Dungeon Tales
We read Dungeon Tales II in September last year and loved it. In fact, it was everyone’s favourite read from the August-September selection, even though it competed with Paati Vs UNCLE and Frindle. So how can we not read Dungeon Tales, or, as the children at my book club call it, ungeon ales?
A brilliantly crafted collection of stories, this book takes us through the creation of the tome we encounter in the second book. The Badmash Badshah is all set to make heads roll, until one young prisoner comes up with a plan – of regaling the emperor with stories. One by one, the prisoners are brought before him, and they tell him their magnificent, fantastical, hilarious tales.
Word Choice
Why does the author Venita Coelho use the word ‘dungeon’ rather than a word like ‘prison’ or ‘jail’? How does word choice affect a story?
Through a quick vocabulary activity, we’ll discuss synonyms for simple words like said and walked. How do writers change the mood of their stories by choosing specific words?
Ballads
The stories in Dungeon Tales are old-fashioned ones with a twist, the perfect way to explore old-fashioned storytelling styles like ballads. Can we take a section of a story and rewrite it in the form of rhyming narrative verse? This is the perfect way to introduce the importance of meter and rhythm when we write rhyme!
Prisoners
Creative writing is an integral part of Read, Write, Explore, and so we’re going to write a story of our own. Imagine you’ve been thrown into the Badmash Badshah’s prison. Why are you there? What is your story?
At my creative writing programmes, we will be working on fractured fairytales, and this exercise will follow much the same pattern. What stereotypes and norms can we invert while telling a fantastic story?
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Ottoline and the Yellow Cat
I love Chris Riddell! I read Ottoline Goes to School sometime last year, but I couldn’t introduce it to my book club because it wasn’t available in India. Less than a month ago, I learned that Ottoline and the Yellow Cat is available, so of course we must read it!
I love serious humour. I know that’s an oxymoron, but for me, it’s the kind of book that’s earnest and written in such a way that something utterly ridiculous reads like it is perfectly normal. And that’s what makes the Ottoline series delightful. Lovely pictures and a perfectly lovely story come together in this quick, beautifully illustrated story about a girl and her unusual friend. Here’s what we’ll do as we read Ottoline and the Yellow Cat at my book club.
Collections
Ottoline’s parents travel all over the world and collect all kinds of things, including masks, extremely small paintings, and portable fishbowls. Ottoline loves to look after the collections, and I think most children do! I collected perfect pencil shavings, for instance. And my sister collected tissues from restaurants. What do my book clubbers collect? Through a small Show and Tell session, we’ll find out.
Make Your Own Business Card!
I love bringing artsy activities into my book club! Lots of people who take care of Ottoline and Mr Monroe. One spread of images shows us all their business cards, so let’s make our own! What special services could we offer? What are we good at, and what would we call our business?
Maps
Ottoline’s story is full of maps, not all of which seem very useful. Nonetheless, maps are entertaining and could be fun to explore.
Can you draw a map from your front door to your room? What about a fictitious map? Can you draw one of those?
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A Boy Called Bat
What does it mean to be autistic? What exactly does the word inclusive mean?
I think these are conversations we must keep having, and the earlier we have them with children, the more likely it is that they will be sensitive to neurodiversity, and the fact that we can look at things from other points of view.
For me, the best way to have these conversations is through books – books like A Boy Called Bat.
Bat, aka Bixby Alexander Tam, is an unforgettable character, and his story is both funny and lovely. Bat may be autistic, but the truth is that all of us – neurotypical or neurodiverse – know what it is like to want something with all our heart.
And what does Bat want?
To convince his mother that a skunk kit is the perfect pet.
A story about friendship, sibling rivalry, and being different, A Boy Called Bat promises to be a rewarding read at my book club.
Our Five Senses
I’ve read so much about needing to rethink how we teach the senses. When we’re hungry, for instance, isn’t that a sense? Sure, we stub our toes and hit our elbows once in a while, but what sense prevents us from doing this all the time?
Understanding autism is also about understanding our senses and how they work. We’ll talk about the five senses we study at school, explore sights and sounds we like, and then move on to discussing what senses we have but take for granted.
Animals
Thanks to A Boy Called Bat, I learned that the young one of a skunk is called a kit! It’s a good time to explore a few others – foxes, wolves, kangaroos, and maybe a few unusual ones too.
Points of View
Bat’s mom thinks his dresser drawers are a mess. Bat thinks they’re organised. Janie is upset about her unicorn pajama top, even though Bat has a very logical explanation as to why he gave it to the skunk.
This is the perfect time to write two diary entries – one from Janie’s point of view and one from Bat’s. What would make them different? Which of them is in the wrong?
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The Lizard of Oz and Other Stories
As a child, I adored animal stories. Dick King-Smith was a favourite, and I scoured the British Library for his books. Another favourite was the Animal Ark series – completely different in the sense that the animals aren’t anthropomorphic, but fun, all the same.
That’s one of the reasons we’re reading The Lizard of Oz at my book club. Although I haven’t worked with short stories with my book club for ages seven and eight before, they work excellently with the older ones, so I’m excited to read this set next month. Humour, adventure and sparkling surprises come together in this collection that I’m sure we’ll have fun exploring!
Word Puzzle
Several years ago, the theme for the reading challenge at the British Library was ‘Animal Agents‘. I loved the books in the collection, as well as all the activities we did! One of those activities is a word puzzle that I’m sure my book clubbers will enjoy. Searching for words is always fun!
Favourite Animals
When we read A Very Naughty Dragon, the children at my book club made wonderful presentations on animals they find intriguing. I discovered animals I hadn’t heard of, and this was rewarding for all of us! This is an activity well worth repeating because children are treasure troves of trivia that they’re eager to share. Here’s our chance to learn about more animals from around the world, while also giving each child the chance to talk about something that excites them!
Creating an Animal Story
The Lizard of Oz and Other Stories features all kinds of unexpected animals – a mosquito, a bee, an ant, a mouse … What animals can we write about? What strange characteristics could they have? Together, as well as individually, we will create protagonists for animal stories of our own.
