A Glance at Children's Literature

As you can read and see, the picture is a cover of a children story book 'Up and Up', one of my favorite before I learn to read. This book does not have a single sentence as a part of story... This is a picture book... a series of pictures will tell us the story and hence will make us 'think', which is quite common nowadays. Today I think of discussing about books -for children (and not about children)-

My childhood was abundant of books. My days started with books... My parents used to either read or tell me stories. I vividly remember my first birthday gift when I learned how to read; it was a Malayalam book with big letters and colorful pictures 'chuvanna kochuvandi' in which two small monkeys were trying to build a vehicle and painting it red. It was fascinating enough so that I tried to build such a one and named after it (it wasn't a working one!). I've been trying to write a few books from my childhood collections but then it went so long making this article boring, so I'm writing the types and a few specialties that would help later in the following part. I used to read fantasies, adventures, biographies, science fiction, pure science, religious books/stories(that includes Christianity, Greek, Islam, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhism), moral stories, historical stories (of wars or pyramids), geographical books etc. When my collection was over I turned to my parents collection and I even read small translated brief versions of Dracula, Karamazov brothers, Count of monte cristo and Jean valjean, before the age 10!!! and certainly I didn't understand them as I perceive them now, at the age of 23.

I liked everything except moral stories, I found them boring as those books from my parents' collection...because most of the time I didn't understand them or I didn't find meaning in it (moreover we-the human society- have been reading the same moral stories, say Aesop fables since ~BC 600, Bible almost for 2000 years, Bhagavatgita and so on... yet did our society change accordingly-learning them-?! well, we always hear the aged people criticizing the degradation of values among the upcoming generation!!!). I didn't understand why Dantes takes revenge in The count of monte christo as in the case of the story of tailor and elephant, in which tailor hurt the elephant and it takes revenge to him. I used to read a book at least 10 times if I like it and I always found fresh! And whenever I liked a piece of writing, I found it interesting either because it was 'informative and adventures' or because 'I found myself in it'. Say Hoity-Toity goes to the first category, The little prince goes to the second category and Tom Sawyer goes to both (not informative); I wondered how alike our games were when I read it, even though both of us were from different era and continents...

Later as I grew older I began to think why we -Malayalam- do not have much stories for children? Even when people told me Kunjikkoonan and Oru kudayum kunjipengalum are children literature, what I felt was It's about children and NOT for children, because it had several ideas that a child never would understand... Those were stories of cruelty for me... I didn't want kunjikkoonan to suffer so much, it made me nothing but morose. I dumped them along with my moral story books... Why do they belong to children literature? Why there must be moral stories for children? Why don't we let them grow and glide in their imagination and creativity, like 'Up and Up' does to every child?

I grew older... I began to have friends of age 4 who are just beginning to read,way younger than me. We played together we collected and sorted stones or leaves and studied them. We made prisms or Archimedes pulley system, We painted pictures. Along with that I wanted them to read and to enter into a new world. (additionally, I used to ask them so many reasoning questions and I think they are much rational than adults...Because they are unbiased and not prejudiced as the adults. I like their expression when the began to think about something that they never think before.)

One day with one of my young friend, who was lazy to read (because his parents never used to read him stories and make him eager to read and learn) I went to my home library. I tried to attract him with my favorite books. But he was reluctant to read. Finally I read him stories and asked him about it on the next day... a few days later he started forcing me to read for him, then I made a deal that he must read a page per day. After one year he started asking me books to read. Then I began to search for 'the apt one' for him... He wanted stories with plenty of pictures. I owned only a few like that and those were moral stories and not stories like Tom Sawyer or Pinocchio. Then I noticed carefully the fact that most of them were cynical, pessimistic, or filled with contempt and making someone hero some else villain, and inducing fear about the world we live in, portraying the world as a bad place to live in...

In Malayalam I rarely found children literature, say maanikyakkallu by M.T. and majority of the existing are cynical... Still I must mention a few are there published mainly by Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishath. Still we need a lot more...

We need to develop our culture providing more attention and care to children, to make them innovative. or else with not much articles to read and to develop brain how do we dare to expect our children to conquer the wisdom and to be unique? (The same is applicable in the movie/visual media industry too. We do not have much movies/ programs for children. Instead we have quite a lot of visual arts that make use of children as a very good marketing tool... say for sentimental movies or entertaining programs- interviewing children-... I can't help saying it's pathetic to watch them being used as entertaining objects...).

When I look at the world I do see only those nations are wonderfully developing all the time, who have considered children as inevitable and have a world specially for children...

I dream a future where our children will eagerly wait on the road for the bell ring of the person who travels with books instead of Ice creams or Cotton candy as we see around us... as I read in the book 'പാതിരാസൂര്യൻറെ നാട്ടിൽ' by S.K. Pottekkattu