Meet the Authors - Sowmya Rajendran

Karadi interviews Sowmya Rajendran, the author of our latest title: The Dog Who Wanted More: A Rulebreakers' Club Adventure.

Karadi: What made you take up children’s writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children’s writer? 

Sowmya: It wasn't a conscious decision to write for children. I've been blogging for many years now and a publisher who had newly entered the market wrote to me asking if I wanted to write children's books for them. Niveditha Subramaniam, my friend from college, and I had already discussed writing and illustrating children's stories together among other things, so we worked on this project as a team.

Being a children's writer is a tremendous opportunity and responsibility. You have to be careful about what you say but you can't be so careful that you become a crashing bore. Children are honest readers and they will not read you if you are not interesting - that kind of genuine feedback is very useful to a writer! I also think writing for children has freed me of many writing constraints. The obvious disadvantage is that it doesn't pay. You can't pay your bills being a full-time children's writer in India.

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?
Sowmya: Not necessarily. But you have to like many of those wonderful characteristics that most children and some lucky adults have. The ability to imagine, make leaps of faith, enjoy a funny joke, celebrate nonsense, feel kinship with non-human creatures and objects, be sensitive to the world around you. I was never the type of person who went around kissing random babies (I have exhibited this tendency after my daughter came along though!) but I've always enjoyed writing for children. And I also happen to like adults who can still enjoy a good children's book. 

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?
Sowmya: My favourite books are all ones in which I've learned something about my fellow humans that I had not realized earlier. They are books that have made me understand and like the world around me a little more. This doesn't mean they are books with happy endings or that they are comedies. Some of these books are quite dark, even tragic, but they have taught me well. My favourite authors are JD Salinger, Zadie Smith, RK Narayan, Virginia Woolf, Marjane Satrapi.
My favourite children's books are No, David! by David Shannon, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, The Seed by Deepa Balsavar, Puffin Peter by Petr Horacek....there are so many! And I've only mentioned picture books.

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?
Sowmya: My current writing routine is my daughter's nap-time routine! I write when she sleeps - for about three hours a day.
Sometimes the story comes easily - an idea that comes from something someone said or did. Then, I just get started with the idea and allow the story to flow as I write. Sometimes, I work out the plot beforehand and write. Especially when I'm writing on a tight deadline or writing for a certain purpose - for instance, I write many picture books and illustrated stories for children for education programs, so there, I have to submit my ideas, get approval and then work on them. It's more clearly defined. 

Karadi: What are you currently working on?
Sowmya: I'm working on a graphic novel for young adults for Penguin. It's a funny, possibly feminist, take on romance as the movies show it and romance as it is in real life. I'm also working on a collection of short stories for adults.

The Dog Who Wanted More is the first book in the exciting four-part Rulebreakers' Club adventure series by Sowmya Rajendran and Arun Kumar Kaushik, and it can be purchased on www.karaditales.com. 

Meet the Authors - Chitra Soundar

Meet Chitra Soundar, the author of Farmer Falgu Goes on a Trip - Karadi Tales' newest title that is all set to be launched this Sunday at Isha Life, Mylapore, Chennai!

Karadi:  What made you take up children’s writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children’s writer?

Chitra: I was one of the oldest in our extended family. I loved stories – to read, to listen to and to tell. I grew up in the tradition of listening to oral tales from my mother and grandma. So I started telling stories to my little cousins.

Even today I love the imagination and humour in children’s books – especially picture books and can’t imagine writing anything else. I’ve just started telling stories now in bookstores and the like and I’ve realized how much I missed telling stories.

I’m not sure there are any disadvantages of being a children’s writer – except some funny stares in the trains in London when people see me reading children’s books.

The advantages are many. I can explain why I’m crawling on the museum floor to think like a baby, take photos of funny mushrooms and clouds shaped like a rhino. I enjoy thinking about what would make a child happy or sad. I love the imagination of the 4-9 year age-group – where dragons can fly and fairies can appear out of cupcakes.

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?

Chitra: I love kids. I love being with babies and toddlers. My sister calls me a baby whisperer. But I don’t have any children of my own. It is definitely easy research if you had a wandu of your own. I have a little nephew now and I’m sure he’s going to appear in my stories soon.

Being a good children’s author is about the craft; about understanding the language, the topics that kids would love to read, and writing stories that inspire, excite and kindle their imaginations. It is about teaching life to new human beings without being didactic and preachy.

