Exploding pens

Had much fun yesterday reading to kids at Eureka Bookstore, probably the best-known store in the city as far as younger readers are concerned. Was asking grave young readers, who were arranged in Roman military formation for some reason. Scholastic should be pleased with me – many copies of Bewitched were sold, though I was wary of signing for a young gentleman who had previously revealed that he wanted to possess a pen that could blow people and kill them in 10 seconds – and this when asked how he’d change the world if he could. Why 10 seconds, I asked? So they could suffer for a bit, he said.

Rama Lakshmi of the Washington Post was there too, and wrote this piece on the long-awaited explosion in Indian children’s literature, which hasn’t really happened yet but is expected to happen tomorrow. Or maybe in a few years.