'A Book I Wrote' 2025 - Book Launch and Felicitation of Winners

‘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 7^th edition of ABIW was launched on 14^th 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.