Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murthy discuss writing for children

Story telling and the challenges involved in writing for young readers took centre stage at the ongoing Spring Fever festival here with Ruskin Bond, a favourite author with children discussing the issue with Sudha Murthy, an entrepreneur and an author herself.

At the fourth day of the festival yesterday, an initiative of Penguin Books, the duo read out from their books "Hip Hop Nature Boy" and "Dollar Bahu" respectively. During the session titled "Friends from small places", Ruskin Bond recalled his early days as a writer acknowledging that it was difficult to get publishers for books written for children.

"When I was younger, we didn't have any publishers, especially for children's books, there was a void. As someone who has grown up passionately wanting to be a writer, there is a sense of responsibility you feel towards your readers," said Bond, who has penned many collections of books and novels.

"When it comes to children, the responsibility is felt more as you want to instill good values in them, while staying humorous as well," he said.

Author Sudha Murthy who has written a book on a wide range of genres acknowledged that easy access to information had made it difficult to write books for children. "Writing for children is a big challenge as you needto first understand today's children. With today's tech savvy children, there is no dearth of information or knowledge.Children are direct and not biased and therefore we owe it to them to be responsible in our writing", she said.

Recalling her early days Sudha told a packed crowdthat hailing from a family of teachers her grandfather hadgiven her the responsibility to donate books to at least one library. "My grandfather was a teacher and he told me when you

have enough money. For me, you must buy books for at least one library and today we have donated books to some fifty thousand libraries," said Sudha.

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