Reflections on writing books for children

Mariam Karim-Ahlawat, author of ‘The House of a 100 Stories’.

Animal characters are always of great interest to young readers and ‘The House of a Hundred Stories’ is full of such characters and lots of animated conversations between the creatures of all species. In fact, I think it would make a very good Disney film! There are songs as well, sung by the characters!

Readers of all ages love the book. It needs better marketing as it’s a one of a kind book. They love the deep philosophy and they love the characters who they find very endearing.

Books for children today are more oriented towards fantasy, closer to video games, more fast-paced or I think they may not hold the attention of the readers who are used to the computer and fast-paced mental and visual inputs. Books are more and more removed from real life. Still, writers like Ruskin Bond who are very close to life are popular and that’s a very good thing as, at least in India, children live in pretty real circumstances.

Books for young children have become more visual. I’m not sure if this is a good idea as it prevents the readers from creating mental images based on either audio or inputs that are word images supply. Story telling has become a very performative craft even in the form of books. In that sense, it has become less interactive and demands less imagination from the readers.

For older children, I very much advocate paperbacks with black and white illustrations as then the brain works filling in the missing elements and colours… and the interpretations depend more on the reader than on the text itself. That is the true joy of reading, and the characters and settings in a sense belong to the reader.