President of the 87th Akhila Bharatha Kannada Sahitya Sammelana Go Ru Channabasappa welcomed by Mandya district in-charge minister N Chaluvarayaswamy, Kannada Sahitya Parishat President Mahesh Joshi, DC Kumar and others in Mandya on Thursday.
DH Photo
Mysuru: Children's littérateur called on schools and parents to develop love and interest for literature among children in India. They pointed out that a love for reading is important for their overall personality development that will shape their future amid their fascination towards gadgets, social media, reels, games in the tech era.
Children and kid fic writers expressed these views at a session on the 'role of literature in developing personality of children' on the second day of 87th Akhila Bharatha Kannada Sahitya Sammelana in Mandya on Saturday.
Writer T S Nagaraj Shetty said that Kannada Sahitya Parishat and other Kannada organisations should hold workshops for kids to encourage kids to read and write literature.
He also said that, even as there has been an increase in the cases of children in conflict with law, it is important to build a child-friendly environment and keep kids away from negative habits.
The writers' panel also suggested that to make books more accessible to kids, schools should host contests literature fests to keep the world of books alive in the future in a state which has bagged eight Jnanapeeta awards, they said.
Amid nuclear families with both parents working, it is necessary to engage children in reading books like Ramayana, Mahabharata, to develop human values. It is necessary to read moral stories of books like Panchatantra to learn to handle challenges in life. Education should not remain marks centric and syllabus centric, Shetty said.
Writer Baagooru Markandeya called on parents to have libraries at homes besides those at schools and they should gift books to children. Reading books and activities of fine arts should become part of time tables to keep up creativity and emotional self active. Children's books should be accessible on websites too, he said.
Writer Basu Bevinagidada said that litterateurs should keep the child in them alive to understand the world of children to write for them. All writers should write for children too like how Kuvempu and Rabindranath Tagore wrote for children. They should write in a way to attract them. Even adults should read children's books and discuss them with children, he said.