Gear Up for Yayavar Kids Online Lit Fest

Nupur Sandhu discusses about Yayavar Kids Online Lit Fest in a candid chat with Dr. Chirdeep Malhotra

With two successful Lit Fests conducted in Jammu and Jalandhar, the literary organization Yayavar has now come up with a Literary festival exclusively for children. Originally scheduled for 22-23 April in Jammu, due to the Coronavirus lockdown, the Lit Fest has now been taken online, albeit on the same dates. Now, it will have participation of children from many countries. Dr. Chirdeep Malhotra connected with Nupur Sandhu, festival director of Yayavar-Kids to know more about the online Lit Fest and its highlights. Read on!



How did you arrive on the concept of this Literary Festival dedicated exclusively to children’s literature?

My debut book “18 Real life Stories of Great Valour and Bravery”, published in 2005 contained true stories of children that I had penned down for young readers. As a practicing psychologist for many years I relate to children a lot. And I believe that they have utmost potential that needs to be explored by them first. In a year, it is recommended that a student should read 52 books. These books can be anything from journal articles to thin books, and not only thick tomes. Through reading, a child explores many worlds, and this also increases the child's imagination and vocabulary. I always looked for such Literature festivals for my daughter, but there were almost none then. So, this led me to think on the lines of an exclusive Literary festival for kids.



How is this Lit Fest different from other initiatives for inculcating the habit of reading in children?

The one thing that sets this Lit fest apart from others is that it connects and creates beautiful bonds. Here, readers are reading the books of the panel authors, talking to them on phone personally, writing reviews of the books, and also sharing their take on the particular book with other readers.



With this being the first edition of Yayavar Kids, what is your ideology for this and the subsequent festivals?

The ideology is to develop not only readers but reviewers and writers too. We want to create a bond between parents, children, authors and books. The Lit Fest is being done online due to the present situation, but we do plan to have a separate section for schools who had registered with us for our main festival, where students will be moderating the sessions. I really do not believe in forcing and doing things at superficial level. It is necessary for readers to be involved. We pick books of almost all genres. Children have picked up those books to read which they’ve liked. We plan on having Kids Fest annually at Jammu and Jalandhar.



What has been your curatorial process like for the books featured and the sessions planned for this Lit Fest?

We planned it in the month of November 2019 and dates were scheduled keeping in mind the academic calendar of the schools. So we started first with the list of national authors who write for kids. All the books have been read individually by me and reviewed before finalizing it.
Each school was given the book to read according to the genre that they picked. Then we trained the children how to moderate a session with the help of the teachers from the school.



What are the major highlights of Yayavar Jammu Literary Festival- Kids?

The highlights are that we are going online on the decided dates and now readers globally can connect with the authors.
In the Opening ceremony, Sophie Khurana, Class 7th student from Pathways, Gurgaon will perform Bharatnatyam on “Prabho Ganapathe”, a devotional song in praise of Lord Ganesha. Aradhya Jain and Keshav Tiwari from Doon School, Dehradun will perform in the Closing ceremony, followed by National anthem played on piano by Avneet Kaur and sung by Mehak Dua. The team, including Creative Director Jasleen Kour and Director Management, Arush Mahajan are working hard.
Young students till age 12 did drawings on nature and friendship, and a participating author knitted 2 minute stories around those drawings. Students from Egypt, USA, Australia and Russia will be participating in the online Lit Fest.