St. Mary’s Public School, Queen’s Road
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Archive for January 4, 2010
Sense and nonsense
Children’s writer Anushka Ravishankar talks about reaching out to children through books that don’t preach
For the love of books Anushka Ravishankar is tired of answering people about the point of her books
When Anushka Ravishankar, award-winning children’s author, is asked what she writes, she replies, in complete honesty, “Nonsense.” And most often, the response is a placating “Come now, don’t be so modest! I’m sure you write wonderfully!”
Put it down as one of the perils of being a nonsense writer, in a country where it isn’t even recognised as a genre. It’s refreshing that someone is able to unabashedly admit that her books are not intended as moral science textbooks, will not tell you to brush twice daily, or hold the Key to a Successful Life. So is meeting someone who feels the best compliment she’s received is a mother calling up to yell: “I’m thoroughly sick of you! Your books are coming out of my ears!”, because her son insisted on being read to from her books every single night.
It seems ironic that a Math graduate would go on to write nonsense verse. “If you learn analytical writing and structured narratives, then you also learn how to mess with it. I think understanding logic is what helps me subvert it,” she said.
Surprisingly, for someone who has become one of the strongest voices in modern children’s literature, writing didn’t form an integral part of her early life. “But, of course, there was always that phase of writing terrible poetry that everybody seems to go through — the ‘Oh! I cannot find my book; wherever I look’ variety,” she laughs.
A wander lusting tiger who escapes up a tree, frightened out of his wits by a goat, was her first protagonist. “Now what? Send him to the zoo? Stick him up with glue? Paint him an electric blue?” wonder the villagers who’ve caught…More
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