- Sarita Aryal
On June 17 2023, My Editor gave me a privilege to interact with respected children’s author Bal Sahitya Ratna Shantadas in his residence at Chauni Kathmandu. We had a fruitful discussion on the scientific way of writing stories for children for about two and half hours.
I showed him some of my child stories hoping to receive some insights from the senior most author in the field of Nepali children’s literature. He carefully read them and asked me a question, “Have you ever edited anything?” I started thinking about the writings that I had edited in the past to answer him. However, he spoke, “Why do you take a long time? Don’t you think that you take part in the editing process when you are cooking, eating, feeding, shopping, and each and everything that you are doing consecutively?
I got puzzled. He further clarified and said, “when you are feeding something to a child, you start thinking about which food item does the child love to eat the most, whether the meal you are going to feed to your child is very hot, very cold or average, whether the amount of food you put in the child’s mouth is appropriate, whether the food contains the nutritious elements required for the child’s physical and mental growth, don’t you?” I surrendered.
He added, “In the same manner, children’s author should be very much conscious and careful while writing stories for children because literature is the most effective diet that has a long lasting effect in children’s mental health. We should not drive them into the world of fantasy creating an illusion of the impossible things and events that can never ever take place in the real life of the children. Rather , we should portray those things and events that the children have been experiencing or can experience in their own surrounding i.e. conflict between parents and children, relation of the children with their teachers and friends, bullying, discrimination, violence, abuse and many more.
Also, our content should be rational and scientific. For instance, we say that the children should not eat junk food. Children always have a readymade question in their mind, why should not we eat such a tasty food item? Here, they require a scientific reason to get convinced. And it is the challenge of the author to convince his/her reader with a convincing scientific rational that tantalizes the child’s brain and changes his/her perception about the junk food.”
He continued, the authors are not merely the writers, they themselves are also the editor of the subject matter. Editing the spelling, grammar and punctuation is only a superficial editing process. However, the children’s authors of this smart and advanced era should think and rethink about the appropriate amount of nutrition in the content of their literary diet that plays a vital role for the mental growth and development of the child.
I realized that the children’s authors have to be careful while preparing the literary diet similar to the way a mother cooks and feeds a nutritious meal to her child. I would like to extend my gratitude to 90 years old senior most children’s author respected Shantadash Manandhar for providing me the valuable insights about the selection of appropriate content in children’s literature. And also I am equally grateful to respected author Kartikeya for arranging such a fruitful meeting with him.
