Children’s books illustrators Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar and Aindri Chakraborty are addressing themes like discrimination and climate change sensitively

As a writer of children’s books, I am often asked why there are so many ‘woke’ books for kids all of a sudden. Why can’t children’s books just be fun? Do kids have to hear about racism at bedtime? Or climate change?

So, why do we need books that look at politically charged themes? It is not to indoctrinate children, as some newspaper articles allege. They exist because many young people experience violence, discrimination, and the impact of climate emergency, and it would help to have books that address this sensitively.

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When it comes to books for young children, illustrations are what draw them in, and get them hooked to the story. I’ve always loved how artists Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar and Aindri Chakraborty’s approach themes such as justice, gender, and the environment in picture books — with empathy, a rich imagination, and shaded by their point of view.

Shridhar, an only child, was raised in an atmosphere of Marxist and Ambedkarite movements in Sion, Mumbai, and remembers her home filled with poets, artists, and activists. “It was culturally very rich, but not in a mainstream way,” the 29-year-old artist tells me over a Zoom call. Money was often tight, but there were always plenty of books, and no matter how late her mother came home at night, she always read to Shridhar. Books written by Manjula Padmanabhan and Russian children’s literature that focused on themes like dignity of labour were staples in their home.

A peek into an adult world

Russian kids’ books and magazines like Misha were a mainstay of Chakraborty’s childhood as well. The 40-year-old illustrator from Kolkata says they had a typical, upper-caste, anglophone, city upbringing. “I grew up reading ghost stories, Narayan Debnath’s comics, and copied cross stitch patterns from Soviet Nari with my mother.”

Both Chakraborty and Shridhar had a view into the world of adults from a fairly young age, with the latter’s parents talking to her about the Mumbai riots, abuse, and many other topics that parents typically shy away from addressing with their children. Chakraborty admits to reading Desh, a magazine intended for adults, and says that their first attempt at serialised illustrations was a retelling of a rape scene they had seen on television. When they showed it to their grandfather, they were forbidden from watching shows unsupervised.

Both artists, like the others featured so far in this series, drew copiously as youngsters. But, while Chakraborty found their artistic talents supported by teachers at school, Shridhar’s efforts weren’t always appreciated. She remembers getting a C minus in art in the first grade. “My mother was livid,” she recalls with a laugh. “She took all my work to an artist friend of hers, who said they were good, and then went straight to school to tell my teacher that she couldn’t say my work was a C minus. And that her daughter was a great artist.” At the time, Shridhar didn’t appreciate her mother intervening, but she now realises what a difference it made to have a parent believe in her.

Putting themselves out there

Shridhar decided at age 10 that she would become an artist, and went on to attend the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru. During a children’s picture book making module in her final year, she wrote and illustrated Aamu’s Kawandi, which Katha went on to publish.

In the book, a young Siddi girl, Aamu, proudly takes the reader for a walk through her village, created using digital art layered with hand-drawn cutouts, hessian nets, and patches of ‘stitched’ grass. I loved how she captures Aamu’s character — she’s shy at first, hiding her face from the reader, and then on the next page there’s a wide smile across her face, open and welcoming.

Character design is something Chakraborty, who has a Masters from Central Saint Martins, London, thinks about a great deal, too. They are drawn to stories that give ample space for developing characters creatively. One of my favourite books they’ve illustrated is Your Body is Yours (Pratham Books) done in collaboration with author Yamini Vijayan. Exploring body autonomy and consent, Chakraborty’s illustrations show a diverse range of bodies, each entirely at ease with themselves. They say the characters in the book are all situated outdoors, a deliberate choice, influenced by the advocacy of Why Loiter, a community that has grown around the book of the same name by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade (which addresses the ‘exclusions and negotiations that women encounter in the nation’s urban public spaces’). “It was important to show that the characters were unafraid to be outside,” they feel.

This lack of fear, and ease with one’s body is evident in Shridhar’s illustrations for Girls Want Azadi (Pratham Books), in which a group of free-spirited girls bring to life the words of the late activist Kamala Bhasin. Did Shridhar feel the weight of illustrating these iconic words?

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“I wasn’t that familiar with Bhasin herself, or her work,” she admits. “But I did know that the chant had a complicated history; it comes from the Kashmiri movement, from the women’s movement in Pakistan, and I myself have heard this slogan throughout my childhood at protests my parents have taken me to. I wanted to imagine what it would be like if my friends and I were children in today’s political climate, protesting and demanding for our rights.”

While the words of the book are themed around the girl child, Shridhar’s own location and point of view enriches the narrative. “It was important for me to bring in the icons I grew up with,” she says. “I’ve drawn Dr. B.R Ambedkar on the page that mentions the constitution, and a young girl dressed like him. All through my childhood, the idea ‘we are, because he was’ was ingrained in me and the children of my community. On the spread, where it shows the women who helped draft the constitution, I’ve added portraits of Fatima Sheikh and Savitri Bai Phule.”

The style of illustration in this book is unlike her earlier work, though Shridhar brings in a similar physicality as Aamu and Chiu of Chiu’s Power (Pratham Books) to the girls of Azadi. “I was focused on bringing the spirit of resistance into the characters who were demanding change. I wanted them to have an almost clay-like feeling, and for the colours to stand out.” The girls, rendered in gouache paint, are shown singing, climbing trees and bookshelves, and flying through the air.

Making textures talk

With both these artists, it is hard to pin down a signature style of illustration, but there are some techniques that Chakraborty enjoys returning to, like mono prints which they’ve used in Ammu’s Bottle written by Nivedita Subramaniam (Tulika Books) and Earth, Our Home, a collection of poems by various writers (Pratham Books).

“Since these books look at the environment and climate emergency, textures of biodegradable and non-biodegradable objects were used to build the narratives. They’re intrinsic to the story, rather than just ornamentation,” says Chakraborty. (They’ve made a publicly available library of these monoprint textures that can be downloaded for free: nimkistudio.com/freebies)

In Ammu’s Bottle, Ammu lets her plastic bottle boat float away to sea. Chakraborty fashions people, animals, and settings from plastic bottle caps, nets, and soda can tabs. The technique is used again in Earth, Our Home to striking effect. In Salil Chaturvedi’s poem The Orangutan’s Call, orangutans and rainforest are lushly illustrated in colour on one page, and on the next, engulfed in red and black as forest wildfires claim their homes.

Stories in need of a voice

But do all ‘woke’ books work? I don’t think so. The trick is in being intentional and respecting the reader’s intelligence, no matter how young they are. It is something both Shridhar and Chakraborty believe in. “Just because a book is dealing with a serious topic, it doesn’t give the creator the right to make it boring,” Shridhar says at the end of our interview.

Wildfires, real and metaphorical, are sweeping the planet: ecosystems are collapsing, rights are being trampled on, and freedoms are curbed. If books are doors and windows to the world around us, then can we really afford to keep these issues locked out?

The third in a series on children’s books illustrators from across the country.

The writer is a children’s book author (Loki Takes Guard) and columnist based in Bengaluru.