During our Human Library Session at Writer’s Fortnight, we learned and listened to the story of a mother and daughter’s journey. Shweta Bhatnagar (Indian woman) wrote a children’s poetry book along with her daughter, Jiya, who illustrated the book. The book is called Colors Flollers, and the main character, Big Eyes, embarks on a journey through many themes and topics each with some kind of poetic writing. The protagonist story begins when she is very young and ends when she is eight years old. Furthermore, the book explores many themes and lessons throughout a child’s early childhood ranging from friendship, family, emotions, vacations and lots more. The book is also written in the first person and even combines the literary and visual elements of storytelling.
Shweta Bhatnagar
When she was speaking about the book, she illustrates the crucial objectives that a poet must do to engage the readers/audience. She talked about evoking sensory images, emotions, feelings, big ideas, messages, stories, themes, ideas and turning the ordinary to extraordinary. She explicitly told us that there needs to be imagination before there can be created. In other words, even though we can think about lots of ideas, we have to be creative in order take these ideas into practice.
Shweta has been doing a great many things in her life, she used to be a journalist in India as well as in Singapore writing stories about issues around the world. She even when to study at MIT and has been an early childhood specialist for 8 years. She is even a classroom teacher and was a Television and Radio journalist. In many ways, writing stories was a fundamental part of her life so she decided to pursue this interest. With experience as a childhood specialist, she believed that she could create an effective children’s book that will captivate the audience. However, she wanted her youngest daughter to help her as she believed that if she drew the drawings, the children will feel like they could draw something like that, instead of the drawings being created digitally, which is what most illustrations are made from.
Jiya, the daughter, has many passions but she really likes to engage in activities that involve her hands, whether that is drawing or painting or playing sports. She has illustrated all the hand-drawn drawings in the book. She loved working with her mother on the book and they were very proud and excited when it first published. They are even planning on a new children’s book with similar ideas from the previous one.
The book was self-published and she decided to write in poetic form because, from her experience, children could learn more easily if words rhymed with each other just like Dr. Suess’ method. She wanted the children to be inspired so she went to schools across Singapore to read the stories to them. She wanted to be in the moment because she loved engaging with the children as well. She wanted the audience (the children) to ask questions and hoped to get a direct feedback from the children. Finally, she also wanted to create a lasting visual impression on them.
This presentation and speech were very interesting and she gave us tips as well. When writing stories, we need to present in a clear and coherent manner as well as bringing awareness to the word choice, themes and voice.
