Here’s where children are booked for life
Book Clubs For Kids Spread Their Magic Across The City
Book Clubs For Kids Spread Their Magic Across The City
Young bookworms had better be warned. The excitement might rocket way too high for them to return home. After all, the sky’s the limit when they’re asked to re-think favourite fiction heroes differently. Conceptualise a changed story climax. Design an alternative book jacket. Or play Dumb Charades based on key words from the book of the week in lively readand-enact games.
These and other creative freedoms are theirs to explore and enjoy for members of children’s book clubs.
One such cosy hub is Reading Magic in Colaba. With content devised by child development specialist Alefia Poonawala, this programme keeps kids hooked to the habit. Authors like Roald Dahl, Leela Lopez and Manjula Padmanabhan help Poonawala to pick books which are simple and entertain kids but relevant to their life.
Once they’ve flipped through the pages of new books, Poonawala offers interesting facts about their writers before sitting the group down to solve wordsearch puzzles and anagrams related to the story or a quick quiz on its characters. After Gerald Durrell’s My Family And Other Animals, the gang visits the Parel animal hospital. Anne Holm’s I Am David becomes a springboard to discuss the emotional as much as physical landscape of the world wars, complete with Winston Churchill’s speeches. A neighbourhood treasure hunt romp follows a mystery novel read together.
Tucked in a lane off Breach Candy, there is Creative Reading, conducted by Rupal Patel who also holds Active Parenting workshops. Dividing children into age groups from six to 12, her sessions gently nudge eager participants beyond mere oral reviews of selected titles. “I like it.. I don’t is not enough,’’ Patel urges, encouraging them to write on wider ranging themes hinged around each book. She is rewarded with scrawled piles of imaginative exercises like poems or one-act plays scripted around a pivotal part of the narrative. Sometimes, even original passages which will foretell what the characters could be doing five years
from when the story ends.
from when the story ends.
Kids enrolled in Creative Reading also take home non-fiction books in order to expose them to different genres. Pointing out the psychological plusses of intelligently guided reading, Patel rates boosted self-esteem as a logical benefit of the loose flow of laterally expressed ideas.
Further north, in suburban Juhu, journalist and book critic Sonya Dutta Chowdhury calls her monthly club Talking Volumes. On some afternoons, bug-eyed kids gawp excitedly at an author invited to share the personal experience of writing the book with them. On other days, members swap notes about what each is currently reading besides the club-prescribed book.
Continuing to keep older kids gripped by the printed word is challenging. But Dutta Chowdhury has discovered they connect well with contemporary references. If it’s Shakespeare to appreciate, she hunts for modern, preferably Indian, parallels. They have pieced links using Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Maqbool, inspired by Macbeth, which then got kids engrossed in that classic play. “We’ve had post-Macbeth discussions of the notions of challenger and king, of accepting or rejecting authority, with kids talking about the Kashmir problem,’’ she says.
Yet, reality kicks in. With so many seductive technological stimuli vying for young attention, not losing readership of books is, frankly, a miracle. “If you don’t take care to actually dangle interesting books in front of them, even reading kids drop off in the teen years. In books you give every child a friend for life,’’ Dutta Chowdhury says, adding that reading develops vocabulary, comprehension and communication—three highly rated skills critical to negotiate a complex world.
– Sonya Dutta Choudhury (Talking Volumes): sonya1@gmail.com
– Rupal Patel (Creative Reading): 98211-74471
– Alefia Poonawala (Reading Magic): 98201-02849
* FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Innovative ideas by children’s book clubs give kids the freedom to be creative and help them to think out of the box