Bloomsbury & Katha Partner for Children's Books

New Delhi, May 8 (PTI) Bloomsbury Publishing India and Katha Friday announced a partnership to bring children's books across India and seven other Asian countries.

The seven other countries where the books will be distributed are Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

For nearly four decades, as one of India's foremost institutions in children's translation, Katha has brought hundreds of stories from Manipuri, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Odia, and other regional languages into the mainstream, a statement said.

Katha also started StoryPedagogy - a research-based learning methodology, developed over decades, in which stories become the engine for curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

Katha books are distinguished by their visual identity. Illustrated by some of India's and the world's finest artists, these books are designed to delight as much as to educate, the statement said.


Speaking about the partnership, Rahul Srivastava, managing director at Bloomsbury Publishing India Private Limited, said, "Bloomsbury has always believed that the right story, in the right hands, can change a child's world. When we decided to enter the children's publishing space in India, we asked ourselves a simple question: who has spent the longest, most committed time understanding what Indian children need from their books? The answer kept coming back to Katha."

He went on to add: "Thirty-eight years. 12.4 million children. A methodology that the best educators in the country trust. A translation legacy that has opened regional India to the world. We are proud to bring Bloomsbury's distribution strength to a body of work this extraordinary. This is a shared belief that Indian children deserve world-class books that know and love them."

According to Rajesh Soundararajan, executive director at Katha, "For 38 years, Katha has believed that the story is the most powerful learning tool a child can hold. We have built that belief into books, into classrooms, into teachers' hands, and into children's hearts - across languages, across geographies, across every definition of what it means to be Indian."

He said this partnership means these stories now have the wings to travel further than they ever have.

"To reach children in bookstores and schools we have not yet reached. To sit on shelves where Indian children will find them and feel, perhaps for the first time, that a book was made for them. That is what we have always worked toward," Soundararajan added.