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Pinkoo Shergill: Pastry Chef
When the publishers sent me a review copy of Pinkoo Shergill: Pastry Chef, I devoured it. Even as I read it, I knew I wanted to introduce it to my book club soon. The only question I had was as to whether to introduce it to ages seven and eight, or nine and ten. Ultimately, I chose the latter for several reasons. For one, there’s so much we can do with the book in terms of creative writing! For another, it’s rather longer than the books I usually read at my book club for seven and eight-year-olds, so I felt I would not be able to do it justice with younger readers.
Pinkoo’s story is filled with a sense of urgency, which makes it a pacy read. I like the characters, the storyline and the telling – what more do I need?
Here’s what we will do with the book at my reading programme.
Portmanteau Words
We’ve worked with portmanteau words at my book club for the younger ones, and each time I do vocabulary activities of various kinds, I realise how much fun they are! Some activities are also worth repeating, simply because each time we do them, we enjoy them more. Fabtastic! Wowmazing! Spectaculous! These are words that Vibha Batra uses in the story. What can we come up with?
Recipes
In a book that is all about food, let’s create recipes of our own! The best thing about recipes that we don’t actually have to follow is that we can let our imaginations run wild. What ingredients could we put together? What cheftastic creations can we conjure up?
Creative writing is all about having fun with words and enjoying the process of writing. I can’t wait to see what this activity will lead to!
Genre
As this is the first book we will be reading in March, it is a good time to explore genre.
What genres do children enjoy reading? What kinds of stories do they like to write? We will do a genre quiz, following which we’ll briefly explore how we classify and categorise stories.
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Petu Pumpkin: Cheater Peter
Petu Pumpkin is a cheat!
Or at least, so Jatin is convinced.
And if Petu Pumpkin continues to cheat and lie, what will become of him? One day, he fakes a stomach ache. He used to be a tiffin thief. Tomorrow, he’ll be a pickpocket. And then soon, he’ll be a murderer! His friends have a duty. They must get him to confess, no matter what it takes. That’s the only way they can save him from a life of crime.
Humorous and fun, Petu Pumpkin: Cheater Peter has that element of silliness that I know my book club will enjoy. Here’s what we’ll do as we read it.
Book Cover
The episode featured on the cover of Petu Pumpkin: Cheater Peter is probably my favourite part of the book. It’s as mad as it looks, and so, I’m going to begin by asking the children what they think is happening there. Is that … an egg? What are the boys doing?
And with all the hypotheses my book clubbers come up with, we’ll begin to read!
Renaming Old Games
When I learned that Ludo simply means I play, I was amused and amazed. What do you think would be a better name for it?
Petu Pumpkin and his friends play ‘Firebreathing Dragons and Spiralling Staircases’, which is just a fancy name for Snakes and Ladders. What other names can we come up with?
And connected to that, what other games can we come up with?
Two Truths and a Lie
How easy or difficult is it to tell if someone is being truthful or lying? Let’s find out through this game we play together – two truths and a lie!
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Writing Poetry
I’ve been conducting writing workshops for a long time, and if there’s one thing I love working with, it’s poetry. Nearly every writing programme I conduct begins with a poetry module. Why? Because it’s accessible. It’s far easier to write a poem in a week than it is to write a story in a week.
And so, each time, I try to work with different kinds of poetry. We’ve done list poems and narrative verse, limericks, rhymes, poems with strong verbs, and much, much more. Everything serves as a poetry prompt for me, and I think it can work for anyone!
For instance, what we read always helps us to get creative, and so, my reading programmes too have an element of poetry sometimes. Here’s a brief look some of the kinds of poetry we’ve explored recently.
Cinquains
The first poem below is a cinquain, which the children wrote when we read I Survived: The California Wildfires, 2018. Climate change is a phrase children encounter all the time. What signs of climate change do we see around us? Cinquains push children to pay attention to each word they choose. Teaching cinquains creates opportunities to brainstorm, explore our vocabulary, and attempt to find the perfect fit.
List Poem
I led the children through the second poem below when we read Crenshaw. Guided writing exercises, with poetry worksheets, work so well! In the story, Jackson and Robin put together a keepsake bag, and this prompted us to write about a keepsake bag of our own. I think it’s a lovely way for children to think about what is precious to them.
Of course, writing programmes allow us to explore even more. With each writing programme I conduct, I, too, become more ambitious. During the last two editions of the programme, I chose the best pieces and put together a zine (download issue 1 here and issue 2 here). This pushed the children to work even harder, editing and rewriting their pieces until they were satisfied.
Free Verse and (Rhyming) Puzzle Poems
In the April to June session, I introduced the participants to Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the thing with feathers, and then I guided them through a poem in free verse, comparing an emotion to an animal. I also worked with puzzle poetry because I love riddles, particularly rhyming riddles. Plus, it was the perfect pre-writing activity for us to work on detective stories!
Free verse allows children to become more familiar with metaphors, similes, personification, onomatopoeia and the like. It allows them to look at these literary devices as more than just terms, understanding what poetic effect they create. And the puzzle poems we wrote? While working on rhyme and meter, we also find ways to involve the reader!
Haikus, Acrostics and Reverse Poetry
In the latest edition of the writing programme, we grew more ambitious. I came across Brian Bilston’s review haikus, and I wondered whether we could do something along those lines. We took this idea further and explored recipe haikus too.
In keeping with the same idea of testing our limits, I also wondered if we could take a form that every child explores at some stage – acrostics. Whether it’s for greeting cards or for a chart in school, children write, or at least read, acrostic poetry at some stage. So, we took this familiar form and tried to do something new. Can we write a backwards acrostic? Take a look at one of my favourite ones below!
Our most ambitious project so far has been reverse poetry, and I was impressed with the poems the children wrote. I’m not usually someone who is effusive with praise, but the reverse poems they created were clever and lovely. Of course, we read multiple examples, and of course, I guided them through the process. But to successfully write a reverse poem – which conveys the opposite meaning when read in reverse – is a feat. There are many more in the latest issue of WORDS, our very own zine!
