A weekend haunt for young bookies

Ten-year-old Akshay Sharma had a hard time deciding where to start at the Young Scholar Bokaroo’s Children's Literature Festival, reports Jatin Anand.

Ten-year-old Akshay Sharma had a hard time deciding where to start at the Young Scholar Bokaroo’s Children's Literature Festival.

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“I was confused between the Doodle Wall and the Museum of Everyday Art, since both of them looked very interesting,” said the Class 5 student of KM Mangalam School.

Sharma finally chose the Doodle Wall. In 15 minutes, he had completed filling-in his drawing of an eight-eyed alien in red, green and blue.

“I can go to the museum now,” he said before running to his mother, artwork in his right hand.

Sharma was one of the hundreds of children — aged between 10 and 14 — who had flocked to the second annual edition of the Bookaroo's Children’s Literature Festival at Sanskriti Anandgram, Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road, on Saturday.

With more than 45 authors and performers and 64 events on the itinerary, the two-day event aims to bring books and children closer.

The children had a variety of things to choose from — The Glades, Doodle Wall, The Museum of Everyday Art and the most popular Pavilion.

“It’s a sort of a wake-up call, a sign that we should start taking children’s books more seriously,” said C.P. Viswanath, director, The Karadi Tales Company, a Chennai-based publishing house.

“The idea is to make books more exciting for children.”