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Child's play, Adult's pleasure

Why do children’s books continue to resonate with grown-ups? Sohini Das Gupta asks bibliophiles who read, revisit and collect them with much passion

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Rupsa Munsi’s online shopping cart is a jumble of whimsical purchases – butter knives just like the ones in her kitchen or stationery too purple to be useful. But there’s nothing irrational about the wide selection of children’s literature that crowds her wishlist all year long. Children’s books, for this 30-year-old, is the safest investment, intellectually and emotionally.

A safe bet


(Rupsa Munsi boasts of an exciting collection of children's books)

“As a child, I was eager to transition to so-called adult books. So by age fourteen, I was devouring Sharadindu Bandyopadhay’s Byomkesh Bakshi and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,’’ recalls Munsi, a Teach for India alumna.

But like faithful childhood friends, the books she’d cast away found their way back in 2015, when she found herself amidst a room full of youngsters excited to dive into the world of fiction. Over the school’s summer break, Munsi stocked up on titles new and familiar – Rickshaw Girl (Mitali Perkins), Wonder (RJ Palacio) and One and Only Ivan (Katherine Applegate) and good old Roald Dahl — kicking off a tryst with children’s books that still continues.

“Strangely, as an adult re-reading kids’ books, I find I can now better empathise with the journey of the young characters,’’ points out Munsi. There’s also the added bonus of being able to relate the text with adult experiences, as Munsi discovered when reading Bandyopadhay’s Sadashiv series to find the descriptions of Maharashtra now mingling with her lived experiences as a Mumbaikar.

Picture this



(Shaili Contractor nurses a soft spot for picture books)

For Shaili Contractor, who enjoys co-reading children’s books with her husband, their novelty lies more in the flight of fancy. One year into collecting children's books, her heart is sold on “picture books with breathtaking illustrations, and stories so simple they bring tears to your eyes’’. But as much as she relishes the innocence and imagination of books like The Day the Crayons Quit (Drew Daywalt), Contractor doesn’t shy away from slice of life tales like The Dark, where authors Oliver Jeffers and Lemony Snicket marry text and images to talk about the common childhood fear of darkness. “It’s something so natural that it doesn’t really strike you till you read it,’’ she muses.

Then there are books that deal with subjects darker than a fear of the dark. “Cry Heart, but Never Break (Glenn Ringtved) was one of the first children’s books I read -- it eases one into the idea of death,’’ recalls the 30-year-old who shrugs off her friends’ jokes about her “weird addiction’’ in the hope that once they read it, they’d understand. “Reading children’s books has taught me to spend time on a certain thing, looking at it from different angles, serving as a reminder that the simplest things matter the most in life.’’ The ad copy writer also credits her unusual reading list with helping her to think out of the box.

Chasing wonder!


(Calvin and Hobbes is Rishabh Shah's happy place)

Rishabh Shah, one half of travel blogger duo Gypsycouple, is happy to travel beyond the landscape of reality on the wings of literature. The Calvin and Hobbes fan admires how children’s books “transport you to another world, where you can become children again’’. Shah, who has written two poems on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, turns to the books for sweet escape, and that sense of wonder. “The eyes of a child, highly observant, seek amazement in everything they see. A good children’s author would know how to evoke similar feelings in adults while treating his young reader as an equal in everything other than language, and in certain cases, content ,’’ he reckons. Shah, who once bought physical copies, took to “donating books to libraries or friends and then looking out for new ones’’ as the collection grew, has lately turned to Kindle for unbridled access.

Love for layers


(Kasturi Roy Bardhan  loves Tales of Jemima the Puddle Duck)

For Kasturi Roy Bardhan, reading children’s literature is not just pleasure, it’s work - she’s pursuing her masters degree in the subject. When not studying, however, she pays leisurely home visits to old favourites - Grimm’s Fairytales, Harry Potter (JK Rowling), Coraline (Neil Gaimen), Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne), The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck (Beatrix Potter) or Panchatantra. What thrills the 26-year-old is how even the books read cover-to-cover as a child throw up interesting new layers when revisited later in life. ‘’I’d never have known back then how Cinderella and Snow White portray the male perception of a woman, or that Enid Blyton’s works contain racial implications!’’ she points out. But that does not mean that real life issues, conveyed in child-like gait, are not right up the alley for the younger readers as well. Roy Bardhan cites Oilver Twist and David Copperfield as classic examples of books that leave the necessary impression of issues like death, poverty or ill-health on both children and adults — without disrupting the sensibilities of either.

If there’s one aspect of the topic that bugs the folklore and fairytale enthusiast,it’s the process of identifying certain work’s of literature as ‘children’s’. ‘’The labelling of books as children's books by adults is problematic in itself. Declaring a book as an appropriate book for a child is never going to happen from a child's perspective – so we, the readers (adult as well as children), will forever be at the mercy of the perspective of the people who decide what is and what isn't children's literature.’’

For what it’s worth, it would appear that some adults still keep finding their own reasons to stack up and savour books recognised — rightly or debatably — as children’s books. As Munsi says, “What else can remind one about the power of love in these times of hatred and rat races?’’

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