalisation and channels other than Doordarshan, will recognise the familiar motifs of the eighties and the much slower pace of life that was common then. Some will also remember how it was a time of unease and violence, due to the presence of a certain brand of communal politics and the different shapes this took, from the anti-Sikh riots to Thackeray’s new vendettas.

This is a coming of age of tale, centred around key events that are triggered by the fact that Siddharth sets off a firecracker, a rare act of disobedience, on the day of a cricket match between India and Pakistan. The setting off of the firecracker results in events that cause Siddharth’s life to change irrevocably.

The consequences of setting off the firecracker are faced by Siddharth at home and at school. In addition, he faces changes outside-his best friend (who had given him the firecracker) is drawn to a local bully, who in turn is part of a right-wing party (the Narad Sena headed by Jajasaheb Baapre) that advocates the destruction and removal of Muslims from India. Siddharth is mostly repulsed, but also briefly attracted by the anti-Muslim rhetoric. How Siddharth deals with personal tragedy and the changes it brings, while simultaneously growing up and making sense of the world around him forms the gist of this book.

Krishnan is good at capturing the turbulence of growing up, weaving a tale that is at once humorous and tender. But one wishes he didn’t feel the need to spell things out so much-such as the thinly veiled reference to Bal Thackeray, motivated perhaps by the desire to clearly point him out as the villain in real life. Even children and young adults can be left to make up their own minds and don’t need everything explained to them. However, the meeting between Siddharth and Jajasaaheb and Jajasaaheb’s attempted manipulation of Siddharth’s tragedy to suit his own ends, realistically evokes how proponents of this brand of politics don’t actually care about the people they claim to represent.

The illustrations by Aditi Raychoudhary also suffer from being burdened by the need to spell things out. My only quibble about the drawings, which are otherwise sensitively executed, are the large titles they have emblazoned across them-one can surely guess, for example, that the illustration of the “man-lion,” is Narasimha (who is explicitly referred to and described in the text already) without the words telling us so? Ironically, the book’s website has this to say about the illustrations:

The Loudest Firecracker is sensitive to the needs of word-weary consumers of the information age. This is why The Loudest Firecracker includes beautiful illustrations that are a calming recipe for the tired mind.

The illustrations by Aditi Raychoudhury won’t wear you out by speaking a thousand words. They are content to remain silent so that you can bask in their exquisite detail.

Ultimately, Siddharth rejects the Narad Sena, his father makes a film without song and dance routines that does well, and he begins to overcome his tragedy: a game of tennis helps him to reach a decision of sorts and the sight of a dog brings back memories that give him hope for the future.

Monumental themes from mythology to Bollywood to communal riots have been tackled succintly and some may wish that Krishnan had developed some of these further, while others might simply accept the book as a description of life-changing vignettes recounted from a child’s perspective. Either way, one hopes that more Indian authors will write with young adults in mind and that this is just a beginning for Krishnan.

Note: The book’s official website with an excerpt can be found here. Thanks to Arun Krishnan for sending me the book, not once but twice, since it got lost in the mail the first time around.

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In that castle there lived an enchanter, all by himself. At night, or whenever he felt like it, he transformed himself into a bat, and sometimes he could be seen by people on passing boats (when the island was visible) flying out of the highest window of the tower. The enchanter bat, known as the Bat for short, was rarely seen in human form, and didn’t talk to anybody. As a result he had a reputation for being a rather grumpy sort.

One morning when the Bat got out of his bed (shaped like a coffin because he liked to sometimes pretend he was a vampire bat) he heard a thump. He went to investigate and found a medium sized parcel had arrived for him in the mail, with holes on the top and that appeared to be padded inside. He could hear something that sounded like a buzzing and a low growling sound coming from inside the box. Being fearless, of course, the Bat opened the box only to find a cat asleep inside, all curled up and obviously having a happy dream. The Bat could tell this cat was a human enchantress, but was a contrary sort, and would not turn human unless she felt like it or was overcome by powerful feeling. The Bat did not like this, as he wanted to be the only contrary sort around.

“Who has sent me this cat,” he wondered. “I shall post her right back.” But he couldn’t find a return address, and for some reason his magical powers weren’t helping him any further in finding out about the magical cat.

“Oh well,” sighed the Bat in exasperation. “I guess I’ll have to keep her until I find out where to return her.”

So he picked her up and put her on the couch, where she continued to sleep (he was later to discover that she spent rather a lot of time sleeping). As he laid her down he couldn’t help but admire her stripy and golden-brown-red fur. She seemed to change colour and gleam in the sunlight. The Bat then flew up the winding staircase of his tower and out of the highest window to attend an Enchanters’ mathematical convention, a place where, if you or I had gone, we would not have understood anything, but would perhaps have been able to appreciate the beauty of the fractals the Bat put on show.

