Nandana Dev Sen

Q. What did you read as a child?
A. I grew up in a family of writers and read everything. My grandmother and mother wrote extensively for both adults and children. We had the largest collection of books from all over the world. We had no TV, even later we could only watch the news. I never got bored. The games then were not video games. I read books in English and in Bengali. There was no young adult category separately. When I was 12 or 13, I read Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Tagore, Jane Austen and Dickens that were not targetted at children but I read them.

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Q. What should an aspiring children’s writer keep in mind?
A. It’s important not to be didactic. You should be playful. We are competing with TV, the iPad and Disney. There needs to be colour in terms of writing, vitality and energy You have to become a child to write for them. I think we can all do that. In fact, as parents we do that often

Q. Tell us about your next book
A. Kangaroo Kisses was actually the first book I wrote. It was written for my niece, who is now 6. I wrote it when she was younger. She would refuse to go to sleep. I was just like her. It’s a bedtime stories book. It uses poetry to describe a mother and daughter relationship, where the mom’s trying to get the girl to sleep while the girl keeps coming up with innovative excuses to stay awake. So it’s meant for the kid but for the mother too, or the dad, brother, grandparent, nanny – anyone who tries to put a child to sleep, as a tool.