Bookshelf #28:
D. and S.
9 years old and 8 years old
Bangalore, India

The kids’ bookshelves are dual purpose shelves, filling a space on top of the stairs that we didn’t want either the kids or the puppy to tumble out of. The raised ledge there meant that the custom built shelves don’t take up valuable floor space, fitting well into an otherwise unusable space. The rocking chair, a hanging chair in another corner and a futon make this space a cozy space to read, do charts and homework with our ‘research’ being close by. One of our favourite spaces in the house.

My children are readers, one from very early on and the other needing some intervention to go from reluctant reader to engaged reader in the past year or two. One major reason (in my opinion) is access to books and the availability of a variety of books in our house. When the right book comes along, it is impossible to not pick it up! As a result of thinking things through, I got to read books that I missed reading when I was growing up like the entire Anne of the Green Gables series and Little House on the Prairie.

Submitted by: Sangitha, blogging at Life and Times in Bangalore

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #27:
A.
11 years old
Bangalore, India

Here are some of my daughter’s treasures that I would like to share. Pardon the relative disarray: I haven’t got around to making bookshelves yet. These are housed in wardrobes that were cleansed of any clothes and other inconsequential stuff. The first photo is books at hand that A. has earmarked as ‘to be read over the next few weeks’. Note the Bill Bryson book at the far right in the upper row:  A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. The second photo is of  books A. has read. The third photo is the other half of the shelf shown in photo 2. Harry Potter books, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series are behind these as is our collection of picture books by the Indian publishers. The thin red and white books obscured by the issue of Tell Me Why are our collection of the Amelia Bedelia books.

Submitted by: Sandhya, blogging  at  Saffron Tree and My Handful of the Sky!

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #26:
Prarthana
5 years old
Mumbai, India

This is my 5 year old daughter Prarthana’s bookshelf. She has been an avid book lover since she was very very young! I still have the few odd cloth books that she used to chew on (quite literally!) when she was a baby. As an avid story teller herself – books are just a gateway to her imagination. Every time she picks up a new or old book, she builds up from the pictures to spin her very own unique yarns! Now that she has started to read, re-visiting books is an adventure again. I can see the joy in her eyes every time she can read a new word or decipher a phrase. She has now truly begun her journey into losing herself in a world of words and alternate realities. And it is with great pride that I observe her swelling yet well thumbed down bookshelf!

Submitted by: Nidhi at Momming around in Mumbai 

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

If you scroll down our blog page and look at the widgets on the right-hand side you will see one entitled “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves”. What is this you ask?

We started our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves project in 2009 in the hopes of featuring 100 of our readers’ bookshelves from, well, around the world! It is our hope that our combined photos will offer a glimpse of a big world made smaller through books and reading. So far we have received pics from India, Canada, UK, Philippines, Hong Kong, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Jamaica and the USA (click on the “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” widget or here to see all the photos submitted to date).

Whether your child has too many or too few, in shelves or piles, tidy or scattered on the floor, we would love it if you could send us a photo of their books! Email the photo in .jpg format along with your child’s first name, age, city and country, to corinne(at)papertigers(dot)org and we’ll post the photo here on our blog. If you have a kidlit blog please let us know and we will include that link too. Don’t worry about capturing the whole bookshelf/book collection in the photo. A partial image, along with a reading-related anecdote and/or a few lines describing the bookshelf’s content, should be enough to help us connect across languages and cultures. We hope to feature bookshelves from all over, so please help us spread the word!

Bookshelf #25:
Krishnav
4 years old
Gurgaon, India

Krishnav loves listening to stories. He is a South Indian living in North India, so he knows three languages fluently English, Hindi and Telugu. Which is triple the fun because he gets to hear a variety of stories in different languages.

Some of his favorite books and authors are:

Gruffalo
Julia Donaldson‘s books
Eric Carle
Anushka Ravishankar
Roald Dahl
Tiki tiki tembo
Funny Little Women – Arlene Mosel
A Story,  A Story
Gudugudugudu gadagadagada
My Mother’s Sari
Katha, Pratham and Tulika are our source for good Indian books.

Submitted by: Prasannitha

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #24:
Mia Wenjen (Pragmatic Mom)
Boston, MA, USA

Mom of three, Mia Wenjen is better known in the kidlit blogging world as Pragmatic Mom.  She blogs on “picture books through YA with a special focus on Newbery/Caldecott/Printz quality books, Asian & people of color characters/authors, special needs, graphic novels and math/science.”