It was late evening by the time the Bat flew back home, carrying the smell of sea salt in his hair and wings. He had almost forgotten about the cat. He flew down to the kitchen to make himself a strong cup of Assam tea (if you looked carefully around the castle you would see several half-drunk cups of strongly brewed tea, congealing, their tea bags still in them, waiting perhaps for a future archaeologist) and stopped short. There, near the vast fireplace, was the cat. In the fireplace was a heap of black and grey suits and light blue shirts, in fact, the Bat’s entire wardrobe, burning away.

“What are you doing?” demanded the Bat in horror.

“Burning your clothes of course,”said the Cat with a swish of her tail.

“But why?”cried the Bat.

“They’re so boring, all greys and blacks,” replied the Cat, adding, “by the way you look cute with your hair all standing on end and windswept like that. And you smell of the sea, nice. Tuck your shirt out, it looks silly and prim tucked in like that.”

The Bat was just about to decide whether he was very angry or very happy, so confused had the cat made him, when he noticed an empty bottle of Chateau-Sang, his best and oldest wine of which he had only two bottles. Next to it were the remains of a chocolate cake, that just that morning had been delivered to the Bat’s fridge (by a special service called www.theenchantersocado.com) and that he had been looking forward to eating with his two sips of tea (the rest was meant for congealing).

The Bat was outraged. “Out,” he shrieked, “Out.”

“But I don’t need to go out,” said the Cat.

“I mean leave,” yelled the Bat.

“I can’t,” said the Cat. “This is my castle too now.”

The Bat fell silent. He knew that cats decided where and with whom they lived, not the other way around, and it was very bad magic indeed to turn out a cat, particularly an enchantress cat. He risked losing his own magic if he did that.

“Have a slice of cake,” said the Cat generously, pointing to the thin slice of cake left on the plate. “You’ll feel better. Also do you have some cheese? I’m feeling a bit drunk and the cheese would do me good.”

“What, you want cheese now?” asked the Bat incredulously.

“I eat cheese at all times of the day,”said the cat sniffily. “The smellier and Frenchier the better, though I am partial to mature English Stilton as well.”

“You’ll just have to make do with the Dutch Edam then, that’s in the fridge,” said the Bat. “I hate smelly cheese. I’ll order some for you tomorrow.” With that he went off in a huff to his chambers in the basement, which were shrouded in darkness, and where he could let off some steam by playing some vampire computer games.

The Bat played many games and began to feel much happier after producing some very loud banging noises that rattled the whole castle, before finally climbing the stairs to lock up for the night and to check the cat wasn’t making off with his second bottle of Chateau-Sang or stealing his magical telescope.

The Bat found that the cat was asleep again on the couch, but this time the couch had grown both longer and wider and was covered with cool white silk sheets. The breeze from the sea was coming in from the window, and the Bat could see the cat was taking on her human form. She seemed to be small-built and elegant, like her cat self, but had long black-brown hair with a few hits of red and gold, that was blowing about in the breeze. As if pulled that way by her hair the Bat wandered over to the couch-bed (the cat later admitted, when confronted by the Bat, that she was administering magic through her hair and was only pretending to sleep).

Still in a daze, he reached down and stroked the Cat’s back, which he decided had a very pleasing feel to it. The Cat sighed and reached out and pulled him down next to her, all woman now. She twined herself around him and felt his enchanter hands with their long, graceful fingers, meant for playing the piano and finding the hollows in her back, combing her hair back, away from his face so that it wouldn’t tickle him.

The Bat found himself curling around the Cat, all man now. They twirled and wound around each other so that you couldn’t tell one from the other, and because they were magical creatures, if you were watching, which you shouldn’t have been, all you would have seen was rays of dazzling lights dancing and streaming around each other.

The next morning the Bat and the Cat woke up, still in their human form, and still twined around each other.

“I think I’d like to have you here, drinking my best wine and eating my cake and my cheese for ever,” said the Bat.

“Mmmm,” said the Cat, who was distracted by the shape of the Bat’s mouth.

The Bat pulled her hair a little (which was tangled in his large watch) to get her attention.

“Ok, I’ll stay,” said the Cat. “But only if you promise to stop wearing grey and black, at least on the weekends, when you have no conventions to attend.”

The Bat did promise (he only forgot every once in a while) and so the Cat and the Bat got married and lived happily ever after. They had many adventures in-between of course, but I’ll tell you about those on another day.

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