Give more importance to children's literature

The tidings about the celebrated Indian-English story-writer, Ruskin Bond, whether it is about the launch of a new book of stories or his interview by the press-people or his interaction-sessions with young readers is welcome, for it, apart from making the legions of his ardent admirers happy, offers an insight into his literary personality and unveils a novel dimension to his vast literary oeuvre ( "Ruskin Bond strikes a positive note in children's books "Young Hans, May 2).

Though Ruskin Bond is primarily hailed as the writer of children's books, the close of his fiction reveals the fact that dwelling on universal subjects such as nature, birds, animals, deforestation, depletion of greenery, urbanization, ecological imbalance, lives of rural folks and basic human emotions, Ruskin Bond transcends this limited and restricted tag and his fiction is widely read, appreciated and admired by the people of all ages.

Child at heart, Ruskin Bond with wonderful craftsmanship captures the child's rainbow-hued world of dreams, facies, fantasies, aspirations, joys and sorrows, fun and frolic and fictionalizes it in simple, effective, beautiful language to the delight of his readers.

Nowhere in his stories Ruskin Bond sounds negative and pessimistic both in his portrayal of the characters and in his narration of the incidents.

As Ruskin Bond narrates most of his stories in First person singular "I", his stories are quite authentic, making his readers identify themselves with the characters he portrays and the incidents he narrates turn out to be realistic.

While children rejoice over finding their own world, the grown-ups enjoy revisiting and regaining their long-lost glorious childhood in his fiction.

Children's literature stirs the fountains of imagination in children with positive impact on their tender minds, brings out creativity in them and molds them into the power-houses of creative potentialities.

But unfortunately, in India ,enough importance is not given to the writing for children as lamented by Ruskin Bond in his short introduction to "The Puffin Book of Holiday stories".

Even the various literary festivals held in the country by different literary organisations focus only on mainstream literature, especially major fiction and hardly provide space for children's literature.

So literary organisations, scholars, critics and media need to highlight the significance of children's literature and parents must encourage their children to read the story-books of Rabindranath Tagore, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty.

Dr Venugopala Rao Kaki, Kakinada