IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CHILDRENS BOOKS

Dip into the voluminous heaven that is the American Public Library system, and you will be hooked forever. I certainly was. The malls may have been magnificent, but it was the libraries with their kiddie sections that saved the days, days I must add of diapers and dishes and of no domestic help. What delight then to dash into the library and deposit my daughters in the children’s section. Here where low lying shelves crammed with books were set amidst chairs, they picked up their favorite Barney and Big Bird cushions and settled down with piles of picture books and giant jigsaw puzzles. Leaving me free to scour the stacks nearby. All too often though, I’d double back, gazing at the rows and rows of older children’s fiction, dipping into all the Judy Blume’s and Madeleine L’Engle’s I missed in my small town childhood days.
And then the Sales. What Sales! Doors open, and we’d be there, our exchange rate disadvantaged brains delirious at the prospect of books for free. Well, maybe not free, but it certainly felt that way. Eleven rupees (25c) for nicely bound Sesame Street stories, like the ones in which Elmo learns the days of the week, or Big Bird learns to read. Thirteen rupees (30 c) for the Prize winning Frog and Toad Series by Arnold Lobel and eleven rupees again for Eric Carle’s captivating ‘Thank you Brother Bear’. The princely sum of Rs.22 for Margaret Wise Brown’s comforting classic ‘Good Night Moon’ and so on.
Moving back to Bombay, I began the hunt for a good children’s library, or even a browsable bookshop. Old favorite ‘Strand’ simply didn’t qualify anymore. Its one thing to browse in an old curiosity shop and it’s quite another to tote toddler, baby and baby bag up the shop’s steep wooden stairs to get to their minute mix of kiddie delights.
‘Crossword’, which to the connoisseur, is like confusing cream cheese with camembert or Nescafe with café-au-lait, so solely bestseller-centric is it’s book collection, actually ended up faring better on my kiddie scale . It’s Hogwarts Express; with space in it for kids to climb in and read was always a hit. The staff smiled (So what if they never knew where any book was or whether they had it at all). It was secure and it never raised your expectations - you knew you’d never stumble on a rare book, one you’d heard of for ages and never found (like Noel Streatfield’s ‘The Circus is Coming’ or ‘The Random House Book of Poetry’ ) or even an unusual one you might be looking out like eleven year old Samhita Arni’s self illustrated rendition of the Mahabharata from Tara Publishing.
You’d have to travel northwards from the city to ‘Landmark’, a branch of the Chennai based store, to source these books. But it was a mixed thing taking kids there. The store’s so full of other things, Barbie and Batman sets and other toys, that the wide selection of kiddie books was rather lost . And then there was no space to sit.
Ultimately it was old college favorite BCL that saved the day. The place to be, for atmospheric old issues of the Times and classic Brit novelists, the British Council Library had, I discovered, a wonderful children’s section too (complete with the Barney and Noddy cushions!) For a totally- worth- it annual fee of Rs. 2500 , we could borrow an unheard of aggregate of eighteen books , that ran the gamut of prize winning fiction to gorgeously illustrated hardback non-fiction. Space Travel, the Animal World, the Magic of Numbers piled onto Dave Pilkey’s ‘ Captain Underpants’, Lemony Snickett’s ‘Unfortunate Events’ and Philip Pullman’s ‘The Fire Makers Daughter’. The library has all these holiday programs for young readers, like ‘Little librarians’ where the kids actually kid the library (as in man it). So it’s a wonderful chill out place to be in, and when you walk out with your eighteen books (or fifteen books and three DVD’s) it’s like you have the keys to the kingdom.

This feature appeared in the Sunday Times March 2007