The success of libraries like Akshara and Kaleidoscope perhaps lie in the freedom that they offer children. They recognize that different children have different preferences, and it is therefore important to make available a wide range of books. They do not insist that the children read a particular author or genre of writing. When children are exposed to a variety of books, they will have the opportunity to experiment with something that they are not familiar with. They also support interests other than reading.

I cannot believe that some schools actually choose the books for children to read. Really kills the joy of discovery, apart from assuming that everyone is reading at the same level.

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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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“Tcheh!” my mother used to say, employing her favourite dismissive term, when she would see me, aged about eight, staring at the illustration of a young Parvati playing, in my Amar Chitra Katha comic, “Tales of the Mother Goddess”. The coy smile, the large eyes, the sweetness Parvati dripped from every pore had me riveted, for two whole years at least.

“Parvati doesn’t look like that,” my mother would say, disgusted.

“How do you know?,” I would ask, my eyes still glued to the page. A valid question, not just because Parvati belongs to the ethereal realms, but because my mother is an atheist.

“Our goddesses don’t look like Barbie dolls,” my mother would reply and that was that. She continued to buy me Amar Chitra Katha comics however, because I devoured them. In between, of course, I was taken all over the country and shown sculptures, paintings and temples which depicted the goddesses rather differently.

Several years later, an interest in goddesses and goddess worship (and an inability to appreciate Amar Chitra Kathas any more) led to reading some academic books on the subject. I purchased a copy of the Chandi Path (also known as the Devi Mahatmyam and the Durga Saptashati) translated by Swami Satyananda Saraswati.Hymns from the Chandi were familiar to me, but I had never read the whole thing from start to finish.

What appealed to me and what stands out immediately in Swami Satyananda Saraswati’s translation was that it has the Sanskrit text in Devanagari (in a nice large font) followed by the transliteration in English which in turn is followed by the translation. Thus, if one wants to read the Sanskrit side by side with the translation, this version makes it very easy.

The Devī Māhātmya consists of chapters 81-93 of the Mārkandeya Purana, one of the early Sanskrit Puranas, which is a set of stories being related by the sage Markandeya to Jaimini and his students (who are in the form of birds). The thirteen chapters of Devi Māhātmya are divided into three charitas or episodes. At the beginning of each episode a different presiding goddess is invoked, none of whom is mentioned in the text itself.

The framing narrative of Devi Mahatmya presents a dispossessed king, a merchant betrayed by his family, and a sage whose teachings lead them both beyond existential suffering. The sage instructs by recounting three different epic battles between the Devi and various demonic adversaries (the three tales being governed by, respectively, Mahakali (Chapter 1), Mahalakshmi (Chapters 2-4) and Mahasaraswati (Chapters 5-13). Most famous is the story of Mahishasura Mardini – Devi as “Slayer of the Buffalo Demon” – one of the most ubiquitous images in Hindu art and sculpture, and a tale known almost universally in India. Among the important goddess forms the Devi Mahatmyam introduced into the Sanskritic mainstream are Kali and the Sapta-Matrika (“Seven Mothers”).

link

It being the occasion of Navratri, I finally embarked on a complete reading and recitation of the text, including the extra Angas (limbs or appendages) often attached at the beginning and end of the text, such as the Devi Kavacham and the Argala Stotram. I decided to recite it over nine days as is traditionally done.

These texts are meant to be spoken, not silently read, even if one is not praying or reading them as part of ritual. Reciting the text enabled a greater appreciation of the sound and flow of the language (which is especially beautiful in the hymnic parts such as in the Ya Devi hymn and the Narayani Stuti) and the meanings that attach to it (it should go without saying that it is not possible to attach a single meaning to the Mahatmya).

It is possible to say the seven hundred verses are simply telling us quite a gripping story about the Goddess destroying the asuras Shumbha, Nishumbha and Mahishasur-no doubt embedded in many people’s memory as the dark demons in Amar Chitra Katha. On the other hand, there have been several commentaries on the Mahatmyam, both ancient and contemporary, that discuss all the various layers that the verses hint at:

Coburn says:

The sage’s three tales are allegories of outer and inner experience, symbolized by the fierce battles the all-powerful Devi wages against throngs of demonic foes. Her adversaries represent the all-too-human impulses arising from the pursuit of power, possessions and pleasure, and from illusions of self-importance. Like the battlefield of the Bhagavad Gita, the Devi Mahatmya’s killing grounds represent the field of human consciousness … The Devi, personified as one supreme Goddess and many goddesses, confronts the demons of ego and dispels our mistaken idea of who we are, for – paradoxically – it is she who creates the misunderstanding in the first place, and she alone who awakens us to our true being.

