‘A Book I Wrote’ (ABIW) is a unique library initiative started in 2017 in
collaboration with the fantastic children’s book publisher MomSays. The purpose
of this initiative was to provide a platform to children to write creatively
and give them a sense of accomplishment by printing
it as a beautifully illustrated book with their poems and stories. These books
are a testament to the fact that children have the ability to ‘author’
their ideas.
‘A
Book I Wrote’ is
a thematic poem and story writing competition for children in age group 6-8 and
9-11 years. Every year a unique theme is given and children are invited to
contribute a poem or story based on it. Some of the themes were Nature, Fantasy, Festivals and
Gratitude. After receiving the entries, our panel of judges review and select
the 12 best entries, 6 in the category ‘Poems’ and 6 for ‘Stories’. These 12 best
entries are then published as a beautifully illustrated book. The theme for this year’s competition was ‘Happiness
is…’. By choosing happiness as a theme, we wanted children to think about
what makes them happy and draw their attention to the positive instances in
their life. Lavanya Karthik, an eminent
illustrator and children’s author drew beautiful illustrations for the book.
The 7th
edition of ABIW was launched on 14th November 2025 where we
felicitated the 12 best entries of the
competition. For the
launch, we invited four special guests from the fields
of literature, media and library science. They were writer Ms Meghna Pant,
features editor of Mid-day newspaper and writer Ms Fiona Fernandez, Head of the
Library Network at the Muktangan Education Trust Ms Mamta Paigankar and Librarian
and Information Curator Ms Heeru Bhojwani who very graciously accepted our
invitation to launch the book. They
spoke some words of encouragement and felicitated the winners with a copy of ABIW, a certificate and a cash prize.
In today’s
world of gadgets, reading printed books has become a rarity. The purpose behind
Nehru Centre Library’s initiative was to draw people back into libraries,
reconnect them with the fascinating world of the printed word and the rich
language that somewhere seems to be lost.
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