As a book curator who has been working for two decades to promote Indian children’s literature, my nose is often buried in piles of children’s books and perhaps doesn’t come up often enough to smell the roses – or the garbage! While Funky Rainbow has always had a collection of Indian children’s and young adult books on the environment and participated in many environmental events in our city Bangalore, nature loss and its far-reaching consequences seemed a distant reality. But all this changed when a children’s literature festival we had been happily curating at a school in Chandigarh ran into extremely cold weather one year and horribly hot weather the very next. As temperatures plummeted and soared, festival schedules, attendance and the overall atmosphere were thrown wildly out of gear. The environmental crisis and its tangible consequences had hit home hard.

At Funky Rainbow, our green bookshelves immediately moved front and centre, and books were organised by specific themes like climate change, biodiversity loss, renewable energy, environmental activism and sustainable living. As independent booksellers, we were convinced that only good children’s literature could help young people make sense of the drastic climatic changes unfolding around them. 

HOW GREEN ARE OUR BOOKS?

Fridays for Future, a movement of students protesting climate change founded by the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in 2018, was a game changer for green publishing globally. Data from Nielsen Book Research showed that a year after the movement, the number of new children’s books looking at the climate crisis and the natural world had more than doubled and sales too had gone up. Publishers around the world called this boom the ​‘Greta Thunberg effect’.

While India has had a long tradition of writers such as Ruskin Bond, Zai Whitaker and Ranjit Lal writing books on nature, the years since 2018 have seen a significant spurt in green publishing, with authors and illustrators consistently creating books that draw young people into a deeper engagement with environmental issues. 

We have publishers like Kalpavriksh and TERI Press, who focus exclusively on children’s books that showcase nature and delve into the complex relationship between human beings and the environment. Others like Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Tulika, Karadi Tales, Tara, Speaking Tiger and Pratham also have numerous green books in their lists. Indian Pitta, India’s first dedicated imprint for bird lovers, conservationists and policymakers, ventured into children’s books in 2024, while Perky Parrot, the children’s imprint of Niyogi Books, also published a few environmental titles in its debut year.

When we were invited to be the official children’s books partner of India’s first Green Literature Festival that curates honour lists of environmental literature for adults and children, we took a deeper look at our collection of green books. It struck us then just how vast, vibrant and varied it was! Old classics like That Summer at Kalagarh and Birds from My Window and the Antics They Get Up To by Ranjit Lal and Andamans Boy and Cobra in My Kitchen by Zai Whitaker sat alongside contemporary reads like Wild in the Backyard by Arefa Tehsin and Ambushed by Nayanika Mahtani. There were also many lovely picture books for the youngest readers, such as Bombay Ducks, Bombay Docks by Fleur D’Souza and Kripa, Bumoni’s Banana Trees by Mita Bordoloi and Tarique Aziz and The Poop Book! by Tejaswani Apte-Rahm, Sujatha Padmanabhan and Priya Kuriyan.   

Some of the landmark titles on our shelves included Bijal Vachharajani​’s A Cloud Called Bhura, widely regarded as the first popular work of climate fiction in India, Rohan Chakravarty​’s delightful cartoons and comic strips in Green Humour for a Greying Planet and Naturalist Ruddy that both entertain and educate, and Meghaa Gupta​’s Unearthed: An Environmental History of Independent India, a first-of-its-kind book of children’s non-fiction that unpacks the history of some of India’s most pressing environmental issues.

In recent years, we’ve had the pleasure of showcasing some spectacularly produced green books on our shelves, such as Go Wild! Stories, Essays and Comics that Celebrate the Earth, a fascinating anthology edited by Bijal Vachharajani and illustrated by Prabha Mallya, and Song of the Asunam, a stunningly illustrated modern fable by CG Salamander and Rajiv Eipe. 

ARE THERE GREEN BUCKS IN GREEN BOOKS?

Clearly, there are plenty and more books – but do they sell? Over the past few years, we’ve made a concerted effort to effectively and innovatively market green literature for children and, fortuitously, there have been ample avenues for this.

At the wonderfully planned Kere Habba in Bangalore, a save-the-lake carnival designed to rekindle the relationship between people and lakes, we were delighted by the enthusiastic response to our curated collection of children’s books on water as a precious resource, rainwater harvesting and recycling. Sales across a single day almost touched a lakh of rupees. We had a similar experience at the Pet Carnival, an adoption drive for strays, where books featuring pets of all shapes and sizes received bow-wows and meow-meows of approval. At the Green Literature Festival in 2022 and 2023, books flew off our shelves and sales far exceeded our expectations. It seemed like everywhere we went with our pop-up of books, a market quite simply popped up! 

Over the years, Funky Rainbow has also collaborated with schools across India to incorporate green literature into curriculum, curate library collections and organise literature festivals and book fairs. In addition to author-illustrator sessions, our school literature festivals often feature panel discussions on environmental issues, where students from different grades get an opportunity to exchange ideas with creators of green books. Book sales at these festivals run up to several lakhs, proving yet again that there is indeed a healthy appetite for such literature. 

Some of our greatest learnings, however, have come from experiences at our flagship store in JP Nagar, Bangalore. Contrary to expectations, customers don’t usually walk in asking for green books. Dedicated book displays featuring new releases and award-winning books, personalised recommendations and specially-designed in-store events have played a big part in drawing customers towards these books. For example, a nature walk at our tree-lined campus led by author Roopa Pai had children and adults reaching out eagerly for her book, Let’s Talk about Trees! Similarly, a session that had authors Nandini Nayar and Meghaa Gupta speaking about the cruelty meted out to animals during the British Raj and how the Wildlife Protection Act passed in independent India helped address this, found great resonance with young readers and their families. At yet another event with wildlife enthusiast Peeyush Sekhsaria, we promoted an NGO-published book on the successful revival of tigers at the Panna Tiger Reserve, taking it to newer audiences.

Our eco-adventures as independent booksellers have been about going where not too many others have gone before, championing green books in the hope that we can be the change we wish to read! 

About the author:

One of India’s foremost children’s book curators, Vidya Mani is the co-founder of Funky Rainbow, an independent children’s bookshop in Bangalore that is committed to bringing books and children together in exciting ways. She was one of eighteen booksellers who were chosen to be part of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s invitation programme for international booksellers in 2022. She co-edits the monthly Nature Writing for Children newsletter for Azim Premji University.