Picking up from my earlier Books for Baby by Indian Authors, as my daughter has grown she has introduced me to many more wonderful books for children by Indian Authors. Unfortunately not all of them are in print so we’ve had to grab them whenever we could and are still searching for some of the items in the series that we have started.
Suniti Namjoshi, Aditi Adventures (12 books so far!). Here is a series that we desperately wish would stay in print.
Subhadra Sengupta has written works of fiction set in historical times. She has also scripted Satyajit Ray’s Feluda Mystery Series for a cmic book format, illustrated by Tapas Guha.
Now that dear daughter has re-learned to read in Telugu, we are once again on the lookout for interesting stories at an elementary reading level. It was, inter alia, the comparative dearth of such stories in print that set us back several years ago when she first learned to read Telugu. Kick-starting our Telugu reading revival has been a series of Ukranian folktales published by Manchi Pustakam in Hyderabad, a gift from our dear friends Kiran & Samyuktha & Tanmay.
Another work of historical fiction that we enjoyed was the Smile of Vanuvati by Harini Srinivasan.
We’ve also been mesmerized by Night by Junuka Deshpande.
Deepak Dalal has written adventure stories set in different parts of India, exploring the wildlife and natural beauty of such diverse places as Rajasthan, Lakshdweep, the Andamans and even Bombay before it became a city! We had the opportunity to meet him recently at the India Homeschool Conference where he told stories and showed slides from his travels throughout India.
I would like to appeal to Ask Amma readers to write and also translate books into Indian languages to enrich the range and quality of literature available for children in India. It will help keep your languages alive for the generations to come.