The Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival has returned to Delhi for its 18th edition, bringing 50 writers, illustrators and storytellers from 12 countries to Sunder Nursery in Nizamuddin on October 3 and 4. The festival will host 58 sessions for children aged four to 14, including a collaborative drawing activity designed to turn a wall into a collective mural.
The ‘Doodle Wall’ will allow children to draw alongside illustrators without following a fixed format or working towards a predetermined final picture. Children can sketch, attempt caricatures or add to drawings made by others, while illustrators contribute their own strokes. The organisers expect the wall to evolve throughout the festival.
“We give a lot more exposure to illustrators because generally when we talk of children’s literature events, it’s restricted to storytelling, performances and writing,” Bookaroo co-founder and director Swati Roy said. “Most times, illustrators get a little short-changed.”
The festival will run from 11 am to 4.30 pm on both days. Its programme includes the return of the ‘Illustrators Quarter’, introduced at the previous edition as a space where illustrators can display and discuss their work. A panel on the making of children’s book illustrations will feature Swiss illustrator Carla Haslbauer, Mumbai-based artist and illustrator Kripa Bhatia, and Delhi-based visual artist and illustrator Pakhi Senshekhar.
The panel is intended to show children how artists have developed different professional paths from an interest in drawing and illustration, Roy said. Other participants at this year’s festival include Singapore-based writer and educator Laremy Lee, writer and editor Namita Gokhale, author Pradeep Chakravarthy, illustrator Shubhshree Mathur and Dutch illustrator Mark Janssen.
A separate session titled ‘Let Them Choose’ will bring together author Paro Anand and Roohi Sehgal, managing editor at DK, to discuss how children select books. The session will address the tendency of adults to determine what children should read and will encourage parents to pay attention to children’s interests rather than focusing only on what a book teaches.
Bookaroo co-founder and festival director M Venkatesh said the festival grew out of Eureka, a children’s bookshop opened in Alaknanda in 2003. The shop’s sessions could accommodate only 15 to 20 children at a time, prompting the organisers to move events to community halls in 2007 before launching Bookaroo the following year. Around 3,000 people attended its first two-day edition.
Since then, the festival has travelled to more than 16 Indian cities and has also held editions in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. The organisers said venues are selected for being centrally located and open. Sessions do not use a stage, podium or strobe lights, and speakers may interact with children while sitting on the floor.
Parents are asked to wait outside sessions so that children can respond more freely, Roy said. There is also no pre-registration, allowing children to sit beside people they do not know and potentially make new friends. The festival’s organisers said they begin planning the next edition as soon as the current season ends, studying newly released books and working with publishers, art councils and embassies to assemble the programme.