May 17, 2025

Quote of the Week

"You cannot stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes." -- Winnie the Pooh

When Stories Take Us Places

"Books are especially important in the first years of life, when we create the foundations for our worldview and attitudes towards the external world. “By three months, infants with extensive exposure to same-race faces prefer those faces. The pervasiveness of different forms of prejudice in children under the age of ten years has been well established,” said Dr Krista Aronson, a psychology professor and director of Diverse BookFinder, a collection of children’s picture books featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Colour. She explained that there’s clear evidence in children of favouritism for those who look like them in areas such as ethnicity, race, body size, nationality and language. 

It’s perhaps not surprising then that children retain plot better when they read books with characters that look like them. But they also favour realistic and factual stories, and it’s by exposing children to more diversity through books that they can experience worlds that are different to theirs, fostering curiosity, understanding and developing empathy, says Aronson. In this sense, she adds, multicultural picture books can create a starting point to end racism, ableism and sexism and make so that today’s children become more empowered and empathetic." 

Read the full article here. 

Note: The featured artwork is called 'Flying Elephant', and belongs to the traditional folklores of the Gond tribe in Central India. Read more about it and the artist here. 

Reading Corner

Name: The Why-Why Girl 
Author: Mahasweta Devi
Illustrator: Kaynika Kini
Ages: 6+

"Moyna lives in a little tribal village. She cannot go to school because she has to tend goats, collect firewood, fetch water… But she is so full of questions that the postmaster calls her the ‘why-why girl'! In this inspiring and delightful story, her first picture book, acclaimed Jnanpith award-winning writer Mahasweta Devi tells us how she meets Moyna (and her mongoose) and helps her find answers to all the why-whys – in books, that Moyna herself learns to read. Some of the translations have been done by well-known writers: Malayalam by Paul Zacharia, Tamil by Ambai, and Kannada by Girish Karnad." -- Tulika Books, India

Be the Change

Children gain tremendously when the books they read represent authors, characters and lores, visual language vastly different from their everyday contexts and the mainstream. Such exposure fosters curiosities, and develops caring attitudes. Many socially-committed book publishers around the world have taken up this task by bringing forward the voices of indigenous, linguistically diverse societies and authors from underrepresented groups for youth and kids. Support this growing movement by consciously opting for children's books that foster such ethos.