Writing poetry is fun, and getting children to write it is, honestly, equally rewarding. When creative writing seems difficult, I turn to poetry. Not because it’s necessarily easier, but because it is liberating. More importantly, especially when working with children, I think it’s important to play with poetry. Explore it, enjoy it, create something new. Rhyme is great. But there’s so much more that all of us can explore.
Do read our zine, and tell us what you think. Before you read it, though, I’d like to say – I’m sure there are typos. I’m also sure that lots of people could have designed it better – I’m a writer, not a designer. Even so, I can unabashedly say that I’m proud of it and I’m waiting for the next edition.
Tara and the Friendship Theorem
Maths and Logic are fascinating. I remember when I studied Descartes, who tried to prove the existence of God using pure logic. I understand the drive to do that – just like I understand Tara’s need to use a theorem to find friends. Can a foolproof Friendship Theorem exist? Can we actually use a Venn diagram to find friends?
Tara and the Friendship Theorem is a lovely book about big changes and making friends. Like with Ramanujan, I enjoyed the facts at the head of each chapter; they help me get into Tara’s very particular character. Just like Tara (and the author Chitra Soundar), I, too, played pallanguzhi as a child too, though my rules were a little different from the ones at the beginning of the book. But I played all things mathematics – Cheese Buzz, Magic Squares, even mental maths games.
Unlike Tara, however, I never attempted to use Maths to find friends. And more importantly, I loved the great outdoors as much as I loved Maths. But what can Tara do at a camp where no electronics are allowed at all?
Cheese Buzz
When we’re reading about a protagonist like Tara, how can we not play a maths game? Cheese Buzz and Magical Mathematical Squares promise to be fun. We’ll play one for sure, and the other if we have the time.
Skills
Part of the process of making friends is finding out what the others are good at. Kapil loves extreme sports. Millie loves to juggle, and is good at it too. What can my book clubbers do that they’re proud of? Solve a Rubik’s cube? Say the alphabet backwards? Fold their tongues? Let’s find out!
Change
Two books we’re reading this time are about big changes – shifting house. Lily in The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips has to move because of the war. Tara has to leave her best friend behind in Chennai and move to the UK for two years. Change is never easy, but it happens all around us. As creative writing is an integral part of Read, Write, Explore, we’ll look at changes around us and write a poem in free verse about change.
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Amelia Bedelia Goes Wild
We read our first Amelia Bedelia (Amelia Bedelia Means Business) at the second edition of my reading programme, and what fun we had with it! Even though there were children who didn’t understand much of the word play, the humour came through, and we enjoyed the book thoroughly.
Amelia Bedelia Goes Wild promises to be just as much fun. Amelia is “sick as a dog”, and she can’t go to the zoo with the rest of her class. But it isn’t like Amelia to give up and give in. Oh, no. If she can’t go to the zoo, she must make one of her own!
Powered by her optimism and bursting with ideas, Amelia can do anything, as she shows us in this humorous chapter book that I’m waiting to share with my book club.
Wordplay
How can we read an Amelia Bedelia and not engage in wordplay? From idioms to homophones, this series explores the madness of the English language, delighting in the confusion its oddities create. We’ll go wild with a quiz on animal idioms, exploring how language can make you go bananas.
Animals
There exists a very special relationship between animals and children, and a book like Amelia Bedelia is perfect to explore this relationship. What strange animal facts do you know? What is your favourite animal and why? And most importantly, do you think it’s right to keep an animal in a zoo?
Figures of Speech
Amelia is sick as a dog. Are dogs always sick? And yet, the phrase sick as a dog exists. What other similes can we explore? Amelia Bedelia Goes Wild is perfect to (re)introduce similes, metaphors and hyperbole.
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Often, when I read a well-known book like Amelia Bedelia, a few children have already read it. It doesn’t matter in the least – they enjoy rereading it and laughing aloud once more. And the fun of a book club is that it’s not just about reading; it’s also about all the activities we do side by side.
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
I read The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips several years ago. And like most of Michael Morpurgo’s books, it’s a classic. In the cruellest, most inhuman of times, we find stories of courage and love – Morpurgo never fails to remind us of that.
Through a series of diary entries, we learn about 11-year-old Lily, who lives in Slapton in 1943. The war seems very far away, even though several “townies” now study in the same school as Lily. Life goes on as usual–until the people of Slapton are told they must evacuate in seven weeks. Lily’s grandfather refuses to move, but the time comes when he accepts that he will help the war effort by moving, so he does. The problem is that Lily’s precious cat, Tips, goes missing, and everyone begins to hunt for her, including the Yankee soldiers who are now in Slapton.
As the hunt for Tips goes on, relationships are formed, and these relationships drive the story, leading to the astonishing end of the book, one that fills us up and makes us rejoice.
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips is a beautiful, heartwarming story – I can’t wait to share it with my book club!
Adolphus Tips
Lily renames her cat Adolphus Tips after the soldier Adolphus, whom she meets in Slapton. Whom would you name an animal after, and why? What about toys? Have you ever named a toy after someone?
Journalling
The story of Adolphus Tips is revealed to us through Lily’s diary, the perfect prompt for us to write a journal entry or two. We will begin by writing a little about ourselves – our day, and what makes it special. We will then move on to a more imaginative entry–about a day when we have to move out of our home to a new place.
Autobiography
We learn about Tips’s adventures through Lily, but what if Tips could write for herself? What would her diary look like?
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The Egghead Detective Agency
What child has never dreamed of being a detective?
The Egghead Detective Agency is perfect for my book club in so many ways. For one, there are clues to solve within each story. For another, the characters are young children, accompanied by a friendly ghost, making the book fun to read. I enjoyed the cases too – raining cupcakes, a missing chicken, a pink pool and more!
Here’s what we’ll do as we read the book together.
Solve It Yourself!
Can we all become detectives? We’ll begin by trying to solve the clues in the stories, but we’ll move on to observing the world around us. What unusual things do we notice the moment we pay attention? A mark on the wall? A strange smell? Good detectives are, first, good observers!
Magical Chairs
Many children are familiar with Enid Blyton’s wishing chair. Here, in The Egghead Detective Agency, we have another kind of magical chair – one in which a ghost appears. Can we imagine something new? What else could a magical chair do?
