Bookaroo - Children's Literature Festival, Delhi Nov 28-29, 2015

Maia and I have had a very inspiring and exciting day - a day in the world of books!

"Thanks to book lovers BOOKAROO has grown from strength to strength over the years. While in 2011 it featured over 60 speakers participating in over 90 events. Speakers from 12 countries including India spread the joy of reading through their talks, readings, performances, music, craft… In 2012 we had 97 speakers.

Bookaroo is much more than just storytelling – although we have plenty of that!
The festival includes workshops on everything from mathematics to cartoons, from building alien worlds to recycling paper; as well as story sessions under the banyan tree, puppet shows, and a doodle wall to let your imagination take flight!"
On bookaroo's facebook page you can read more.

 

We walked around the area in Shankar's Centre for Children and the British School. There was a lot of activity - painting, arts and crafts, and an amazing list of guest speakers. Maia and I decided to go to "The Thetre" and listen to Roopa Pai talk about "By the Power of the BG" - the power of Bhagavad Gita - a part of an epic Hindu poem called Mahabharata's Bhishma Parva. It is a very important literary work in Indian history and tells stories of the Lord Krishna.

Roopa Pai has written a book called The Gita - the stories about Krishna written for children.

Looking to pass the time before the next workshop, we continued checking out what was on offer, and suddenly walked into ...

... Martin Widmark!! Here is his Swedish site. Maia has read several of his books about Jerry and Maya's detective agency (Lassemajas detektivbyrå) and looooooves them. And so do I!
It was of course a thrill to meet the author in person and have a chance to talk with him. Maia had brought one of the books from home for him to sign.

He had come to Delhi and the Bookaroo festival to promote his latest project together with 3 other authors. "The Sherlock Holmes Connection" Two Swedish and two Indian authors--Martin Widmark, Anushka Ravishankar, Katarina Genar and Bikram Ghosh--follow the journey of the magnifying glass of Sherlock Holmes in four gripping mystery stories. Here is a link to an interview with them about this project.

Yeah, well, worth a try at least.

 

It was interesting hearing the four of them talk about this project and of course we went to the book store afterwards and of course we got that book signed as well. Martin Widmark and Katarina Genar turn out to be very nice people.

 Stacking up!

 "So nice to meet you, Maia!!"

 Yes, we hope so too.