A case for non-fiction or better understanding of kidlit

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If you are a parent there are more chances than one that YOU have handed your child a book to read. Or you have chosen to bring home the books that you think that she might like to read. If any of these hold true then we are almost alike and no this is not an article that tells you how wrong you have been all along in bringing your child the books that you choose. This is just a few of my thoughts on this very subject
that I gathered today morning as I wrote an Instagram post.

Let me begin at the beginning.
Today my soon to be 4, son sat down with a book and was at it for good 10-15 minutes. No, it wsn't a tome. It wa a small picture book on trucks. My friend gifted him this book on trucks on his first birthday. The chap was fascinated with it from the moment he got it. You could flip pages and see bright pictures of different types of trucks and then you could open little sliding screens to find out men in uniform who drove a certain kind of truck.

Unsurprisingly his first words were- DUMTUCK (Dump truck). Today the boy is approaching his fourth birthday fast and whenever he can manage he sits down with that book. I would have liked to tell you that the book is in a bad condition or that he has chewed up its pages but no, the book is a board book so has not been that easy to demolish. After my initial observations about the boy's interest in vehicles I had begun to get him more books that had trucks as central characters. These were story books, appropriate for his age and all but they did not seem to gain a point with him. After a couple of readings he never asked back for them. The boy, it seemed, had moved on. His newest passion were monkeys. He was enamoured with Curious George and the Dump Truck and I have been reading it to him for what seems an eternity now. The house remains filled with Pepper books and Julia Donaldsons, books about dinosaurs, cats, buildings and insects but this dear boy does not want to deviate from his monkey love or his trucks infopedia.

On the other hand my daughter who is 10 always loved listening to stories so it was natural for me to get started on story books of all kinds from the time good sense about reading prevailed over me. I hardly was able to get her to read a thing on her own though she loved if me or the husband were reading to her. My husband an Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) fan got a few comics into the house for himself but we were happy to see our daughter taking to them nicely. Quite later we learnt that she just liked to flip the pages for the pictures. Never mind, we said to ourselves, and got down to the business of acquiring age appropriate picture books (read more ACKs). Then another friend gave my daughter Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls and the book struck a massive chord with her. So much so that she began to sleep with the book tucked under her arms, held close to her chest. She knew about the women I had not even heard of. She thirsted to find out more about the girls she read about in this book and googled all of them. In the process she learnt about a few others. Now she is drawing her favourites from this book here, there and everywhere (tell me if I should be alarmed). On a side note she also got interested in Geography and History after reading about Hatshepsut and Cleopatra.

The point that I am trying to make is that I have a huge appetite for fiction. I loved stories all my life and even dreamt about becoming a novelist. I had hardly ever considered non fiction. I would read it if it fell into my lap like this Rahul Pandita book but I would not go out and buy them. Similarly though I have been brought up on a healthy diet of Chandamamas, Champak and Target, I would personally not buy ACKs.

What my children showed me was that non fiction- books beyond stories also have takers among children. We should not only offer our kids colourful stories from all over but give them a chance and an exposure to variety of things even where books are concerned. Some might like encyclopedias and others their graphic novels. Some might like tid-bits and nuggets while some might prefer essays and poems. Kidlit probably has more to it then we presume. It is more than just stories about wonderlands, trucks, monkeys, princesses, elves and gnomes. It is everything what your kid wants  it to be.

Also maybe don't judge those who do not take to books at all.


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