Story Worksheet
Story worksheets are always fun, and a set of detective stories provides us with the perfect opportunity to write a mystery story of our own. Using a worksheet, we will write a complete detective story – an activity that is always satisfying.
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Talon the Falcon
We love the Feather Tales series at my book club! I didn’t choose to read Talon the Falcon earlier because it is much shorter than The Golden Eagle and The Paradise Flycatcher, but when children fall in love with a series, how can we not read the whole lot together?
Set in the familiar Rose Garden, Talon the Falcon opens with a beloved character, Shikar, who wonders where all the birds have disappeared. He soon finds the reason – the presence of a falcon in the neighbouring garden! Of course, the birds, terrified, have flown away. But everything isn’t as it seems, and Shikar soon realises that the mighty falcon needs their help.
Here’s what we’ll do as we read Talon the Falcon together.
Idioms and Proverbs
Birds of a feather flock together.
Bird-brained.
Chicken-hearted.
I never tire of working with theme-based idioms with children. A quiz always brings a surge of energy!
Birds
The stunning pictures in Talon the Falcon add magic to the story. More, illustrations like these are perfect to learn about birds around us. As a child, I knew nothing of bee-eaters, drongos and sunbirds. Books like this can change that! During one class, I will also ask the children to talk about a bird they love, and what makes that bird special.
Poetry
The falcon and the other birds sing two beautiful songs, which will serve as the perfect introduction to list poetry. I love list poems, and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve worked with them. Here’s one that a child wrote at one of my first creative writing programmes. It’s time for more!
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My Year in Workshops: 2022
The year 2022 was all about flexibility.
Conducting online sessions from cafés and hotel rooms.
Finishing an online session before boarding a bus to do an in-person session in another city.
Adjusting schedules.
Cancelling some editions of my book club because children were – finally – travelling.
Competing with swimming and cricket coaching and all the other things that weren’t factors I needed to consider at all in 2020-21.
And it’s been quite a journey. We did so much; I met so many people; I travelled extensively for work. I can’t help wondering what 2023 is going to be like!
Book Clubs
I launched my first book club in December 2020, and look how far we’ve come! Yes, we read ALL these books in 2022. I read 14 with ages nine and ten, and 18 with ages seven and eight.
Yes, there were sessions I had to cancel. In 2022, children started going to school again, and their schedules slowly filled up. Yet, before I could wonder what I was doing wrong and why people weren’t signing up, parents would write and ask me for a different time-slot. They wrote and wrote and wrote again, reaffirming that they loved the book clubs, loved reading with me … but just couldn’t fit my book club into the children’s schedule.
And that’s what keeps me going. I did have to cancel three sessions across age-groups in 2022. But that hasn’t stopped me yet!
Writing Programmes
My writing programmes remain as rewarding as ever. With children signing up time and again, it’s wonderful to see them blossom and grow. Poetry, drama, nonfiction, fiction … we’ve explored it all. Just like in 2020-21, I invited experts from various fields to address the children, and these were a treat!
During each edition of my creative writing programme, there are so many pieces I love that in April 2022, I decided I would bring these pieces together in a zine of our very own. So, June 2022 saw the launch of the first issue of WORDS, written by children aged nine to 14! The second issue came out in January 2023, and I’m sharing that here too, since all these pieces were written in 2022.
In-Person Workshops
And of course, with schools reopening, my offline workshops began again too. Teacher-training sessions took me to Nagpur, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Goa, and all over Pune. Lit fests took me to Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Vadodara and Jaipur–but more about those when I write about how 2022 was for me as a writer.
My 2023 calendar is already chalked out. My reading sessions continue, new batches are around the corner, I have sessions lined up in Mumbai and Goa … I’m waiting to see what the year brings!
Building Dramatic Characters
What fun we had at ‘Building Dramatic Characters’ – a guest session conducted by Neha Singh for my creative writing programme!
To quote Neha, anything can be a character. Maybe even a chair talking to the moon! The strength of a character simply depends on how much you have invested in the character to make it full-fledged and believable.
Step by step, she led us through the process of creating dramatic characters of our own, and before we were even halfway through, here are the characters we met:
- Bland – a lonely blade of grass
- Orange – a carrot with no friends
- Slippmery Slippers – an unwanted pair of slippers
- Mr Squeak – a mouse who loves to build things
- Madame Gabriella the Fifth – the poltergeist who simply cannot do something mischievous
- Gray – a sidewalk that’s about to be dug up
- Alexandra or Alex – half a personality in search of a human home
- Six-Face – a Rubik’s cube whose owner has sharp nails
Each child chose three props and gave their character a unique voice. Neha asked the characters questions, and we explored how we could help each one reach its goal. Now, I wonder what stories the children will come up with based on the characters they created today!
Flipped – Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories
With Flipped – Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories, we have another first at my book club – an anthology! Full disclosure – I have a story in Flipped too, but we won’t be reading that one.
I love the idea of the Flipped books. You read a few stories, then decide you want another kind of story, so you just flip the book over and discover another genre. Short stories work well at my book club too, so there’s a lot we can do as we read this anthology.
Sci-Fi Stories
A couple of years ago, I invited a friend and NASA scientist, Dr Sreeja Nag, to conduct a session for my writing programme on science stories. Like every other guest session I’ve organised, I learned a lot from the session. What is science fiction anyway? What kinds of stories make for believable science fiction? Taking an idea from another session Sreeja conducted, we’ll explore a few writing prompts. Set a story in a place without gravity! Imagine an alien visits the earth. Create your own spaceship. What else?
Mystery Stories
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – I love codes! We’ll play with a few simple codes and then write coded notes to each other in the chat box. Perhaps we could even invent a code of our own!
Writing a Story
Mystery stories are fun to read and fun to write. We worked extensively with mystery stories at my writing programme in April, and two stories the children created feature in issue 1 of our zine, Words. We’ll take small steps in the same direction as we read mystery stories at Read, Write, Explore in December ’22 – January ’23
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Crenshaw
I read Crenshaw over two years ago. In fact, it was one of my top reads of 2020, and it’s a story that has stayed with me since then, a story I think about often because of its portrayal of friendship, loneliness and vulnerability.