Arguably you need not like children to write for children – the same way you don’t have to kill to write murder mysteries.

But the difference is that kids want to meet with their authors, get to know them. It helps enormously if you like them and enjoy their company. Many children’s writers I know, are mums, dads, teachers and librarians who come into contact with children as part of their daily lives and enjoy their company and respect their audience.

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?

Chitra: I love reading picture books and stories for young readers. I used to devour every Enid Blyton book ever written, every Nancy Drew. But now I read children’s books for both pleasure and research.

I love reading poetry by Roger McGough, stories by Michael Morpugo, Horrid Henry series by Francesca Simon and many more.I buy more than 10 books a month and borrow a lot of them from the library. Whenever I visit India, I buy a suitcase full of books from here.

As an adult, especially when I am travelling I love reading crime. I also read biographies.

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?

Chitra: I work full-time in a bank here in London. So I write in the mornings before going to work or during the weekends. I also scribble ideas, first lines, titles for new stories while I’m on the bus or in the train.

Usually my picture books start with an idea. I write 2 lines about the theme in my notebook first. Then I try to work through the story in 12 spreads (for a 32-page picture book).

I storyboard in a notebook until I know I have enough scenes that can be illustrated distinctly. Then I start writing the story – sometimes on the computer directly, sometimes in my notebook. I keep editing and revising the same story off and on for many weeks. Sometimes if it is not working or if it is not child-friendly or something that interests my reader, I will put it away.

Sometimes I put it away to get more perspective. If I come back and read the same story in a few weeks I need to like it as much as I did when the idea came.

If it is a chapter book, usually the words come first. I write the first chapter and keep going until the first burst of words is finished. Then I read it back and think about whether this has potential for a full chapter book. Will it work? Can I sustain the reader’s interest? Can I sustain my own interest for that long?

For me, chapter books take longer to finish than to start. I have a number of first chapters that I don’t have the time to pursue. Usually this is because I am already working on a project and a new idea just has to wait. But I do love the excitement of a new idea and the new first chapter.

Karadi: What are you currently working on?

Chitra: I am working on two projects now. One is a chapter book for 7 year olds – about two girls, Aurora Watts and Jessie Scully. Aurora is an inventor and Jessie is an athlete. Aurora’s honesty is challenged by a new super-power she acquires and together with Jessie, they try to solve problems around them.

The second book is a set of animal stories set in an Indian jungle with Mandy the monkey and Tula the tiger. I am working on the first two stories in the series and have ideas for more.

Meet the Authors - Kavitha Mandana

You do remember Kavitha Mandana, the author of one of our latest books - A Pair of Twins, don't you? Here, she talks to Karadi about remembering what it's like to be a child; her favourite children's books and her current projects. 

Karadi: What made you take up children’s writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children’s writer?

Kavitha: I really don’t have a clear reason. I sort of drifted into it. I had always wanted to illustrate, cartoon and doodle; so when I gave up being a copywriter in advertising, kids writing seemed a fun way to combine illustrating and writing.

I was lucky that my first story - one that I wrote and illustrated (Bando: The Dog Who Led a Double Life) got serialized in the Deccan Herald’s kids’supplement - Open Sesame. That gave me the confidence to keep going.  

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?

Kavitha: I’m not sure about that. Maybe good children’s writers are those who clearly remember what it was like being a child – the fun parts, as well as the scary or sad parts of childhood. Many grown ups forget that they too loved playing in the rain. Or didn’t do too well in school! AND were scared of the dark.

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?

Kavitha: I read whatever I could lay my hands on. My parents’ home and both my grandparents’ houses were lined with books, so I was lucky. I read the Enid Blytons, the What Katy Did series, the Little Women and Little Men books. I read my father’s Louis L’Amour westerns and the John Grishams of my teen years – Alistair McLean, Fredrick Forsythe, along with a lot of the classics.

Wind in the Willows is one of my favourite children’s books. Even now, I could quite happily spend an afternoon with Toad from Toad Hall. He is one of my all time favourite characters from literature!

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?

Kavitha: I wish I did, but unfortunately my teenaged daughter and dog manage to turn any routine on its head! I also work full time, so writing for children is an activity I indulge in when my ‘bread and butter’ job is done for the day.

Most of my stories rattle around and take shape inside my head first, sometimes over days and sometimes over months, before I key it into my computer.

Karadi: What are you currently working on?