link

Swami Satyananda Saraswati has sought to unpack the esoteric meaning of the Mahatmya by translating not just the text but the names of the characters, by examining the root meanings of the words. For example he translates Asuras as “thoughts”. He says in his introduction:

In the case of the enemies of the Gods, Asuras, which has been rendered as “Thoughts,” primarily the root meanings of the words have been employed. Asuras in Vaidika usage is an epithet of both the Gods and their enemies alike. It means variously: spiritual, incorporeal, divine, a good spirit; an evil spirit, an opponent of the Gods. In the Puranic literature it is almost exclusively in this latter sense that the term is used. Just as the Gods or Devas are the forces of clear perception, their opponents must be those that obscure clear perception-self-centred, egotistical thoughts.

Brahma’s name is translated most often as the “Creative Capacity” and Shiva is translated as the “Consciousness of Infinite Goodness”. Take the lines “Tato-tikopa Purnasya cakrino vadanAt tatah
NishakrAm mahattejo brahmanah shankarasya cha”

They are translated as:

And in excessive rage a great light emanated from the face of He Who Holds the Discus of Revolving Time, and from the Creative Capacity and the Consciousness of Infinite Goodness

These lines could have been translated as “And in excessive rage a great light emanated from the face of Vishnu, and from Brahma and Shiva.” Satyananda Saraswati’s translation is interesting because it does not remain literal, and in not doing so, is revealing another way of looking at the Mahatmya. At times all the various deconstructed names of the characters do get a bit overwhelming and it is possible for one to lose the thread of the narration. It would have been nice to retain the names, at least in brackets. So “True Wealth” could have been followed by Lakshmi in brackets and the “Spirit of All Pervading Knowledge” by Saraswati and “The Reliever of Difficulties” by Durga.

Chandi, in this translation, is the the Goddess who tears apart all thought, though she herself is the cause of all delusion. The Chandi Path is about how Self- Conceit, Self-Deprecation and the Great Ego (the asuras) inspire selfishness and how to surrender these thoughts to the Goddess.

On the question of thought, Maya, ego and selfishness-adharma in general, there are many commentaries, including those on the Chandi. One might not agree with this way of looking at thought and the processes of the human mind, nonetheless, this is a translation that I would recommend, to be read along with other translations, as the Chandi not only contains poetic brilliance but some interesting philosophical concepts to chew over. In short, it can be read by the interested student of literature and philosophy, who may not have a particularly religious bent of mind and by the devotee.

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When we were in fifth standard we began learning Marathi in school. The classes were the most stultifyingly boring I have ever attended in my life. The text book, the teacher-everything was so dry, anyone without any previous exposure to the language would have had any nascent interest in it killed immediately. When I was in the eighth standard I started learning French at the Alliance Francaise. The approach was entirely different-based on the fun and beauty of the language, a fun and beauty that Marathi certainly doesn’t lack. I did three languages for my board exams, both in class ten and twelve. The thought of choosing Marathi, though the option existed, did not even cross my mind. I chose French-simply on the basis that those classes were more enjoyable and taught better. It took a move to London, a yearning for the sound of one of the languages of my childhood, a chance encounter with a Marathi speaker who taught while he was doing something else, for me to start studying the language seriously again. I am making it interesting for me to learn, but I am an adult and children need their teachers to do that for them.

This time while I was in Mumbai, Mr. Raj Thackeray’s grumblings about people not speaking Marathi etc etc were still reverberating. He can throw as many tantrums as he likes. His hoodlums can cause trouble. He can wag his finger at the people all he likes, and stick it ominously in the air all he likes (what is it with Indian politicians and the finger anyway?) But that is not the way to make people want to learn a language.

I wish Mr. Thackeray would DO something for Marathi. DO something that doesn’t involve hectoring and abusing North Indians. Do something that makes kids want to run to their Marathi class, because it’s fun. Make Marathi medium schools world class. Send the teachers on courses so they learn how to teach the language. Promote Marathi literature and poetry. Expose people to the joys of Marathi music. Hold festivals. Spend money on these things, rather than on more statues of Shivaji that will be mute spectators to the demise of the language, starting with the schools.

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