Crenshaw is the story of a boy, Jackson, and a giant cat. What role can a giant cat have in the life of a boy who loves facts? How can Jackson reconcile his need for truth with the … fact … that he has an imaginary friend? I’m waiting to share this beautiful story with my book club!
Book Discussion - Imaginary Friends
Do you have an imaginary friend? Have you ever had an imaginary friend? Children make up all kinds of companions; after all, that’s what dolls and toys are for. I’d love to know what characteristics they give either temporary or more permanent imaginary creatures in their lives.
Words, Books, and More
As always, the advantage of reading a popular book that is often used in schools and book clubs is the wealth of activities I can find online. We’ll play word games and discuss the keepsakes Jackson and Robin treasure – the books A Hole is to Dig and The House on East 88th Street. If time permits, we’ll read excerpts from these two books too and talk about why the children in the story treasure them.
Poetry
What I love most about Katherine Applegate’s writing is her simple, poetic style. It makes each emotion come alive, hitting all the right spots. Can we write poetry like this? During the creative writing class for Crenshaw, we will try to write a list poem in free verse about someone in our lives whom we treasure.
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Gulgul in Jungalu
It’s time to introduce another series to my book club – the Gulgul series! I wonder if the book is targeted at slightly younger readers than my book clubbers, but the number of things we can do with Gulgul in Jungalu prompted me to select it.
Gulgul is mischievous, resourceful and friendly, the perfect protagonist of an adventure story. She must befriend not just elephant-like creatures, but also flippots, bluglugs and longfellows in order to help her mother Megha build a zingjuck that will shoot them into space where they will have phone coverage to call a spacecab!
Full of wacky words and even wackier animals, Gulgul in Jungalu promises to keep my book clubbers giggling as we read.
Space Travel
Imagine you’re travelling through space. What planet are you from? How do you travel? How old do you have to be to drive a space vehicle? What are your favourite picnic spots? The list of questions we can work with is endless! Let’s see what we can create together.
Wacky Animals
The cover of Gulgul in Jungalu reveals what looks like a hippo that can fly and an elephant with a very long trunk. We’ll let our imaginations go wild as one child describes the animal of their imagination and the others draw what they can based on the description. We’ll come up with new animals that no one has dreamed of!
Earth Calling Aliens!
What if an alien landed in your balcony? What would you show them? What would you want them to eat, see, smell or experience? If time permits, we’ll write a short piece about an encounter with an alien.
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Demystifying Publishing
One of the best things about my creative writing programmes is how much I learn on the way. For one, before each class, I research for hours. One hour of class time typically requires at least four hours of research.
And for another, I invite guests to talk about a variety of subjects from science fiction to cyber crime, historical fiction to comics.
Our latest guest was Andaleeb Wajid, a hybrid author who has published 37 novels in the last twelve years! Since so many parents and children have questions about Kindle Direct Publishing and whether they should publish their children’s work at all, Andaleeb was the ideal guest. Step by step, she took us through the process of publishing, comparing traditional publishing with KDP, with complete frankness when it came to costs, timelines and control.
For the most part, we followed a Q and A pattern for the session. Here are two answers that stood out to me.
What do you think about self-publishing, especially when it comes to children?
Free publishing platforms are now available to us, so go ahead and publish! Remember, though, that you should publish the best version possible. Work on your writing, edit, and get feedback. Because your name is going to be associated with that book.
Do you have advice when it comes to publishing children’s work?
Whether adults or children are looking to publish, my question is the same: why do you want to be published? Do you want to make money? Become famous? Or do you just want to get your work out there?
If you want to make money, publishing via KDP could work. If your book is well written and you market it well, you will find readers and make money.
If you’re looking to publish because you want to become famous, KDP is not the route I recommend. Your book isn’t going to be at a store. In India, KDP is restricted to ebooks, plus distribution networks don’t really make space for self-published books.
If you want to publish your book because you have spent so much time and effort writing it that you just want it out there, go for it! Publish. It gives you a sense of achievement!
The session was informative and useful; I can’t wait for the next one!
The Adventures of Mooli and the Bully on Wheels
Just like the second book we’re reading this time, Yikes! Bikes!, The Adventures of Mooli and the Bully on Wheels features characters some of my book clubbers have read about before. In December 2021, we read the third book in the series, The Adventures of Mooli and the Sticker Trickster. It’s time to meet Mooli again!
Mooli and his friend Soups are fun, enterprising characters, itching to try something new. After all, they want to win a prize on WAYOUTS – World’s As Yet Original Untried Tricks and Stunts. Toothpaste art sounds like a good idea–or not.
Funny, silly and full of wacky ideas, Mooli is a character with whom book clubs are fun!
Art Explorations
Mooli tries to create art using a tube of toothpaste. We’re not going to waste toothpaste, but we are going to have fun with art! Can the children draw with their eyes closed? Or with their non-dominant hand? Or without lifting their pencil from the paper? Let’s find out!
WAYOUTS
We discussed this during my December book club, and we’re going to discuss it again. What unusual and untried ideas can my book clubbers come up with for a fictitious WAYOUTS entry? What can they do that has never been done before?
Dear Team Wayouts
This time, we’ll take our WAYOUTS ideas one step further, working with a little writing too. I’d like the children to imagine that they’ve created something they would like to send for the WAYOUTS competition. We’ll work on a cover letter that they could write to accompany their entry. Letter-writing is always enjoyable!
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Dragonflies, Jigsaws and Seashells
For the first time ever, we’re going to read one of my books at my book club! I am in equal parts nervous and excited.
Yes, Dragonflies, Jigsaws and Seashells was shortlisted for the Scholastic Asian Book Award.
Yes, it’s been published both by Scholastic Asia and Scholastic India.
Yes, it was shortlisted for the Singapore Book Award.
That doesn’t make me any less nervous!
I chose this book of mine because reading Dungeon Tales II convinced me that short stories are perfect for Read, Write, Explore. We will read excerpts from three stories in class and do activities based on the stories, concluding the edition by writing something of our own.
