I wrote about having been long-listed for the Toto awards three years in a row, without being shortlisted even once – it’s time to try again! I know there are several young writers who read my blog, writers who don’t quite know how and where to begin. A competition is sometimes the best place. I […]
Stories on a Postcard Challenge
I found this such a charming idea that I felt compelled to share it! I have so many memories of postcards! My father used to send postcards like this to me when I was on vacation in Bangalore with my grandparents. Somehow, I remember one postcard very clearly. ‘Did you hear the one about the […]
Happy Birthday, Harry Potter
How can I let this day go by without wishing one of my favourite fictional characters of all time? I don’t have the books in front of me, but phrases flash through my mind – ’emotional range of a teaspoon’ ‘Gred and Forge’ I can see Harry at school, praying not to get to into […]
Hyperbole and a Half
LOOK AT MY BOOK. LOOK AT IT. IT IS VERY NICE. I AM VERY IMPORTANT. 15 July 2013 at 07:30 I have been told that I need to promote my book so that people will know it exists and maybe some of them will pre-order it. My first inclination was to accomplish this by sitting […]
Blue Shoes and Happiness
A colleague of mine saw me reading the book and commented on how it looked like a children’s book. Many people don’t know yet that I spend more time reading children’s books than anything else – and am not ashamed of it. This one was delightful, as Alexander McCall Smith usually is. It’s the kind […]
Unit Plans
There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, like teaching. You can be so joyously idealistic in everything you choose to teach! Planning my units on narrative and imaginative writing, and descriptive writing was almost as inspiring as writing itself. Well, not really, but you know… I made a whole plan on how to introduce the idea of story-writing. […]
Sylvie and the Songman
What a crazy book. And that’s a compliment. There were parts of the book that I read only because I wanted to finish the book. I pushed myself to read, page after page, completing each chapter before putting the book down. So I simply can’t give it those overused compliments – ‘page-turner’ and ‘unputdownable’. When […]
Butterscotch’s Washing-Machine
Ought I to be embarrassed by this one? It was written two days after my tenth birthday, when I was eager to show off newly acquired vocabulary and paragraphing abilities. Butterscotch was a brownie. He lived in India. You may not believe it, but he was tinier than a wild daisy! Butterscotch was very kind. […]
Reading Stories
I was asked to read and assess stories written by Grades III and IV. What a joy that was! Of course, I had students who wrote for me the story of The Life of Pi or other movies they’ve watched. In fact, I felt rather bad for one of the children who wrote about that movie – […]
The Dictionary at School
The portion for the exams has been completed; students are fed up with revision. So, a colleague of mine decided to do something different – she read out a story from The Story-Catcher. I was thrilled! This reading went one step further than ‘I loved your story’ and ‘nice story’ and ‘I like the story […]
Not Just a Witch
I sometimes feel that a book that is easily read and easily forgotten cannot be a great book. Easy to read is always an important factor, but when it’s also easy to forget, I begin to wonder… Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson is simply charming. It’s old-fashioned in its ‘moral’ idea of doing good […]
Will I ever call it junk?
How do teachers throw away cards they receive? The children I read to gave me so many cards. Some were beautiful; some were thoughtful; some were sweet. How can I throw any away? Just a sample of those gems… THANK-YOU FOR SHARING SO MANY THINGS I LOVED […]
The Dame who Hated Plants
Another original story by seven-year-old Varsha. This one won the first prize in a story-writing competition and was published on my mother’s birthday in 1994. The word ‘dame’, for those who have not read Enid Blyton, meant nothing to me except ‘woman’ (often magical/ evil). I wonder if this story could be psycho-analysed. There was […]
Book-Reading – A Different One
An acquaintance who is part of the Teach for India programme asked whether I would be willing to come to a small government school in Chandannagar and talk about my book, about writing and about dance. I was tremendously excited by the prospect, and agreed immediately. When I got there, though, I realised how different […]
The Circus Boy
I did two more book-readings yesterday – The Circus Boy and The Old Yellow Scooter. The reactions were completely different! Children never stop surprising me. The first reading (The Dictionary) was wonderful – I got questions about reading, writing, publishing, drawing… The second reading (Dreams) was strange – I wondered whether the girls understood the story at […]
Why I Write for Children
My first reading at St. Mary’s school yesterday told me, yet again, why I love writing for children. The number of questions they asked me and the way they interacted with me for a whole hour was simply wonderful. Writing, editing, publishing, marketing, illustrating and designing – they had questions about all these things. They […]
Book-Reading in MY School!
Once upon a time (in 1995, to tell the truth), my wonderful school-librarian encouraged us to write and illustrate books of our own. A friend and I sat and wrote a book of stories and poems. I forget what it’s called. We illustrated it painstakingly – and one important lesson that I learned from that […]
Treasure Hunt
All my friends ask me where The Story-Catcher is available, all the time. I know how easily it’s available online, and I tell everyone to buy it online. But I’ve wanted to know for a while where it is actually available so that people can go to a store and pay for it at the counter […]
The Mice who Turned into Fairies
I think I’m finally old enough to read stories I wrote when I was seven years old without cringing in embarrassment. Some still make me cringe; this isn’t one of them, perhaps merely because it won the first prize in a story-writing contest when I was seven years old. Written in a four-lined notebook with […]
The Awful English Language
Teaching English is impossible. Words like ‘enough’ are enough to put anyone off, but they don’t even begin to scratch the surface. It so happened during one class that I had to pronounce all the words – though, thought, although, rough and plough. The hilarity and bewilderment are impossible to forget. One particular class stands […]