Kavitha: LOTS of half-baked ideas that barely qualify to be mentioned! Other than that, Rupa’s Red Turtle books is bringing out my novel for young adults No 9 on the Shade Card in a few months. The editing has just been done. I am also working on illustrating a story of mine which appeared in the Deccan Herald a few years ago.

Meet the Authors - Devika Rangachari

Karadi interviews Devika Rangachari, the author of A Hundred Cartloads. Devika Rangachari has won 19 national awards in children's writing competitions. Her book, Growing Up was on the Honour List of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in 2002. Devika helps to run the Children’s Book Forum at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, and conducts creative writing workshops for children. She has also done her doctorate in Indian history and is currently engaged in post-doctoral research.

 

Karadi: What made you take up children's writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children's writer?

Devika: I was a voracious reader all through my childhood and adolescence (and even now!) and so, writing was a natural career choice for me. The advantages of being a children’s writer, as far as I’m concerned, is that you get to communicate your stories and, through them, your feelings, emotions and experiences to an extremely vibrant, intelligent and discerning audience. There aren’t any real disadvantages unless you consider the financial angle in that children’s writers are not always millionaires like J.K. Rowling!  

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?

Devika: A children’s writer need not necessarily like children but must have empathy and understanding towards them and their lives/ circumstances. She cannot write at them but for them and the difference comes about only by putting oneself in their shoes and looking at life through their eyes. I, for instance, have a very vivid memory of my schooldays, and my likes and dislikes at that stage and so, I write for and enjoy interacting with my target audience (largely 10-12 year-olds) because I empathise with and relate to them and their problems.

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?

Devika: I like reading fiction of all kinds, particularly historical fiction. I don’t like reading science fiction or ghost stories—the former because I was always hopeless at science and the latter because I have an overactive imagination and don’t want to get scared out of my wits by the stories I read. My favourite children’s books were (and are!) those written by Enid Blyton and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer—basically anything to do with school and the realities of growing up. I also loved books by Jean Plaidy (historical fiction), Georgette Heyer (Regency romances) and Mary Stewart (romance/ adventure) in my later years in school.    

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?

Devika: I don’t really have a fixed writing routine but work on my stories as and when ideas strike me. If I’m writing a historical story, I read through all the facts and then work on a basic framework in my mind before actually getting down to write. If it’s a realistic story, I think back to when I was in school at the particular age I’m talking about and let my memories guide me towards writing the story. I am also a historian (I am currently doing my post-doctoral research in history) and ideas for stories regularly strike me while I am looking through details of the past.  

Karadi: What are you currently working on?

Devika: I am working on two books at the moment—one is a collection of love stories from history and legends, and the other is a work of historical fiction on a Kashmiri queen. Both are for the 12-14 age group.  

Meet the authors - Uma Krishnaswami

After a long, long hiatus, the 'Meet the authors' series is back on our blog. This time, we feature Uma Krishnaswami, a prolific children's author and a teacher of writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has written over 20 picture books, illustrated books and novels for children, and her books have been published in India and abroad. She won the Crossword Book Award this year for Book Uncle and Me. 

Uma has reviewed some of our titles on her blog and for the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. Her books for Karadi Tales - Young Markandeya, Markandeya's Vision, Bheeshma and Karna - are yet to be published. 

Karadi: What made you take up children’s writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children’s writer?

Uma: I was a writer when I was a child, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t see myself as a writer, even though I read all the time, and wrote spontaneously, frequently, and for fun. It was not until my son was born and I began to collect children’s books for him that I remembered my early pleasure in reading and writing. It seemed natural to me to turn to writing books for young readers, since those were the texts that spoke to me so powerfully when I was young. 

Advantages? Disadvantages? That’s an interesting question. I don’t think of my work in those terms. I write for this audience because I can’t imagine doing anything else! If I’d known just how risky and unpredictable the business of writing is, I’d probably never have taken it up at all, so it’s just as well that I was clueless. 

I suppose the positive thing about writing for children is the freshness of the audience. Children are honest readers and they keep us honest as well when we write for them. The down side is that people in general, and even writers who write for grownups, sometimes think it must somehow be easier to write for children. It’s just a minor occupational annoyance and one that’s generally easy to laugh off. 

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?

Uma: No. You have to have been a child. You have to have a visceral, unsentimental memory of that time in your life. You have to look upon childhood and children with a clear eye and a lack of nostalgia. You don’t have to like children, in my opinion. That said, I do believe that you must respect them and you must never, never write down to them. If anything you have to write up to young readers. You have to trust that they can handle greater complexity and nuance than they’re usually given credit for being able to do.  