Jigsaw Puzzles
A book club is all about having fun, so we’ll begin with an online jigsaw puzzle. I wrote the story “Jigsaw Puzzles” because I loved jigsaws as a child. Like Aniket in the story, I would make regularly a mat of jigsaw puzzle. (Also like Aniket, I won a jigsaw puzzle competition, but that’s another story.) At each author event I did for Scholastic, I shared a puzzle for the children to solve, and I can’t wait to do it again!
Music
I remember how much fun I had playing a jaltarang, and that will bring us to another activity – one where the children fill water in glasses and tap on the glasses to listen to the sound. Using glass will require parental supervision, so we may work with steel or plastic instead, which isn’t as rewarding, but is fun, nonetheless.
Sharing
The story “A Drawing Lesson” is all about sharing. Can two children create art together? We’ll brainstorm ideas and then attempt to create a rhyming poem (or several!), not on our own, but with a partner or two.
Sharing stories I’ve written with children who’ve been reading with me for two years is all kinds of special. This edition of Read, Write, Explore sure is going to be fun!
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Yikes! Bikes!
We had so much fun with The Reading Race a few months ago that I was sure I wanted to do another book from the Ready, Freddy! series sooner or later. Yikes! Bikes! is perfect.
The animal shelter in Freddy’s town has organised a fundraiser, one that involves a Bike-a-thon. Max Sellars goads Freddy into making a bet with him, and the young protagonist rashly bets that he can ride more laps than the class bully.
The problem? Freddy can’t ride without training wheels yet and he has just two weeks to figure it out!
Lighthearted and humorous, Yikes! Bikes!, like The Reading Race, allows us to do a lot as we read it together at my book club.
The Hidden Fin
As we read The Reading Race, everyone took part in a different sort of race – seeing who could find the word “fin” hidden in the pictures first! The protagonist Freddy loves sharks, so the word is hidden in each picture of Yikes! Bikes! too. Plus, there are puzzles at the end, which I’m sure we’ll enjoy solving at my book club!
Challenges
Riding a cycle can be challenging, and this is the perfect stimulus for a conversation about things we do that seem difficult or frightening at first. What did you decide to do even though you were afraid? Sometimes, it is equally brave to refuse to do something that all your friends are doing. I’d love to know if the children have experienced that too!
Pets
The Bike-a-thon in Yikes! Bikes! is in aid of the animal shelter, and Freddy is enthusiastic about participating even though he knows his mother will never allow him to have a pet. Children and animals share a very special bond, and this will be the perfect occasion to talk about unusual pets, as well as pets the children may already have. I used to have a virtual pet too – a panda! I wonder if that’s more common now – I’m waiting to find out.
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I Survived the California Wildfires, 2018
During my first two writing programmes in 2020-21, one participant (who wrote this poem) recommended the I Survived series. She spoke about it time and again, and somehow, I never ended up picking up a copy. In June this year, when I travelled to Nagpur for a set of workshops, I ran out of books to read, so I visited Crossword. There, I came across the I Survived series and decided it was high time I read at least one of the books. It’s perfect for my reading programme, Read, Write, Explore!
The I Survived series tells the stories of young people caught in disasters and turmoil out of their control. I wanted a book that is set in the lifetime of my participants, which is why I chose I Survived the California Wildfires, 2018.
Many of us read about the deadliest fire season in a hundred years, and the story of a pair of cousins escaping a forest fire is a compelling one, perfect for a book discussion. The protagonist Josh is in the midst of a personal crisis too, providing us with the perfect opportunity to discuss characters, problems and setting. Ideal for a reading programme that introduces creative writing!
Book Discussion
All of us know about the climate crisis. Even as I write this, Pakistan is experiencing the worst floods in a century. What should we do? Can we do anything? I will ask each of the children to share something they know about climate change and climate activism; I’m sure all of us will learn something new!
Vocabulary
What kinds of words build suspense and tension? How do cliffhangers at the end of each chapter work?
Vocabulary games are always fun, and we’ll see what words we can use to create greater emotional impact. We’ll also work with a few literary devices – the book is full of examples of personification and hyperbole.
Characters and Plot
Josh is nowhere near perfect. Does a protagonist need to be perfect? Let’s explore this!
The blurb of I Survived the California Wildfires 2018 says that a family crisis is ‘burning him up inside’, even as a wildfire blazes around him. And here, we have something else to discuss – the way character’s story is intertwined with the larger setting.
And finally, as we discuss this, we will look at different kinds of conflict – internal and external – and how writers use both in multiple ways.
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A Cello on the Wall
War is a difficult subject to introduce to children, and I’m often unsure of whether it should be introduced at all. Yet, most children are exposed to so much media and are aware of so much that is happening around them that I think stories of hope are important.
Yes, history is full of war. But in the darkest of times, love and kindness do triumph.
A Cello on the Wall is part of the One Day Elsewhere series I read nearly a year ago. The series explores important events in history through the eyes of a child, and A Cello on the Wall is about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Young Charlie – named after Checkpoint Charlie – cannot imagine a time when the wall did not exist. But he is part of the momentous fall of the wall, the day when east and west Berlin come together again.
At my book club, as we read Charlie’s story, here’s what we will explore.
Maps
When we read The Absolutely True Adventures of Daydreamer Dev, we explored the world through the story as well as through Google Earth. I was amazed at how well it worked – showing children the earth and helping them find different places on the map. To understand where Berlin is, and to place it in its larger geographical context, we’ll explore the world through Google Earth.
History
A Cello on the Wall is a book that we’ll begin reading from the back. One of the joys of the One Day Elsewhere series is the simplicity with which facts are presented at the back of the book. I often struggle to decide how much context to give children when it comes to books about war. With The Butterfly Lion, we explored quite a bit because the children were older too. With A Cello on the Wall, we’ll start with a little history and then come to the story itself.
Music
A Cello on the Wall is a work of fiction – the story of a boy who discovers the joy of music. I love exploring music and literature together, and I’ve done it so many times – most recently with Malhar in the Middle. A book like this is perfect for us to explore links with the world outside literature. What music do the children enjoy? If they’re willing, I’d love for them to share a song or play a tune for us!
