There were crafts corners,sessions with writers,workshops by illustrators it was the biggest edition weve had since we started in 2008, says Subhadra Sengupta,a writer of more than 20 childrens books and comics and one of the organisers of the Bookaroo Festival,the childrens literature fest,which cocluded in New Delhi on November 28. One particular section was called Under the Kahani Tree and featured Wendy Orr,the Candian-born Australian author who penned the popular Nims Island as a nine-year old. The book was later adapted in to a film featuring Hollywood actor Jodie Foster. The section also saw storyteller Jeeva Raghunath exploring Indian folktales to make sense of history. Among the other participating writers were Ruskin Bond,every childs favourite wordsmith,who fielded questions from young readers,and Anthony Horowitz,whose session on his teen super spy Alex Rider,was gatecrashed by adults. It is one of the few festivals where childrens writers can interact with their readers and with one another. It is heartening that so many children attended the festival. In fact,the increasing footfall prompted the change in venue,from Sanskriti Anandgram to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) this year, says writer Paro Anand. Her performance-based storytelling drew upon children from the audience to play various characters. One of my stories called Wingless is about the daughter of the king and queen of angels who is born without wings. You would think that the world of angels would be empathetic to a differently-abled person but the young princess is driven out and finally makes her own place in the world, she says. Among the other highlights were a close look at the art of Robert Sabuda,the illustrator whose pop-up books are packed with superbly executed three-dimensional images. Arjun Vajpai,a 16-year-old Delhi student,spoke about his experience of being the youngest Indian to scale Mount Everest this year,while actor Javed Jaffrey taught kids to shake a leg.
