Delhi's BC Roy Children's Library has been entertaining and educating children for 59 years and continues to do so with classics old and new. Gargi Gupta pays a visit
Not many know of its existence, but the BC Roy Children's Library & Reading Room on the second floor above the Doll's Museum in Delhi's bustling ITO area is a veritable treasure trove for young book lovers.
For one, it is the sheer variety of books. The library, founded in 1957 by cartoonist K Shankar Pillai, who ran the popular children's magazine Shankar's Weekly, boasts of a 40,000-strong collection. These include not just much-loved classics that most parents would have read — Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, the Fairy Tales of Grimm, AA Milne and Mark Twain — but also ones that you likely read as a child — Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Billy Bunter, Roald Dahl… And then there are books that have been popular among children these days — Narnia, Harry Potter, Dork Diaries and the like.
But not all the books in the library are for pleasure reading. For parents who have a more utilitarian objective in mind, the BC Roy library also has a range of educational books on subjects such as astronomy, geology, animal and plant life.
Chhavi Singh, a teacher at a Noida school, remembers visiting the Children's Library frequently as a child. "My mother made it a point to take me there at least once a week during my school holidays. She'd leave me there with my tiffin and water bottle and come back for me a few hours later. For those few hours, I felt like I was lost in an enchanted forest of books — I'd walk down the aisles between the open shelves, picking up books at random. I'd open it at random and if I liked it, I'd carry it back to the table to read in full, or if I didn't, then put it back and move on. I think my interest in stories and literature goes back to the time I spent there," she recalls.
The library is an inviting space with brightly painted chairs and tables laid out for children to read. Its colourful walls are lined with pin-ups of paintings that have won awards in various competitions organised by the library. To be sure, it's near empty most of the year, except on weekends, and during the summer holidays, says the assistant librarian.
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Entry to the BC Roy Children's library is free but if you want to come regularly, you must become a member by paying Rs650 a year. If you want to carry books out, you must pay an additional Rs1,250, of which Rs1,000 is security deposit.
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