Blog

  After smashing all the bestseller lists in India with her debut book, Girl Power! author Neha Hiranandani is set to take on the rest of the world.  Girl Power! is the first book of its kind to celebrate 50 Indian women that achieved remarkable feats - it's the first children's book that represents Indian women in this light, adding diversity and hope to a dying all-white narrative.  I'm really excited about this book, not just because I'm Indian and a woman, but because it gives a voice to children of colour everywhere and acknowledges their identity through representation, offering inspiration...

After doing the rounds at the BBC, the Bookseller and the Voice-Online we finally got a chance to catch up with exciting mumpreneur, Keisha Ehigie, on a mission to gain representation for young readers of colour. Keisha Ehigie, a former city worker and mum of a three year old, launched an incredible book box subscription on realising the absence of characters of colour in children's books, finally putting these characters on the map. Diversity is trending and it's really exciting to see Keisha's project breaking barriers and enabling belated representation of young readers of colour. It's a much-needed step on the elusive road...

  Photo by Wyron A on Unsplash “I’ll never leave my birth town, why should I? I have a lovely home, friends and family, community, great weather and food — this is a part of me, who I am, it would be crazy to leave!” says my paternal grandmother, who’s lived in Nairobi, Kenya all her 88 years of life and is one of ten children. Her parents grew up here and their parents (my great, great grandparents) migrated from India to Kenya, East Africa in the late nineteenth century, pre-colonial times. This was a time when moving through British colonies for ambitious...

As a mother of two, I naturally wanted them to share in the joy of Diwali as I did when I was young. The gorgeous decorations, the picture-perfect food, the friends and family that we'd celebrate with, perhaps over a sparkler or two and the meaning behind it all - I wanted to immerse them in all of this. In true bookworm fashion, there's nothing better than literature to warm them up, get them excited in the anticipation of the coming days, marked by the triumph of good over evil, aptly titled the festival of lights or simply 'Diwali'. Diwali,...

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash   Nairobi, London, Sydney and Palo Alto. These have been home over the last 37 years — either with my kids and husband, or with my husband, or just me, or with my parents and brother. As a consequence, home has taken on various shapes and forms. With children in the picture, a primal force to nest, root and baptise a home that they can call their own has been nagging me. Penning lucid thoughts and feelings, what ‘home’ is and what it means to ‘be home’ unravels on fresh pages. You rent and you own. For...