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?

Uma: I read impulsively and eclectically and completely at random—everything from fiction to nonfiction, adult to YA to children’s books. I read books in the forms I write in and others in forms—memoir, for example—that I’m not in the least tempted to try. Recently I’ve read and enjoyed the following, for example:

The Great Tamasha by James Astill—and no, I am not interested in cricket but this history of the game in India was really absorbing

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys—YA novel set in the Soviet era

Yarn: Remembering the Way Home by Kyoko Mori—a memoir of immigration, love, loss, and knitting. I can relate to all of it but especially the knitting.

As for my favourite children’s books here’s a partial list: http://www.fromthemixedupfiles.com/2013/11/multi-cultural-books-dead-not/

Charlotte’s Web and The Phantom Tollbooth are others I turn to repeatedly. In the picture book department, I think that Where the Wild Things Are is as close to perfect as one can get in a picture book, structurally and in terms of the economy of language. 

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?

Uma: I follow an anti-routine. I try to block in a few hours a week for writing time, except when I’m traveling. I make those appointments with myself. I vary the time of day, but I always keep the appointments. I make myself a cup of tea, settle down at my desk, and stay logged out of e-mail while I write. 

The process of writing a story varies with the story but in general I am not an outliner, and I don’t know ahead of time how a story will shape up, or what it’s really about, or what it means. I revise many, many times and in the process I surprise myself and eventually find out where the story’s going. 

Karadi: What are you currently working on?

Uma: Too many things at once, I’m afraid. A children’s novel I began back in 2006, a nonfiction project for which I’m just starting the research, and a couple of shorter pieces that are still quite unformed. 

Meet the Authors - Anushka Ravishankar

Anushka Ravishankar needs no introduction, does she? We all know that she is one of India's most well-loved children's writers and that she, along with Sayoni Basu, founded Duckbill Books. We also know that she is the head of SCBWI, India. Of course we know about her Karadi Tales books, don't we? The SABA-award-winning Rumour, The Boy Who Drew Cats, which was listed in the White Ravens catalogue and The Monkeys and the Capseller? Here we have the acclaimed author talking to Karadi about, what else but, children's writing!

Karadi: What made you take up children’s writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a children’s writer?

Anushka: I often say that I started writing for children because I found so few Indian books for kids when I was looking for them, in the late eighties/early nineties. But that was probably the immediate motivating factor. The deeper reason, perhaps, is that I like children's books. I love reading them, so I guess that's why I like writing them. 

The advantage of writing for children is that you can jump from reality to fantasy and from sense to nonsense, and you know the reader will get it as well as you do. He/she will not frown and say, 'but what's the point of this?' 

The disadvantage is that in India, at least, no one takes you very seriously as a writer. It's like they're all waiting for you to grow up and start writing for adults. 

Karadi: Do you have to like children to be a good children’s author?

Anushka: I don't know what people mean when they ask me if I like children. No one ever asks adult writers if they like adults. I like some children, just as I like some adults. I'm not a people-hater and I'm not a child-hater, but I find that each child is an individual, and that's important for a children's writer to recognise. So in fact I would submit that if you 'like children' in a generic and not-thought-out way, you're likely to be a bad children's author, because you're trying to write to an amorphous mass called 'children' rather than to the particular child who is like you, which is the only child you can write for.  

Karadi: What do you like to read? What are your favourite children’s books? Who are your favourite authors?

Anushka: What I like to read depends on time, place and mood. So it could be anything from Georgette Heyer to Amartya Sen. My favourite children's books can take a few hours to list, so I'll just list the first five that come to mind: Hunting of the Snark, Skellig, Saffy's Angel, The Northern Lights, The Butter Battle Book. 

So the favourite authors follow: Lewis Carroll, David Almond, Hilary McKay, Philip Pullman, Dr Seuss. I'll add Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein.

Karadi: Do you follow a writing routine? How do you go about writing a story?

Anushka: I dislike routine, in life and in writing, so no, I don't follow a writing routine. I write in an eccentric, erratic way which I can't really describe. Much of the initial work happens in my head before I actually sit to write, I think. Not in any rational, organised way, but in a sense of there being something that will take shape when I start the actual process of writing. 

Karadi: What are you currently working on?

Anushka: I have some projects I need to complete - one picture book for Tara and the next book of the Zain & Ana series for Scholastic - but I have very little time, so I haven't written anything in a while.