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The Shy Supergirl
When I launched my book club in December 2020, I began with a hOle book, Trouble with Magic by Asha Nehemiah, and somehow, that became a tradition. During each edition of my book club, the first book we read is a hOle book. This time, it’s Shabnam Minwalla’s The Shy Supergirl.
The Shy Supergirl is such a lovely, lovely book! It captured my heart from the very first paragraph. Nina Merchant is a supergirl. She isn’t strange; she’s special.
What’s her superpower? That she can look at a person and tell what kind of person they actually are – nice or nasty, evil or kind. That’s why she shrieks when she sees her father’s boss, but loves the schoolbus driver, Singhji, who seems to be rather scary looking.
This superpower comes in handy when there’s a theft at Venus Towers! Who stole Mrs Khanna’s priceless silver owl? Was it Nina’s best friend Buggy’s cunning cousins? Or Mrs Khanna’s nephew Robin? Nina must find out!
Here’s what we’ll do as we read The Shy Supergirl at my book club.
Superpowers
Two years ago, when we read Shrinking Vanita, we explored superpowers and superheroes. There’s so much more we can do, plus my regulars have all moved from the book club for older children. I’ll introduce the structure of a story in terms of a problem and a solution, and we’ll explore superpowers and create superheroes together.
Colours
I find the link between colours and emotions fascinating. Nina sees colours around people, and that’s how she can tell what kind of people they are. Pink puffs of happiness, green sparks of sneakiness, splotchy orange clouds of lies … what else? What colours do we associate with various moods?
Riddles
I love clues, riddles and treasure hunts! The Shy Supergirl features a treasure hunt in which the children have to solve riddles that are written in the form of rhyming couplets. I’ve worked on rhyming puzzles several times in the past (you can find some in our e-zine, Words!). We’ll try to solve a few of our own too!
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Help, My Aai Wants to Eat Me!
Yes, Help, My Aai Wants to Eat Me! is as mad and fun as it sounds. I know LOTS of people who express affection by saying they want to eat people up. People like Avi’s Aai who thinks Avi is so adorable that she wants to eat him.
The problem is that Avi thinks she’s for real. And when his Aai is ill, he’s sure that he is being fattened up for her, rather like the story of Hansel and Gretel, where the witch fattens children up to eat them …
It’s humorously horrifying, but also sweet and charming; we’re definitely going to enjoy reading Help, My Aai Wants to Eat Me! at my book club.
Pros and Cons
Avi looks at the pros and cons of everything, and we’re going to use this idea in class. What are the pros and cons of reading in a group? What about of online book clubs? Schools reopening?
Notes
Each day that his mother is sick, Avi writes a little note, just like his Aai would do. The notes are no more than a few sentences long, the perfect way to take our journalling journeys forward! We’ll take ten days to read Help, My Aai Wants to Eat Me! at my book club, and during these ten days, I’ll ask the children to write a little note to themselves every day. At our last class, we’ll share the most interesting ones with the others.
Food Idioms
A cup of tea. A piece of cake. You’re toast. A lemon (we came across this when we read Amelia Bedelia Means Business too!). What else? We’re going to be reading yet another book about food, so we’ll take our food explorations one step further by exploring the ways in which food finds its way into the English language.
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Ivy + Bean
Every so often, at my book club, I choose a popular, internationally loved book. We’ve read The Rise of the Earth Dragon, The Absent Author, The Sheep-Pig … and now, we’ll read Ivy + Bean.
The enemies to friends trope is always fun. Ivy and Bean never meant to like each other. In fact, Bean is quite sure she has enough friends. She doesn’t need another one, especially not someone who seems as nice as Ivy. She knows only too well that nice = boring. But when Bean decides to play a trick on her sister, she realises that Ivy is not as nice as she seems. And that’s a good thing.
Funny, silly and full of action, Ivy and Bean is perfect to read with a bunch of seven- and eight-year-olds!
Predicting a story
Before we start reading the book, I’ll show the children a video trailer and ask them to imagine what the story is about. I know that some of the children will have read the book already, so I’ll take this activity further with a story worksheet. I’ll tell them the beginning of a story and then, based on the pictures I show them, I’ll ask them to make up the rest.
Magic
Ivy wants to be a witch. She has her wand, her spell-book, everything. It’s the perfect prompt for us to invent some magic of our own! I love asking children to imagine that things around them are magical. What if their pencil was magical? Or their chair? What magic can they do?
If we have the time, we’ll also try to do some craft work where we make magical wands of our own.
Puzzles
One of the fun things about introducing a popular book to my book club is the number of resources I can find online. From quizzes to worksheets, discussion questions and crossword puzzles, there’s a range of stuff that people have created and shared. Waiting to use some of them at my book club!
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Frindle
I read Frindle quite a long time ago, and it’s EXACTLY my kind of book. I didn’t end up reviewing it on my blog because I kept waiting for a time when I felt I could read it with my book club. I almost selected it once, but one of my regular book clubbers was reading it at school, so we read About Average instead. Now that he’s too old to be part of this book club, I quickly picked it up again!
Nick Allen isn’t really a troublemaker. He just likes to have fun. And where’s the harm in making up a new word?
Pen. Quite a boring, mundane word. Why not call it a frindle instead?
And that’s the premise of this delightful, fun story that keeps you reading page after page. I love how the book is plotted as well as how the characters develop as the story proceeds. Finally, a book about words is perfect for a book club!
The Question
As so many children have just come back after their summer holidays, chapter three is perfect! Following Nick Allen’s school system, we’ll talk about our summer, do a quick vocabulary quiz, and then come to the most fun thing of all – the time-wasting question. I know that this part will make the children giggle, and I can’t wait to see what mischievous, fun ideas they come up with when we discuss what they do to postpone a lesson just a little bit!
Making Up Words
When we read Paati Goes Viral, we spoke about how words are created, and how their meaning changes. We then made up words of our own, which we promised to use right through that edition of my reading programme. I remember at least three words the children created – sclem (which was to substitute ma’am), electric (to use instead of viral) and trook (for book). It was such fun!
