Saturday, April 20

Author: Samina Mishra

Samina Mishra makes films, writes and teaches. She has a special interest in media for and about children. Among her many loves is bookish love and while she recognizes that technology is changing the form of the book, she hopes the smell of books will always be around.
<i>Lockdown</i> <strong>Conversation</strong>
7Jul By Samina Mishra1 Comment
Issue 13 – June 2020, Spotlight

Lockdown Conversation

With Nayan Mehrotra and Rituparna Neog Moderated by Samina Mishra  For more information on Nayan’s work, check out Youtube channel For more information on Rituparna’s work, check out the Youtube channel and Facebook page  
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<i>The</i> <strong>Lockdown</strong><i> Art Project</i>
20Jun By Samina Mishra1 Comment
Chiaroscuro, Issue 13 – June 2020

The Lockdown Art Project

Lockdown is a word. Lockdown became the world. For over 3 months, we have been in varying degrees of being locked down in India (and in some places continue to be) – or on the streets, depending upon our accident of birth. People have been trying to make sense of what this means for the present and for the future in different ways, and one of the coping mechanisms seems to have been the explosion of art on the internet – old work, new work, work created specifically for these times. For children, there has been a burst of storytelling and educational sessions. Often brand-building exercises in this strange and alienating time, many of these have been about providing content for children to engage with. Some allow for children to ask questions and interact with resource people but the limit...
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<i>Voices from the </i><strong>Library</strong>
21Jul By Samina Mishra1 Comment
Issue 10 – July 2019, Spotlight

Voices from the Library

Who is a librarian? Who chooses to become one? What keeps them in the library? In this video, we bring you voices of people who work in libraries and believe the space has helped them discover more about themselves.
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<i>Because of </i><strong>Libraries </strong><i>We Can Say These Things</i>
20Jan By Samina MishraNo Comments
Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she calls herself a “wandering poet, though San Antonio, Texas is both home and the inspiration behind many of her poems. “But everywhere can be home the moment you unpack, make a tiny space that feels agreeable," says Nye. She was the recipient of the 2014 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. This poem is from the collection, Fuel. Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things She is holding the book close to her body, carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk, down the tangled hill. If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield. She looked hard among the long lines of books to find this one. When they start talking about money, when the day contains such l...
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<i>Review: Siddhartha Sarma’s </i><strong>Year of the Weeds is Essential Reading in Our Troubled Democracy</strong>
22Oct By Samina Mishra1 Comment
Issue 7 – October 2018

Review: Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds is Essential Reading in Our Troubled Democracy

One of the biggest challenges for English children’s literature in India is the representation of realities from the non-English speaking parts of our society. It has been a struggle unique to writers of English in India – the struggle to find a self-confident voice that writes in a language given to us by colonialism. Today, that extends to the struggle of using that voice to bring stories of other post-colonial inequities - from villages and working class urban settlements, from forests and tribal lands. How can these mediated stories reflect realities that are so different from that of the readers of those books? And why should these realities matter to young adult readers? Siddhartha Sarma’s new book, Year of the Weeds, answers this in an exemplary way. It is the story of Korok, a you...
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<strong>Ten Books </strong><i>and a Journey </i>
14Jul By Samina MishraNo Comments
Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Ten Books and a Journey

Bookshelves are windows into family histories – which books find a home on the shelves, how the stacks are organised, which books are well-worn, and unopened, the ideas contained in the inscriptions. Family bonds form in different ways and for book-lovers, the web of stories that spreads out across their bookshelves is one way. In my bookshelves, there are many webs and one is a messy web that started to take shape as I began my role in child-rearing, a role that comes to a sort of end this year. I will always be a parent but Imran, my son, is no longer a child. At 16, he is about to embark on one of his first completely independent journeys - finishing high school far away from home, weaving webs that will grow on his independent book-shelves. There is a line that Marquez wrote in one of...
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Preface to Issue 3
17Sep By Samina MishraNo Comments
Axis, Issue 3 - September 2017

Preface to Issue 3

Dear Torchlighters,   The torch of bookish love was probably lit for all of us somewhere in our childhoods and this issue celebrates that by shining a light on Children and Libraries. It takes a village to raise a child, we know, and a library should occupy a central place in that village. Children need to have a plurality of experiences and influences and a library is one of the easiest ways of doing this. Every child should be able to walk into a library, pick a book off its shelves, perhaps talk to someone who loves that book, or maybe even daydream through its pages. Sadly, we are far away from that ideal in India, though we have had some excellent initiatives in recent times that must be celebrated and replicated. And so, this issue.   In Spotlight, we look back ...
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