The year 2021 was such an affirming year for me in terms of work! Since 2014, I’ve been freelancing. I’ve done workshops for children with the British Council, teacher training for Ratna Sagar, and I’ve been invited by schools and organisations to do workshops here and there. After nearly a year of the pandemic, these dried up. It isn’t as if I didn’t do workshops for other organisations; I did. But as I look back, only one paid workshop comes to mind – a session on my book, The Best Idea of All, for an online lit fest, Vishwarang.
Everything else was an independent venture, and looking back fills me with joy and pride. I launched my reading and writing programmes for children in October 2020, and they’ve grown in leaps and bounds!
Book Club for Ages 7 and 8
I just counted. In the year 2021, I read 21 books with 29 seven- and eight-year-olds from different parts of the world! The most interesting thing for me? I haven’t met even one of these children in person! Word of mouth, kind people on social media who had faith in my workshops and parents who spread the word made this possible for me. Plus, of course, all the bookstores I work with, who always ensure that my books arrive in time – Kahani Tree, Funky Rainbow, Storyteller, Eureka, Koolskool …
I started with just one batch – on weekdays – and then launched a second – a weekend one – in May 2021. As the months went by, I also wrote about several little things that make interacting with children special – whispering in class, talking about what frightens us, discovering suspicious monsters lurking on the pages of The Monster Hunters, important questions, thought-provoking conversations …
Part of the fun of my reading programmes also lies in scrambling for books to read together. Here are a few of the best books I chose.
Book Club for Ages 9 and 10
My creative writing programmes are intensive courses, requiring a 12-week commitment from children (and therefore, parents). Even when I launched the programme, I had parents writing to me and asking for something a little less intense. I mulled over it for quite a while before launching, in April, my book club for ages nine and ten. Unlike the reading programme for the younger ones, this one has a significant creative writing component. In a sense, it’s a creative writing programme through books, based on the idea that if we don’t read, we cannot write.
This programme has seen its highs and lows because of the differing interests of children. While some devour books, others are reluctant readers, often making each batch a mix of enthusiastic writers and others who struggle to keep up. Even so, the activities are always fun – and the children agree! Whether we do vocabulary activities or rhymes, we have fun, and we also have our own set of anecdotes!
Here are my favourite reads from this programme so far. Though Moin and the Monster, The Hodgeheg and a Fantastic Mr Fox would also feature on the list, I’ve inserted images only of those books that I read for the first time in 2021.
Creative Writing - Ages 9-11
My creative writing programme for ages nine to eleven is, in some ways, the most rewarding and the most gruelling programme I conduct. Four of the six children who joined the April edition of my programme joined again in October because they loved it so much. What more do I need in terms of validation? The best part of this programme is that most of the children who join do so because they love writing and want to write. Writing isn’t a chore. They log on to the forum day after day, week after week. They write, edit, rewrite, read one another’s work … I love it!
But yes, of course it’s a lot of work. The length of all the writing reports compiling the work the children shared on my forum during the October edition, for instance, was nearly 300 pages!
I had so many favourite pieces – a couple of monologues about seeing Santa, a wonderful set of diary entries written from the point of view of a queen, Shajar Al-Durr, and of course, the reflections the children wrote after each module.
I also invited guests to speak to the participants, and each guest workshop was brilliant!
Creative Writing - Ages 12-14
The twelve to fourteen age-group is a challenging one, but so full of wonderful new ideas! During the April module, we worked on poetry; I introduced drama for the first time; we created new characters, working with the idea of writing what we know. In the October edition, I was delighted to welcome three children I’d already worked with, and, for the first time, a participant from the USA! I loved how motivated she was, getting up at 5:30 in the morning to attend each session!
So many pieces stood out to me – a sonnet on exponents, an interview with an ecopreneur, and snarky one-scene plays about a pair of childhood rivals getting stuck in a lift together.
Working with young people keeps me inspired. I love the range of ideas I encounter, and I’m continually amazed at how much teens and preteens can write without suffering from any sort of writer’s block. May 2022 be as full of wonderful new workshops!
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