It’s nearly impossible for children to call out or even recognise bad behaviour by adults – pulling cheeks, spouting prejudice, bullying – considering the consequences they face for it. A lot of this behaviour is shaped by what children are taught in everyday life and through popular culture, including film and literature. Two young women, Meghna Chaudhury and Alishya Almeida, decided to step in to fix this and and to “interrupt stereotypes and biases in spaces of everyday learning.” It is the motto that fuels their new literary initiative, The Irrelevant Project, which, contrary to its name, is anything but irrelevant. Co-founders Chaudhury (who works for Dost education as their director of curriculum) and Almeida (a teaching fellow in the Department of English at Ashoka University) have just published a set of five picture books for young readers that are united by a theme of inclusivity.
Through these books, we meet a spirited cast of characters. In Don’t Pull My Cheeks by Meghna Chaudhury and illustrated by Pranita Kocharekar, eight-year-old Bibloo tries to figure a way to keep his cheeks from getting pinched. Annie and Arjun by Varsha Varghese and illustrated by Twisha Maniar features two siblings who wonder why domestic chores are linked to their gender (Why should Annie have to assist her mother in the kitchen and Arjun have to help his father clean the car?). The twins in Nila and Najam by Ashwini Ashokkumar and illustrated by Anushka Jajodia have dreams that go beyond the stereotype – he wants to grow up to be a teacher who likes to cook, while she would rather be a scientist. What led the duo to these stories? Chaudhury and Almeida spoke to Scroll.in about what The Irrelevant Project’s books mean for young readers and how they want to change the dominant narratives in the media. Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us a little about how The Irrelevant Project began.
Meghna Chaudhury (MC): We were floormates at the Young India Fellowship and having had multiple conversations about teaching, education and recognising the damaging ramifications of identity differences, we decided to start the project in August 2016.
Alishya Almeida (AA): We initially started with workshops for children, and recognised how powerful stories are as a medium to think about larger themes, grounding in children several concepts to be developed over time. This motivated us to begin the story division of The Irrelevant Project in December 2016. It took us a year and one month to get these books written, edited, illustrated and printed and we are very glad to see people buying them from us!
Did you always plan to launch the five illustrated books together, as a set, with a common thread running through it?
MC: During ideation, we began working through 10 stories. Faced with several difficulties like finding the right illustrators and other resource constraints, we thought it better to work with fewer stories, ensuring our material went through several rounds of iteration.
AA: Then, Read More publishers [a new Indian publishing startup] run by Harish Balan came on board to print these books. Our vision became a reality. He offered to print 1,000 sets, and we decided that five books, 1,000 copies each, was a great place to begin. The common theme across all is being inclusive. We decided to work on inclusion by paying attention to the images and language we were producing in our stories because the theme applies both to children learning to be inclusive, and also (to be) inclusive in our work and approach. An important goal for us is to not repeat multiple biases and stereotypes we see in media including films, advertisements and books. Having multiple ways of representing our characters is important to us instead of having one model character, which we want children to emulate. Many characters on the visual screen and print are all categorically fair, and from here a desire to be fair is generated. The characters in our books have brown skin, hairy bodies, they are not petite and do not have rosy cheeks.
How did you find writers and illustrators for this project?
MC: They are only the best people in the world! One of the most beautiful things of this project is the kind of passion and commitment they have shown to us. They voluntarily offered their time to write/illustrate. Two of our writers are Varsha Varghese and Ashwini Ashokkumar, friends from the Young India Fellowship. Varsha runs her own NGO, The Wordsworth Project, which helps children build literacy skills and is currently studying development studies in Geneva. Ashwini is doing her PhD in Social Psychology from University of Texas. I am the third author. The illustrators (Twisha Maniar, Roopsha Mandal, Pranita Kocherakar, Anushka Jajodia and Sonaksha Iyengar) – some are old friends from college, others, we met through friends.
The books have an easy, warm vibe, yet there is a layered complexity about everyday prejudices. How did you pick the themes – consent, curiosity, body positivity, dreams, gendered roles? Were there others you considered that didn’t make it to the final list?
MC: We wouldn’t think of it as a final list. This is just the beginning. It was also important for us to put these books out there, gain feedback and go back to the drawing room and work on edits and new ideas.We moved ahead with these particular stories because they helped us touch the entire spectrum of inclusivity and agency for a child as the first step.
AA: We initially compiled a list of topics which we thought were reflected with skewed proportions in media (and the list was long!). We then started paring it down to child-friendly topics. We had multiple conversations throughout creating the characters, WhatsApp voice notes being such a saviour! We also would excitedly point each other to any text/op-ed on children’s literature and use it to design our characters and their settings.
Children’s books can be tricky – they need to be light-hearted and amusing enough to be engaging, yet carry an ever so subtle message. How did you maintain the balance
MC: I used to be a teacher for Akanksha kids (The Akanksha Foundation in Pune) where I taught children in Class 1 and 2 and they pretty much helped me understand the “language” which appealed to them.
AA: There is no overt moralistic tone in the books – something we deliberately maintained. We also wanted children protagonists who think and problem solve, with no or limited help from adults – this appeals to a child because they can connect with the character. Finally, it was the illustrators who did the magic – the colours are warm, the spreads are eye-catching and we also have little asterisks thrown throughout the book with questions like “What do you think the character has in that box?” to make the text interactive. To give another example – Our Big Book of Why has stickers you can cut out and create your own big book of why.
Yes, the design is particularly child-friendly, very informal and chatty and intimate, almost childlike. It reminded me a little of the way Oliver Jeffers dresses up his books.
MC: Thank you for the Oliver Jeffers comparison! I did provide a brief to illustrators but mostly, it was their research and magic. The characters and the imagery is very fluid. The font was suggested by the illustrators and most of them deliberately did choose childlike fonts to appeal to children.
Have the books been self-published? Tell us why you didn’t take the conventional route of looking for a publisher.
We did approach a few publishing houses but didn’t hear from them or were not approved. We had spent a lot of time working on the stories and we didn’t want to give up. And with Harish’s help, we were able to make our dream come true.
Where do you plan to take the themes that fuel The Irrelevant Project from here? Are there more books coming?
MC: It’s important for us to stick with sites of prejudice and equip children with tools to problem solve through the various conundrums they face in life as a wholesome approach to education. The next step is to work with schools and seek space on the shelves of many bookstores.
AA: We have [another book] The House in Limaland’s Special Tree already illustrated. It is a book on the definition of family through the story of two blue birds – Shankar and Shubham. We can only go ahead with printing it if our current lot sells out and we hope they do.