“I started reading children’s lit again…when I realized I was giving my oldest Newbery Award Winning books that were her reading level, but were inappropriate because of content. As my middle child started reading independently, she was so picky that I had to wrack my brain to get her books she likes. And my youngest, who is just starting to read, has gone on a reading strike lately. So, there you have it.  It’s always a challenge to find “just-right” books and that has become my life.”

Submitted by:  PragmaticMom, Education Matters. You can also follow her on Twitter (PragmaticMom) and Facebook (PragmaticMom)

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #23:
Araba
22 years old
Mandeville, Jamaica to Spokane, WA, USA

When I learned of the Paper Tigers “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” project, I had to submit a photo of my favorite childhood bookshelf! Not only do the books reflect storytelling traditions from countries all over the world, but the bookshelf itself has a globetrotting past. It was handpainted by a Jamaican artist, using images and Adinkra symbols from Ghana (my family’s home), and traveled with me all the way to Spokane, WA, USA, where it still resides. Nowadays, it holds beloved stories from picture books to novels, reminding me how fortunate I am to have grown up with a good read always at hand!

Submitted by: Rachel Phillips, currently working with Mmofra Foundation in Ghana, Africa

 For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

 

Bookshelf #22:
Vignesh
3 years old
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

I would like to share my son’s bookshelf for your series ‘Around the World in 100 Bookshelves’. My son Vignesh will turn 4 this Sep. I introduced Vignesh to the world of books when he turned 1 yr.

We started off with pictorial books about animals, colours & shapes and nursery rhymes. And graduated to mazes, puzzles, short stories of Birbal, Mulla Nasruddin, Panchatantra, Tenali rama (Indian folklore), Bambi, but the current flavor is Dora & Billy Goat Gruff!!! He is totally enamoured with books about the seven wonders of the world, cars and machines.

I hope he sustains the interest in the years to come.

Submitted by: Supriya

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #21:
Rishab
11 years old
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

We are an Indian family settled in Dubai. I would like to showcase my son’s bookshelf. In his own words:

My name is Rishab, I am 11 years old and I live in Dubai with my parents.

“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and you feel a little as if you have lost a friend” said  Paul Sweeney.

I couldn’t agree more, I heart books. Period.

My secret fear/nightmare is a world without books, It would indeed be a sad place. My book shelf is an indication of how my taste has evolved over time. I started off like any other child with the Encyclopedia and the `Tell me series’.  I was introduced to Enid Blyton early and I still cherish her books. I had my staple of Dinosaurs and Harry Potter. (Still have a crush on Dinos). I have moved on to other genres namely Humour, Horror, Mystery, Adventure etc. Roald Dahl remains  one of my favourites, I’m in love with Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) &  Big Nate. Anthony Horowitz, R.L.Stine and Joseph Delaney are my all time favourites. And then there is Thomas Rockwell, H.G.Wells, Ruskin Bond, Steve Cole, Deepak Dalal, R.K.Narayan, Dr Abdul Kalam, Robin Sharma and the list is never ending.

My father has been urging me to start with e books much to my dismay. The joy of holding a book, flipping the pages and the sweet smell of books can never be replaced. If only school books could be replaced with story books….. aah if only……! That wish of mine will remain a fantasy, but what I do know is I will have the largest collection of books in my lifetime.

P.S: Oh by the way, Thursdays are my favourite day at school, because we get to visit the library .

And did I tell you that I wear spectacles with power  - 4.50 & – 4.75 respectively. Go Figure !

Submitted by: Rishab and his mother

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.

Bookshelf #20:

Tanu
10 years old
Maryland, USA

This is my 10-year-old daughter’s bookshelf. These are just a few of them. She is a voracious reader and had been introduced into reading from her very early years. Apart from bringing in tons of books from the neighbourhood library, she has her books lying all around the house. Some could be found lying in piles behind her bed, a portion of a corner of the couch, bathroom, you name it and she has her books there. This is probably the neatest spot of her collection.

She has transcended from the usual Judy Moody and Ramona into more matured levels of reading. Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, and mythologies are turning into some of her favourites these days. Here is a glimpse of her favourite corner….her bookland.

Submitted by: Tanu’s Mom

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf to our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, click here.