A Closer Look At Your Neighbourhood: An Illustration Masterclass with Habib Ali and Canato Jimo
By Diya Shetty, Grade 10 The skilled Habib Ali, illustrator of the NBA 2023 winning wordless book My Street, and Canato Jimo, Art Director of Pratham Books, kicked off the masterclasses on Day 1 of the Neev Literature Festival 2023 with their session Neighbourhood Depictions. The air was buzzing with excitement. We began by discussing […]
Tracing History for the Future Through Fiction: In Conversation with Donna Barba Higuera
Donna Barba Higuera joined us for the very first author interaction of the 2022 NLF Reading Challenge. Her second novel, The Last Cuentista, from which she performed the reading, received the prestigious John Newbery Medal and the Pura Belpré Children’s Author Award in 2022. It was highlighted early in the conversation how the book gives […]
One with Nature: In Conversation with Rohan Chakravarty
With quirky illustrations that seem to pop right out of your screen, author-illustrator Rohan Chakravarty walked us through his new book, Naturalist Ruddy: Adventurer. Sleuth. Mongoose. What really set apart this session of the NLF Reading Challenge was the purely interactive approach with which Rohan gripped everyone’s attention. Naturalist Ruddy is about your average mongoose […]
Hope in the Face of Hopelessness: In Conversation with Divya Arya
“There’s one question I get asked a lot, about the impact my book had on the two protagonists, Saumya and Duaa”. Divya Arya kickstarted her session for the NLF Reading Challenge by elaborating upon this very aspect. Her book Postbox Kashmir explores the intertwined lives of two girls, Saumya and Duaa, one letter at a […]
The Strong Waves of Empathy: In Conversation with Julian Sedgwick
For Julian Sedgwick, Tsunami Girl is the product of his lifelong immersion in Japanese culture, history, and beliefs, alongside his friendships rooted in the nation. It is a dedication to the communities who were affected by the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake. During the NLF Reading Challenge, he spoke in detail about his experience of writing […]
A Closer Look at The World Around You: In Conversation with Katherine Applegate
Katherine Applegate is an author whose concern for the environment and the world around her makes its presence felt across her work. Her book, Willodeen, was described as a “cheer-worthy, inspiring, animal-centered tale”. In her writing, it’s always the final sentences in each of her chapters that really hits the point home for the readers, […]
Writing As and For Children: The Author’s Journey
“If somebody had told me when I was ten that I was going to grow up and become a children’s book author, I would have hid under my bed and told them they were lying…and then written a diary entry on it. I never thought I would become a writer, but books are all I […]
The Seed of a Story
Katherine Applegate told us that the inspiration for a lot of her books comes from the news, “There was a Muslim family that had moved into a small town in the United States, and somebody had put a note on their door that said, Go away. We don’t want you here. It was outrageous…we were […]
The Books That Spoke To Authors
Popular author Thomas Taylor says that all the books he enjoyed reading as a child also found a home in his own writing. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien—one of the books that had a huge effect on him—opens with a map and he decided that he’d put one in his book too, when he wrote […]
The Art of Inspiring Through Storytelling: In Conversation with Kate DiCamillo
“Each letter has a shape,” Beatryce said. “And each letter has a sound and you put these shapes and sounds together and they become words.” This is one of the many prolific lines that stuck with our readers while the New York Times Bestselling author, Kate DiCamillo weaved magic through her words. Having won accolades […]