We started off with Eric Carle, Julia Donaldson and moved on to Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, as N's capacity to understand and remember complex plot-lines grew. These books are a worthwhile investment (Eric Carle and JD are quite expensive). They are colourful, inspire imagination, build language and promote values like sharing and inclusion. From the start, I have been looking, with less success, for similar books in Tamil or Malayalam. I have to read and translate English books for N to comprehend. I want equivalent books in our regional language for N's grandparents to read to her too. Currently, they tell her Hindu mythological stories - I have come to see this as a 'can of worms'. I do understand that this is part of our culture and I grew up with these stories (and loved them) too. But now I see the 'Amar Chithra Katha' tales as reeking of violence, patriarchy, 'might is right', unreal black-and-white characterisation.
I cannot shield my kids forever. This gives me an opportunity to make them aware of these 'forces' in our culture and build their 'self-advocacy skills' to resist it. So I let N listen to these stories and then we have long 'book review' discussions where we compare actual kids' literature with these similarly labelled, harmful books. I go into these discussions hesitatingly, worried if this is too much information for a 4-year old to handle. But I have never been disappointed by N's poise and aplomb to take it all in, weigh it in her head and arrive at her own conclusions.
Coming back to Enid Blyton... I see my favorite childhood author in a different light now. All her stories reinforce, 'girls sew and clean up while boys 'take care' of them'. Bursts my bubble 😔. We do continue reading the Blyton books, but I filter out this biased content. The books are still filled with fun, food and adventures that N and I love. I'm waiting for N to grow up and read these books on her own and wonder why her amma presented these stories to her differently. 🤔
I am looking forward to buying works of குழந்தைக் கவிஞர் அழ. வள்ளியப்பா (Kids' poet, Azha Valliappa), trying some Tamil books from Tulika and printing some Tamil/Malayalam stories off https://storyweaver.org.in/ .
N will probably be too old for our books, but hoping we have our range up in time for your round two ;)
ReplyDeleteI've loved the range you can find in tulika and yes, the little kid books available are often in Tamil and Malayalam as well.
N is old enough and rich in childhood stories. How do you feel about creating a story together for us to publish?
Is this N from C T? 😜
ReplyDeleteYes! N and I have already been discussing about writing our own book in tamil. We would love this opportunity for collaboration 😍
This sounds wonderful. Reached here through a complicated route - a post in Her Trivandrum I found so funny and wanted to check the author's profile. One of the first posts I could see is the blog and knew my reading of that first Facebook post was right :). Here is a fun and informed person. And you are making great choices for N. :-) To be honest, it is the fun(ny) side that I admire more. Such a rare quality, humour, these days.
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