Funky Rainbow ~ Your Favourite Independent Bookshop
The Travelling Children’s Bookshop
Celebrate books, music and a travelling bookshop’s fifth birthday with one of India’s best children’s choirs, The Harmony Chorus! Date: Saturday, 7 July 2018 Time: 11:00am to 1:00pm Venue: Hippocampus Children’s Experience Centre (Address: 525, 16th Main, 3rd Block, Koramangala. Phone: 080-25630206) Age-group: Children, adults and everyone else in between Join us for a scintillating medley […]
Childhood stories are amazing, especially when grandmothers narrate them. Let me take you back in time to my childhood, which means stepping into a rambling old house that belonged to my grandparents. As you entered the house through the main door, there was a Brindavana (the place where the Tulsi plant is worshipped) on one […]
The only special need that any child has (or any adult, for that matter) is to be loved and accepted just the way they are. And, if there’s a children’s book that sparkles as it tells a story around this much-needed theme, it has got to be Zai Whitaker’s Kanna Panna! Words roll, tumble and […]
THE MIGHT OF MILK Ant-E and Buzz-E are great fans of biographies and were waiting for an opportune moment to showcase this gem of a book from their collection on one of their favourite heroes, Verghese Kurien. And there could have been no better day than today – his 94th birthday! Fondly called the Milkman […]
As the nation celebrates Children’s Day today, I remember a story of the VIP with a rose. Yes, a very special person in our hearts even today, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Five decades ago, in the early sixties, Pandit Nehru, then the Prime Minister of India, spent a few days at Shillong during his tour of the North-East. […]
I have always wondered how I ended up being an “artist”, among other things. After years of ‘research’, with nearly 20 of them spent as a professional illustrator, I think I might have an answer. It takes me back all the way to my toddler days… Footloose and fancy free, with a simple daily routine that comprised […]
A chance to meet the President of India? Who wouldn’t be excited, especially when the man was none other than Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam! The morning of the meeting, which was going to happen at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, my head was in a tizzy… what would I say, what would I wear, would he ask […]
Ant-E and Buzz-E have been waiting impatiently for this book ever since a little birdie told them it is in the making! You see, they are privy to inside info when it comes to books because they’re always in and around bookshops and book readings and book dos. So off they went to pick up […]
Rwanda was our third choice for a quick weekend trip from Lagos during the Salah holidays, after Ngorongoro and Victoria Falls. Since life is often full of practical decisions, a direct flight to Kigali and an easy e-visa clinched the deal for Rwanda! Once that was out of the way, I was most excited. After […]
This was Bookalore’s theme for the event at the Butterfly Talent Academy. The programme got off to a smooth start as things usually do for us at this venue. We were partnering with BTA for the third time, and their team was as efficient, organised and welcoming as they have always been. That said, we […]
Remember the time when the knife-sharpener was a regular in the neighbourhood? What fun it was to watch him announce his presence – folks would call out to him and then haggle about rates; children would follow him everywhere and watch a little too closely as he went about sharpening knives skilfully on his contraption. The sounds the […]
An outing at Butterfly Talent Academy (BTA) definitely brings back some fantastic memories for the travelling children’s bookshop. On the morning of 7 December 2013, we were there bright and early for an exciting Bookalore event of stories and craft by author-storyteller par excellence Poile Sengupta and talented author-illustrator Alankrita Jain. In a jiffy, the […]
As an editor of children’s magazines for over fifteen years now, I’ve often featured interesting pieces on people who are inspiring and who make us feel like anything can be achieved if we set our minds to it. These features have mostly been done in the form of imaginary diaries, letters, comics and even posters, […]
The well-known naturalist Sir David Attenborough receives hundreds of letters a week from fans of his wonderful wildlife programmes, but he particularly loves those he gets from kids. “There is not a child born who is not fascinated by the natural world,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Herald Sun. “I get about […]
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list,” said the writer Susan Sontag. Mine too, but while I am at it, Siddhartha Sarma’s eclectic, enjoyable book, 103 Journeys, Voyages, Trips and Stuff has kept me company for some years now. The sort of book that you can read at one go or dip […]