I've been told that this is the first time that IBBY - International Board of Books for Young People has included countries from the Far East i.e. the non-whitey-whitey countries. So, Parag Reads was asked to send a choice of some of the best picture-books of 2025 from India in the categories of illustration, writing and translation from which IBBY would nominate what they thought was was the best in each category to be featured in the IBBY Honours List . There was a formidable collection of books sent from India for the illustration category created by some of my very talented colleagues, the very best in the land, so I must say I was very surprised to find that my book MOMMIES was the only book to be nominated by IBBY in the illustration category from India for the IBBY Honours List.
I suspect that making it to the IBBY honours list has some prestige associated with it because half my colleagues heartily congratulated me and the other half of my colleagues did not. I commiserate wholly with those who did not. I am not even a part of the Indian Children's book world. I decided to make a children's book during the pandemic in order to give myself something constructive to do and lo and behold, my book makes it to 2 dPictus 100 best nominations and now this IBBY thing, these international mentions which I know so many of my colleagues would trade a kidney for. Had I been in my twenties I would have been elated, but these days, when I don't even care about such things, these accolades have landed on my lap. Also, to rub in this particular nomination further, apart from the fact that I was the only Indian illustrator whose work was chosen by IBBY, this also makes me the first Indian to get featured in the IBBY Honours list. It looks like there are some post-menopausal women who cannot help themselves.
I cannot ignore the irony of this ceremony being held in Canada. Many years ago, in despair that I would never have the opportunity to make a beautiful children's book like the kind I had seen abroad, I decided to go live in Canada, Montreal, in the hopes that through all kinds of permutations and combinations of fate, I would end up making a decent looking picture book, hard bound and nicely printed. It turned out that I had to return to India to make that happen and now, this year, the ceremony gets held in Ottawa, just a little off the mark from Montreal.
Do these nominations change one's life? Given how stodgy and tight-arsed international publishers tend to be towards non-white illustrators (they probably barely consider us human), they are hardly going to come knocking at my door asking me to illustrate anything for them just because I made it to the IBBY Honours list. And Indian publishers? From what I have seen, it is the same old tired pillars of the children's book world (writers who know nothing about what constitutes good illustration), constantly exploiting illustrators with their sad justifications of rate card and budget coupled with puerile stories, bad printing and plenty of passive aggression. At the IBBY ceremony in Ottawa, I am told that the illustrators will be given a "diploma". What am I to do with a diploma? Fan myself from the fumes of the wildfires? If I had been given a cash prize large bottle of Maple syrup, that would have frankly made me far happier.
So yes, back to the IBBY thing, it won't actually change anything for me like bringing me interesting work and adequate resources to do such work if any, so I am not quite sure what the elation on social media is all about. I have deactivated my Instagram accounts and frankly my life is so much the better for it.
