Sayoni Basu’s core position, set out in a Scroll interview with Sayari Debnath published on 29 March 2025, is that a children’s book should begin with the child rather than with an adult’s idea of what children ought to read. She argues that hard subjects such as war, discrimination and injustice belong in children’s books, with the treatment adjusted for age, and that a children’s book should end on a note of positivity. The interview is Basu’s account of her own editorial practice. Her broader claims about children’s reading and school libraries are her observations, not measured findings.
Who Basu is and how Duckbill began
Scroll describes Basu as a publisher who has worked in children’s publishing for more than 20 years. She says she began publishing for children in 2001, and her earlier roles included Oxford University Press, Penguin India, Puffin, Scholastic India and Amar Chitra Katha. In 2012 she co-founded Duckbill with children’s author Anushka Ravishankar. Scroll reports that eight years later Duckbill became an imprint of Penguin Random House, and that Basu and her team continue to make their own publishing decisions.
Basu describes the founding aim in practical terms: she and Ravishankar wanted to publish Indian children’s books as a sustainable business, and they were drawn to books that were both silly and challenging. She also recalls that Indian children’s books had lower priority than adult and foreign children’s books in some of her earlier workplaces. That is her experience of those workplaces, not a general audit of Indian publishing.
The child reader comes before the parent
Asked whether the child or the parent comes first, Basu answers the child. She accepts that parents often select or control what a child reads, so the choice is not made in a vacuum. Her point is about how a publisher should imagine its audience. Rather than picturing one ideal reader, she argues, publishers should imagine the wide range of children’s interests and temperaments.
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Difficult subjects, adjusted for age
Basu’s central claim here is that children already meet hard things, so books should not pretend otherwise. In her words, what is in life cannot be ignored in books, though adult gatekeepers, meaning authors and publishers, do moderate how these themes are handled at different age levels. The moderation is the editorial work, not a reason to leave the subject out.
Detail is the variable
Basu says children can read about almost any subject when the level of detail is considered carefully. The question for her is how much a child is given and how it is framed, not whether the subject is permitted. A carefully planned book, she argues, can demystify a difficult subject rather than relying on silence to protect the reader.
Where she draws the line in practice
The interview does not list banned topics or give a fixed age rule for each theme. Her position is a method: decide the detail and tone for the specific reader age, then test whether the book explains rather than hides. Readers who want to judge a particular title should look at how it handles the subject for its stated age band, not at the subject alone.
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The one concession: a note of positivity
Basu’s only consistent request of children’s books is that they end on a positive note. She puts it this way: the only consistent concession she believes children’s books should make is that, somewhere and somehow, they should end on a note of positivity. She describes this as her own principle, not a universal rule, and says the note can be redemption or happiness rather than a neat happy ending.
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Serious and funny books on the same list
Basu does not treat serious and light books as rivals. She says Duckbill values silly and funny books as well as substantial ones, and that a single child can enjoy both. The titles she names give a sense of that range. The table below uses only what the interview and the accompanying Scroll and publisher pieces state. Where a detail is not given, it is marked as not stated.
| Title | Form and author as stated | Age or setting as stated | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zen | Young-adult novel by Shabnam Minwalla, published by Duckbill | Teenage stories set in 1935 and 2019, drawing on historical and contemporary political contexts in India | Scroll review |
| The School for Bad Girls | Young-adult fiction by Madhurima Vidyarthi | Nineteenth-century Bengal, with a young Kadambini Ganguly appearing in the excerpt | Scroll excerpt, 2024 |
| When the Black Birds Fly | Named by Basu as a Duckbill title with substantial themes | Not stated | Interview, Scroll, 29 March 2025 |
| The Piano | Named by Basu as a Duckbill title with substantial themes | Not stated | Interview, Scroll, 29 March 2025 |
| hOle series | Picture-book-to-longer-story series from Duckbill, started to fill a gap between those forms | Contemporary Indian protagonists and dilemmas, aimed at children around seven to nine | Penguin Random House India publisher feature |
The examples cover different age bands and forms, so they are not interchangeable recommendations for every reader.
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Are children reading less?
Basu does not accept the blanket claim in either direction. She says children do not universally read or universally refuse to, and gives a personal estimate: the share of children who read is roughly what it was when she was at school, some 45 years ago. This is her impression, not a published statistic, and the interview does not cite a survey behind it.
She adds a change she does notice. More parents and schools now expect children to read approved books, which shapes what reading looks like in practice. The interview gives no sales figures, so it cannot settle the question of whether children’s books sell well. Readers weighing the two sides of that debate will need market data from another source.
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Basu says competition from other media means publishers have to work harder to make books that children will choose over the alternatives. She does not think every successful book needs to be turned into a game or other adaptation, and she does not present adaptation as a requirement for children’s publishing. The pressure she describes is on the quality of the book itself.
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School libraries: slow progress and a proposed journal
Basu says Duckbill tries to speak with school librarians and language teachers, but that progress is slow. In her account, schools often look for quick fixes or well-known names rather than building a considered list. Her proposed remedy is a journal for school librarians that would help them keep up with new and older books and think through how each could be used in classrooms and libraries. These are her observations and her proposal; the interview does not present measured findings about school libraries across India.
Literature festivals: representation and token slots
Basu says children’s publishing appears at many literature festivals, but she criticises token programming, and she reports that some children’s authors are treated as second-class participants. She also says curation has improved, and she finds festivals devoted entirely to children’s books encouraging. These are her judgements from her own experience of festivals.
Choosing from the titles named
The interview names titles but does not provide an age-rating guide, current editions, prices or stock. Before buying or recommending one of them, check these points:
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- The intended age band, and whether the book is a young-adult novel, a chapter book or an illustrated series.
- The subject and its emotional weight, measured against the reader’s age and what they are ready for.
- The format and current edition, confirmed with the publisher or a bookseller, since the sources do not verify availability.
- Whether the reader wants a serious story, a funny one, or both, which Basu’s own list suggests is a reasonable mix for one child.
Basu’s interview is most useful as a set of editorial principles to test against a book, rather than as a verdict on any single title.
Interview: Sayari Debnath, “‘What is in life cannot be ignored in books’: Sayoni Basu on publishing for children”, Scroll, 29 March 2025.
Also used: Scroll review of Zen by Shabnam Minwalla; Scroll excerpt from The School for Bad Girls (2024); Penguin Random House India publisher feature on the hOle series.
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