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Bookaroo turns 10 this year

India’s first children’s literature festival turns 10 this year with Alpenliebe Bookaroo Delhi 2018, which is to be held on December 1st and 2nd. The Festivity, a collaboration between Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts [IGNCA] and Tata Trusts, welcomes children between the age group of 4 and 14 and brings this year 105 sessions for the children which are to be conducted by 61 national and international speakers from 13 countries. The only children’s Litfest to have gone international, the festival is back with varied activities such as art workshops, dramatized readings, book launches, theatre, poetry sessions, nature walks, etc.

“India’s most-travelled festival tracing its presence through 12 cities, was initiated to provide an opportunity for children to discover stories from around the world and from different corners of India,” M. Venkatesh, Co-founder Bookaroo Trust and Festival Director said.

The sessions in the fest are conducted contemporaneously in approximately 11 venues within a large area. “Entry is free and while only children of ages 4-14 can participate, people of other age groups are welcomed as spectators to the various sessions”, Swati Roy, the director of the festival said.

As part of Alpenliebe-Bookaroo Delhi 2018, Bookaroo organized “The Book Art” at the Experimental Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre to exhibit original artwork and illustrations from children's books by three winners of the Big Little Book Awards, Atanu Roy Roy, Proiti Roy and Nina Sabnani, which were on display from November 21s till November 29th. “As a culmination of this event, a panel discussion on diversity in illustrations is going to be held on 29th evening,” Swati said.

While speakers like Debi Gliori, Lavanya Karthik, Tonya Bolden and Siddhant Shah will address the crowd on subjects that will explore areas of grief, disability, etc., Leigh Hobbs, Gavin Bishop and other illustrators will introduce their characters, for example, Horrible Harriet, and narrate lores from myths and legends.

“One of the most anticipated sessions is the Doodle wall because children love to draw on walls and there is always a story behind them,” Swati said. Qissebaazi, another event in the fest, is a multilingual storytelling project founded by Danish Husain. Having had conducted the event previously in Srinagar, Kohima, Mumbai and Bijeypur, the organizers are gearing up to present stories in Sanskrit and Malayalam through Saattvic and Padma Damodaran in Delhi on Sunday. While Padma will be tracing through the story of a journey from childhood with the help of dance forms, Saattvic will be telling the musical tale of how drama came to be.

Roopa Rai will be conducting a session on Upanishads before the launch of her book which is a prequel to “The Gita for Children”. “Though they are holy texts, it has been done in a very contemporary manner to the child’s language so that they can relate to it rather than to think of it as a chore to know mythology,” Swati said.

Alongside these, in order to mark their tenth birthday, Bookaroo is planning to draw pages from children’s books on ten different walls across Delhi. Acting as not only a stepping stone to little-known authors, illustrators and storytellers and but also a beautiful dream come true to children, Bookaroo has been blessed to get the unconditional love of children everywhere