With Frindle, I look forward to doing something similar. We’ll create new words and see how successful we are in making them common parlance.
A Letter from Ten Years Ago
No spoilers here, but Mrs. Granger writes a letter to Nick and sends it to him ten years later. He knows it’s the same letter because he wrote his name on the envelope. The letter itself turns out to be the most brilliant surprise ever.
We’re going to work with this idea in two phases. Phase 1 is where the children will make a little time capsule for themselves. Time capsules get lost, though. So, I’m also going to ask them to write notes to one another, which they will send to me privately in the chat box. Ten years later, if I can get in touch with them again, I will send them their letters. They’ll be adults by then!
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The Great River Magic
The Great River Magic by Nandini Nayar is one of those books with a message, not usually an obvious choice for me to read at my book club. Yet, as I read this book, I was charmed by the premise. I love stories about families, family traditions, and the ways in which people follow or break them. The Great River Magic touches upon all this!
Sangeeta – whom her grandmother insists on calling Gita – is the firstborn child. In the village of Rajpur, this means that she must take over the family business. What if she doesn’t want to? That’s just one part of the mess that Rajpur is in. Rajpur is famous for its wonderful, top-quality products of all kinds, but of late, people have been complaining about odd smells and inferior production. Sangeeta and her siblings must use their skills to investigate. Together, they find the courage to stand up to the adults and set things right.
The Great River Magic
The very idea of a magical river makes me light up! We’ll do a quick written activity with this book, creating magical rivers of our own. What makes the river magical? Is there anything that can destroy the magic of the river? How can we restore its magic?
Pollution
Every child today is aware of pollution, climate change and the ways in which we are destroying the environment. What can the children do to save the world? And more, what would they like adults to do? Conversations with children are always interesting, and I’m waiting to see what the children say during our discussion!
Tradition
When we read Malhar in the Middle, we spoke about traditions we love and traditions we would like to change. One child said that she would like to wear a cap and trousers for Diwali; others spoke about things that only girls do during festivals.
I’d love to take the conversation forward with The Great River Magic. The village of Rajpur has traditions that the children in the story rebel against – the perfect backdrop for our discussion. Beginning with traditions we love, we will also talk about traditions we don’t like and that we would like to change.
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Petu Pumpkin – Tiffin Thief
We’ve read Bookasura and Koobandhee; we’re all set for yet another book by Arundhati Venkatesh – Petu Pumpkin: Tiffin Thief.
Petu Pumpkin. Isn’t it a fun name? And doesn’t it seem apt that he would be a tiffin thief?
The question is: what can his friends do about the fact that Pushkin aka Petu Pumpkin eats everyone’s food?
They must come up with a plan.
And of course, the plan must be secret.
And a secret plan requires a secret society.
And a secret society must have a name, a leader, a secret meeting place and a password.
Petu Pumpkin: Tiffin Thief is a fun book that I’m sure we’ll enjoy at my book club. Here’s what we’ll do with it.
Secret Societies
Growing up on Secret Seven and Famous Five, I don’t know how many clubs my friends and I set up. The one I remember most clearly was a club called Helpful House, whose mission was to save the world. We made badges, had meetings, and even had a secret signal to get one another’s attention.
Petu Pumpkin: Tiffin Thief is the ideal book to inspire us to set up a secret society, and who will the members be? The children at my book club, of course! We’ll come up with names and a password, and we’ll try to make badges too. We already have our meeting place!
Codes
I love codes! They’re great for secret and not-so-secret messages. We’ll explore the code the children in the book work with and then create one of our own. I’ll also give the children a code to solve. I know it’ll be fun!
Food
A book about food requires conversations about food. What is your favourite food? Now that the children are back at school, I want to know what they love eating and what they hate eating, which will lead us to the question of what they think they will never eat – like spinach that smells like the dirty nala!
Maybe we’ll also have an eating meeting, where all of us bring something to eat and talk about it as we read and eat.
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The Editor’s Perspective
The last guest session at this edition of my creative writing programme was with Daphne Lee, consulting editor at Scholastic Asia. It was everything I expected it to be – informative, detailed, and full of laughter. She answered questions, told us about the publishing process, and shared a manuscript with us, detailing how the editing process works. It was fascinating to see how the book took shape!
Here are a few of the questions I asked and the responses we received.
Varsha:
How do you decide whether to publish a book?
Daphne:
It’s hard to say. Voice is key. Things like grammar and spelling mistakes matter less. To me, even plot does not matter as much as voice. Thoughts and ideas draw me in.
Varsha:
While I understand that typos and grammar may not be the only things that are crucial, what do you feel about shoddily edited work? Work that seems carelessly written?
Daphne:
I think it really depends on the story and whether I’m willing to put in the work that publishing it would involve. The grammar won’t make my decision for me; the story and the potential I see in the voice do.
I also don’t like writing for an author. I make suggestions, but I don’t want to do the writing for them. More than once, I’ve cancelled a contract because a book isn’t shaping up the way I would like it too. But I suppose that is part of the job!
Varsha:
How many manuscripts do you typically receive per week?
Daphne:
Between 20 and 50 unsolicited manuscripts, I would say. I mark them as submissions and I allot some time to read them, but it’s time-consuming. The Scholastic website does mention how long to wait before considering it a pass from me.
Varsha:
Do you ever publish work written by children?
Daphne:
No, that’s also the company policy. You have to be 18 to submit work, and I agree with it. Where’s the rush? I know that when I was a child, I found myself imitating the style of the book I last read, and that is natural! I think you need to give yourself the time to find your own voice.
Varsha:
What about self-publishing? What do you feel about that?
Daphne:
Just my opinion, but like I said, children haven’t yet found their best voices. Yes, they are writing the best they can, but self-published work is often unedited. It isn’t even proofread. Do you think it’s fair to charge people to buy a book that is sub-par? Writing doesn’t pay anyway, so I think that publishing is just the icing on the cake, to use a cliche. If you enjoy the process of writing, don’t obsess over publishing your work.
Daphne also spoke about writing our own stories – stories about people and places that represent who we are. I was so glad she did!
All in all, it was quite an intense session, one that I wish I could have attended when I was a child!