Book Box: How my mother got me to read
Dear Reader,I am in a bathtub. Fully dressed.It is late evening and my parents are out to dinner. For eleven-year-old me, this bathtub is the perfect place to be. I have a backrest and I can stretch my legs out. If my parents come home early, I’ll hear them at the door. That gives me just enough time to hide my book and dive back into bed.For I am reading, of course I am reading, when I should be asleep.
I may be doing something forbidden, but it is my mother who is at fault. She read us a bedtime story and stopped at a cliffhanger.The great war between the cousins is on, and their grandfather Bheeshma has been struck by so many arrows that he lies on a bed of them on the battlefield at Kurukshetra. He has a boon that allows him to choose when he will die, so he decides to wait for an auspicious time.
There is a problem, though. He has nowhere to rest his head. The Kauravas bring him all sorts of soft pillows, but none of them will do. Finally he says, “Call for Arjuna. He will know what to do.”And this is where my mother chooses to stop.I used to think I was very clever to have worked out how to read that book after bedtime. Now I suspect my mother knew exactly what she was doing.
A generation later, I tried the same three tricks on our daughters, who all grew up to be readers.Trick 1: Read aloud to them every day, preferably from a book they can pick up themselves.Trick 2: Casually stop at a cliffhanger. “Enough for today. I need to leave.”Trick 3: Leave books where children can find them. My mother’s copy of the Mahabharata was on a low shelf, right where I could reach it.I still buy extra copies of books I love.
Some stay on my shelves and some find their way onto other people’s. A month ago, I went to an exhibition of children’s book illustrations curated by the publisher Richa Jha. I also stopped at Kahani Tree bookstore and came away with more than one copy of several books.Here are five children’s books I’d happily leave within reach.In Tom Percival’s The River, a boy’s feelings change as often as the river he loves.
“Sometimes the river could be light and playful… And sometimes, just sometimes, the river roared past, wild and angry.” The pictures of the boy, his puppy and the river in all its moods are gorgeous.In Beatrice Alemagna’s A Lion in Paris, translated from the French, a lion arrives in a city that is strange and wonderful. He loves being looked at, and it makes him terribly sad when hardly anyone gives him a second glance, until he finds the secret to being happy.
It’s a lovely little story with huge themes.In Tharini Viswanath’s Catch That Cat, a girl who uses a wheelchair sets off to find her friend’s missing cat. It’s a playful picture book.In Cathy Spagnoli’s Priya’s Day, a bilingual picture book in Hindi and English, we follow Priya through an ordinary day. She helps her mother in the kitchen, goes to the market, flies kites and, at the end of the day, listens to her mother tell her a story.In Tansy Troy’s The Great Nicobar Journey, the island’s birds and animals set out for Delhi when people make plans to destroy their forests.
They cross the Indian Ocean, bathe in the Chambal and tell one another stories about how they’ve survived human greed. I’d read this one aloud or give it to children aged ten and up to read themselves.Back in the bathtub, I find out what happens next. When Arjuna is called from the enemy camp, he takes one look at his grandfather, then picks up his bow and shoots three arrows into the ground, where his grandfather may rest his head.
Of course I can’t stop there. I turn the page and read a little more of Kamala Subramaniam’s The Mahabharata. I can still hear the front door from here.On this Children’s Day weekend, I have a question for you. What was the book you read when you shouldn’t have?Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist, founder of Sonya’s Book Box, and a teacher of Storytelling in Business.
Got a knot in your life, a dilemma at work, or a reading slump you can’t shake? Send your questions and book requests to sonyasbookbox@gmail.com, and she promises to give each one her most earnest consideratio
