Educational Resources - Tulika        

Tulika is a group in India dedicated specifically to producing books for children. The focus of Tulika is to give children images of India we would like them to grow up with; of how all its little parts come together to make it what it is — a diverse whole, and changing. These are the images Tulika hopes to share in a world opening up to more and more voices. Tulika hopes that its books will illustrate in concrete terms how multicultural societies the world over hold together, how they must hold together.

Presentation at the conference (Radhika)

Technically, we’re not affiliated with this group, we’re independent publishing house based in Chennai. On the other hand in spirit I think we share the same concerns, that all of you who work with children and children’s education share. Many of the things that were highlighted here, many of those concerns are addressed in our books. Bharati trust was talking about rehabilitation of Irula children and their community. There is a book about an Irula boy written by Zai Whitekar, a very good writer, who worked with the community. It is to begin with, a very good story, written very well, very sensitively told story. It doesn’t directly take up an issue but certainly the issue come across because it is such a well told story. It was illustrated by  Vidya Natrajan who actually took photographs, did her research and then did the illustrations. So it’s a very authentic telling of that story about a marginalized community, about a boy’s story, which could be a boy’s story anywhere in one sense.

We find that, we have produced this like all other books and this is a book that doesn’t sell very well. Then you realize how deep prejudices are - we’ve seen parents discouraging their children to not take this book. They ask them to take another book. When you ask the question ‘why’, they say because it’s about a boy, who is very different and you really don’t want to know a lot about that, and they don’t see the point. To them, I’m sure, had this been a book about a king and a queen or a folk story retold, then the book would have picked up. So this is the kind of prejudice existing among teachers, among parents. And this we are describing in the city of Madras . This exists everywhere. Now these are the concerns in any of the books, we try to address, but which is not to say that these are the only kind of books we produce.

For us the first thing is the writing, it has to be very good writing, it has to be a story well told. Every writer has concerns that are very close to their hearts and they’re working in that area very often. If a story is very sensitively told - that communicates the best.

There are two kinds of children’s books - those meant for improving reading skills. These are simply told - you look for a certain number of words on a page. These are the teaching reading kind of books. The second kind is one that enhances a child’s reading experience - which is what literature does.  An understanding of children’s literature is not present among a lot of teachers and parents. Books that teach and books that are just enjoyed by a child for the story, for the pictures, and that’s what children’s books are about for us.  This is not to say that the other kinds of books are not important. Those are created by teachers, by educators who are working with children for a specific purpose. Ours is a much larger purpose - a child can anywhere pick up that book and read that book. This is really what makes the difference. We’re not always looking at vocabulary - we look at the story – say one that is meant for an eight year old, a child at a certain level will be able to read it.  Others can enjoy it being read out to them.

The other issue that keeps coming up which I would like to explain, is the whole question about the price of books. We are constantly told that our books are very expensive. I’d like to point out that a book is an expensive product - to create a book is an expensive process. We have writers, illustrators, designer’s input. We produce it on good paper with color printing. Somebody this morning talked about something appealing to all the senses of a child – this is what creates the most impact. The greatest learning takes place then. This is precisely what goes into our books. Someone else - a very experienced educator here told us that its such a pleasure to hold your book.  This doesn’t come cheap. But it concerns us that our books are not reaching everyone. Now one way of doing it, is what we’re hoping to do by working with Asha - to reach these books to organizations like yours, to find an alternative marketing system. And to provide these books at a discount when it is taken directly bought by us. Obviously when this book goes to a shop or is taken to a book fair there are costs added to the cost of the book.

We have also made reading lists of Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi books. We publish books in all these languages including books for younger children. We put together a package of books at the request of Asha - which will be provided to a lot of organizations. This list is very valuable because it can be used by other organizations. These are ways in which we are trying to reach our books as widely as possible.

The other focus is bilingual books.  The first book Tulika published is a bilingual book and the resistance was enormous. Some of the best schools in the city told us that this will not work in the English or Tamil class because in the Tamil class it has to be Tamil, and in the English class it has to be English, you can’t combine the two. Slowly that perception is changing and people are looking at bilingual books. It’s a very slow process. When all of you here are talking about bilingual education - it is very heartening. It is obviously a very realistic way of teaching in India in the multilingual society that we have.

Finally our books reflect a contemporary reality. So whether it is retelling a myth, a legend, or a folk story, contemporary story, whether they are information books, it reflects the society the child is growing up in today. Skill to express this is a talent that comes from a good writer.

 Ques: Is there any way to make a professional kind of book from the stories that children write?

 Ans: Anything can be published into a book. Tulika will do it.  Our only constraints are that we are a very small organization and resources are stretched.  Doing books like this may not work well as a business proposition - so we have to balance the kind of books we do. Apart from that we still haven’t fully resolved our ideas on children writing children’s books. We need to be clear before we take this up. I’m not saying its right or wrong but this is something that we have to resolve for ourselves-  whether that becomes children’s books or literature, we’re not sure.

 Contact Information

Tulika
13, Prithvi Avenue (First Floor),
Abhiramapuram, Chennai  600 018, INDIA
Phone (44) 4981639, 4671117  fax (44) 4671113, 8418253
email  kaka@tulikabooks.com or tulbooks@md4.vsnl.net.in

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