Ananaya Banerjee
Author Sudha Murty has a word of advice for parents: read kids’ books as well and read them out to children—the idea is to engage kids with books as a distraction from screens. “They (children) don’t grow naturally like flowers any more. Parents have to make a conscious effort to bring them up… it’s very difficult,” says the 67-year-old author, who recently launched the second book (The Man from the Egg) in her five-part mythology series Unusual Tales from the Mahabharata. Murty says it’s difficult to inculcate the habit of reading in children nowadays. That’s why while writing the series, Murty kept in mind not only the intended audience, but also their parents. “Many parents aren’t even aware of these stories,” she says.
After she published the first book in the series, The Serpent’s Revenge, Murty says she received several phone calls from parents. “They told me it was very easy to explain the stories to their children, as the language I had used was simple,” she says. When writing for children, Murty says, “you should know there is a limitation… you can’t write the bare truth. There are all kinds of stories available, adventurous, humourous, but authors should know that through their books, they have the power to set better examples for children, particularly teenagers.”
