Welcome to 2022 by Chitra Soundar

 Welcome to 2022. We here at Picture Book Den hope you all had a wonderful Christmas even if it wasn’t as fabulous as it should have been before the pandemic hit us.

As autumn recedes and winter sets in, many communities and families in the world come together to celebrate. And most celebrations include visiting family, doing traditional rituals together and family meals. 

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While these celebrations are moments of joy, days filled with good food, old stories and making new traditions, often we also get upset or angry or hurt. Families know us well, they love us a lot and therefore can hurt us a lot too. 

"Bangladeshi children wearing sari at Pohela Boishakh celebration (02)" / CC-BY-SA-4.0

Children experience heightened emotions during such gatherings. Lots of excitement with extended families, presents, more treats. But also such gatherings involve sharing their bedrooms or toys or doing things with others even if they don’t feel like it.

As a child, I’ve experienced both the highs of celebrations especially during Diwali – with fireworks and sweets and the lows of aunties telling me off or sharing my fireworks or following the lead of older cousins.

Can you spot me in the top right corner?

Extending these experiences to being a picture book writer, I’ve written about both these situations. In my picture book Shubh Diwali!, illustrated by Charlene Chua, we feature a family who is having fun during the celebrations. 

In my recent non-fiction picture book, We All Celebrate, illustrated by Jenny Bloomfield, I talk about families and loved ones across the world coming together to celebrate in many different ways. 

But as I said there is another side to all family gatherings. Things that annoy us, make us sad or angry or disappointed.  

In my new picture book Holi Hai!, illustrated by Darshika Varma, just released on 1st January 2022, I show the other side – what happens when emotions run over, tempers fly and nothing seems joyous.

Young children, especially at the picture book age, don’t have a lot of history behind them. They are discovering their emotions and their own temperament. And so, celebrations offer the perfect storm for not just joy but also tantrums, stubbornness and frustration. 

However, picture books not only offer a mirror of the behaviour – be it throwing a tantrum or being upset or even being hyper – they also offer a doorway into learning about how to deal with those emotions. 

But such doorways must not be didactic or cautionary.

The picture books must acknowledge that such emotions are normal and then offer tools to harness the negative emotion and turn into a positive force.

So, to show and not just tell, I have included a few examples here. The stories below demonstrate how to integrate a celebration with an emotion and offer a positive outlook for the young reader. 

Should We All Celebrate? by Chitra Soundar

We All Celebrate, don’t we? Autumn is here and that means across the world, many communities are celebrating different festivals through the next few months as skies darken and the air turns cold and traditionally was the harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Last week marks the start of Dussera or Navarathri for me as a Hindu from India.  Hindus across the world mark nine days of Dussera celebrations in different ways. And then it leads up to Deepavali or Diwali, one of the largest Hindu festivals. Did you know the same day is marked as a festival by Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs too? 

As a writer of picture books and writing in the UK, I always wondered why there weren’t that many picture books about Deepavali (or Dussera for that matter) and why the lead up to Christmas, booksellers didn’t highlight this wonderful festival of lights?

So, when Albert Whitman from the US asked me to write a Deepavali book, I was absolutely elated. 

Illustrated by Charlene Chua

In some ways, the US had caught the wave a little sooner. These books were published both by indie and big publishing houses and very popular among South Asian families and western families in the US.

But my original complaint remained – why aren’t UK publishers not interested in other religious and cultural celebrations? 

Do we need another Christmas book? Actually, do we need another Santa Claus / Father Christmas book? Even if we do, can they feature different communities celebrating Christmas in diverse ways? 

Will the children that are not celebrating Christmas be missing out on their own celebrations?

To counter this dearth of books, I wrote a Diwali counting book (which will come out soon! Shh!). 

Then I wanted to address the above question. Can I highlight celebrations that are not so well-known? So I pitched this book (We All Celebrate) to Tiny Owl and they loved it. With Jenny Bloomfield's glorious illustrations, this book will be out this autumn, right in time for the festival season. 

Illustrated by Jenny Bloomfield and published by Tiny Owl Books

But back to Deepavali (or Diwali as many call it) books in the UK... I went looking for books that celebrate this festival, written by authors and illustrators from the culture the festivals belonged to. 

So, if you don’t see Peppa Pig or Mr Men Celebrating Diwali in this list, that’s why. 

Here are two that came out decades ago.

And here are two just out this year, right in time for this year's festival. What are you waiting for? Go and grab these! 

That is it. Two new books in decades. 

While I have to scroll through a long list of Christmas books, books about Diwali, I can count on one hand - published across four decades. 

We need more books about all the little and big celebrations everyone is celebrating across our country – because we all celebrate and so, let’s celebrate together. 

Here is a call to action!

Are you a picture book writer? Do you celebrate a festival that we are not familiar with? Do you have unique traditions of celebrating a well-known festival? Then why don't you try writing a picture book about it? 

Writing about a festival need not be dry or didactic. It can be full of wonder and storytelling, it can be filled with activities and hands-on fun and it can be joyous inviting others to join in. 

Have a go! Write something different about Christmas or pick another festival from your own heritage and tell us a story that resonates universally!