Captain planet

Alia Bhatt's debut children's book has many subtle lessons

- REYA MEHROTRA

Like good wine or a bright mind, children's literature has matured with time. Scheherazade is no longer weaving stories with a moral, she is telling those with a message. It might be one of gender equality, abuse, single parenting, racism, bullying or climate change, but writers no longer sugarcoat or dumb down the truth for children. The intent is that, in the kind of world we live in, they must be acclimatised to the realities of life. Sooner or later, ignorance has to be uncoupled from innocence.

This is not new. As early as the 1980s, children's writers were chipping away at tough topics. Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown’s 1986 book Dinosaurs Divorce: A Guide for Changing Families described to young readers why divorces happen and how to adapt to a new family. Virginia Ironside’s 1996 book The Huge Bag of Worries dealt with mental health when it was still veiled by stigma. However, it is only in the last decade that such children’s stories are becoming best-sellers, and the world is waking up to their allure.