When we began working on the Nature Writing for Children newsletter in 2024, we wondered whether we would find enough Indian children’s literature on the environment to fill a monthly edition with new releases, reviews, book recommendation features and columns. To our great joy, we found a thriving abundance of books exploring green themes, and the list only seems to be getting longer and more diverse each year. 

This is not surprising, though. The environmental crisis is a defining reality of our times and it’s only ​‘natural’ for it to seep into every aspect of our lives, including the books we publish and read. Here we highlight some of our observations on Indian children’s literature brought out in 2025 that signalled fascinating and fresh approaches in publishing and writing on the environment for young readers. 

A Photo Feast

It’s no secret that most children love wildlife. Yet Indian children’s books featuring full-colour photographs of animals remain a rarity because of the high cost of production. In 2025, Indian Pitta Kids/​Juggernaut brought out ​‘Wild About India’, a series of ten books about some of India’s fastest animals, most unusual animals, tiniest animals, stinkiest animals and more. With stunning photographs on every page and exciting accompanying facts, these books, written in consultation with wildlife experts, have filled a big gap in our collection of photographic books about wildlife. Attractively priced at INR 299 each, these books not only create a love and appreciation of the natural world, but also kindle in young readers a desire to experience it first-hand.

Going Graphic

Graphic narratives have been around for a while, and in times when attention spans are shrinking, their popularity seems to be skyrocketing. Increasingly, publishers are also infusing such narratives within traditional fiction, non-fiction and even picture books. One of our favourite books of 2025, C.G. Salamander and Rajiv Eipe’s Song of the Asunam, a 56-page-long modern fable about a music-loving beast right out of Sangam literature, combines the shorter picture book and longer graphic novel format to dazzling effect. In her review of the book for the newsletter, well-known literary critic Saudamini Jain writes: The story is built with new information introduced in every graphic panel, and Eipe rises splendidly to the task with illustrations that are even more intricate than usual. Clever little details are tucked in throughout, and the book can keep curious children engrossed for a long, long time and engaged through multiple reads. It’s definitely a keepsake.

In A Girl, A Tiger and a very Strange Story, author Paro Anand and illustrator Priya Kuriyan tell the story of Junglee, a Pardhi girl, and Raunaq, a tiger cub, who find themselves alone in the jungle after a storm. What makes this middle-grade fiction stand apart is its extensive use of graphic narratives to move the story along.

Back to the Future

Worrying questions about the future abound in the face of the environmental crisis we’re living through, yet children’s literature has been largely tentative when it comes to speculative approaches. Only a handful of books over the past decade have taken this route, constructing richly imagined futures to speculate on present environmental realities. A prominent example is Roopal Kewalya’s The Little Rainmaker. Published in 2018, the book is set in a world without rain. Eerily enough, the story is set in 2027 — just a year away at the time of writing this column! 

This year, we got to read Aparna Kapur’s An Absence of Squirrels, true-blue speculative fiction set in a tiny island dominated by the dictatorial ​‘Captain’. Ostensibly, the book is a political commentary on the perils of undemocratic regimes. Yet, in tying this to a young girl’s quest to find a mysterious creature — the squirrel, the author also brings in an important environmental aspect. Many experts have cited connections between dwindling democracy and environmental destruction, and the book creates room for this uncommon but much-needed conversation.

A Plus for Production

The quality of production — cover and book design, paper and printing — is paramount in children’s publishing. Children are especially attracted to well-produced books that stand out on a bookshelf. It’s heartening to see the attention that publishers are increasingly paying to production these days. From board books like Eklavya’s Goodnight! Jungle Buddies, picture books like Pratham’s The Pangolin Protectors and River or a String of Clouds? to Penguin’s The Whispering Mountains: Greatest Himalayan Folktales and HarperCollins’ Our Potpourri Planet, 2025 unveiled a clutch of books that created a rich sensory experience for young readers. 

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

In 2017, psychologist Peter Kahn and his colleague Thea Weiss coined the term ​‘Environmental Generational Amnesia’ to describe how each generation accepts as ​‘normal’ the environmental reality it is born into, forgetting the past environment and the extent of damage that led to its deterioration. 

Children’s literature is a counter to such forgetting. It opens portals of imagination, stoking curiosity, fostering conversations and inspiring small acts of care towards the natural world we all live within. As editors of possibly the only newsletter engaging deeply with this literature, we are immensely grateful for our work and to everyone who makes it possible. Wishing all our readers and supporters a green and glorious new year! 

About the authors:

Meghaa Gupta has been working in Indian children’s publishing for over 15 years. A well-known author, editor and publishing consultant and is the co-founder of Literature across Borders, an international literary exchange programme for young people’s books at Bath Spa University in the UK.

Vidya Mani is the co-founder of Funky Rainbow, India’s only independent bookshop with an exclusive focus on Indian children’s books. She hosted Book Buzzaar, an online book show that was chosen as one of the six innovative pandemic initiatives by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2021. She was also one of eighteen booksellers chosen to be part of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s invitation programme in 2022.