A swishfizzing Saturday at Bookaroo

Swishfizzing Saturday. Snadoodly Saturday. Superbilify Saturday.

I had, what I can say without doubt, the most fun I have ever had at readings last Saturday at the Bookaroo children’s literature festival in Delhi. Bookaroo is above all a wonderful time to catch up with authors, illustrators and editors who remain an email address for most of the year. There were a couple of firsts of putting a face to a name.

Squiggle Takes a Walk (or was that a leap, hop, screech, yelp…)

The afternoon had me as Squiggle, alongside three lovely ladies from Zubaan – my editor Anita Roy, Meghna and Ishani – as punctuation marks. As we enacted the book, we leapt off a knee-knockingly-high stage with wild abandon, pummelled into each other as Squiggle and Exclamation Mark, got looked down the nose by Colon and got dragged back up on stage by the annoying Quotation Marks. And this was just a bit of the mad romp through the session.

Since no party can be complete without some games, this punctuation party had its very own version of Punctuation Dumb Charades followed by the children and me attempting to do justice to Vikram Nandwani’s artistic Squiggle. AND we did a count down to throw four free copies of the book into the crowd to officially launch the book!

 Going hysterical with the History Mystery series

The Duckbill platypuses and I went hysterically historical in the evening with the History Mystery Series. It is a delight to have editors join in and take the session to another level, especially when reading out a part of a book. Anushka Ravishankar and I tiptoed around an imaginary giant Nandi bull (the real one can be found at the Rajarajeshwara Temple in Thanjavur). We were helped along by three lovely people (three being the lucky charm) who lay down to help measure our sixteen feet long bull. Amid quizzes and facts and fiction, we traced our sea route from India to China and left the children with grid maps of the Bookaroo venue to find their way home! I had an aargh of a time and I hope the children were suitably arrghed as well!

Find out more about the books and links to buy online on these book pages: Squiggle Takes a Walk, The History Mystery Series.