r2i forum

Friends,

We have accumulated tons of kids books (for below 5 year old kids). The dilemma is whether to donate if it is available in India or carry to India? Can someone confirm whether simple to read books for 4-5 year old kids are available in India? I have seen comic books like Tinkle ...etc... I am more looking for small story books with big letters and pictures.

Thank you
SSPP

There are lot of story books available in India for kids. But if you already have them and if your kids like to read them again and again, bring them over here.

Some of the Indian prints are cheap & affordable but books printed abroad are expensive. Tin Tin, ASterix comics are also available in all major book shops.

The problem is how to ship them. "mbags" service is stopped by post office. There is no alternate cheap means identified so far to ship books.

I highly recommend getting the books from the US. There are lots of kids books here. But the grammar/sentence structure used in those books leave a lot to be desired. They use too many bombastic words to hide their ineptitude in grammar. There are some Disney books that we bought locally (Landmark, Odyssey etc). But they were written by Indian authors (probably with a BA from a third rate schools) and marketed by Scholastic.

Additionally, the books here are not board books. If your kid is like my son, the book won't last a week.

But my bigger complaint is that the quality of English in Indian books suck. They are written by authors with sub-standard English. If you train your child with poor grammar early on, it may be hard to lose that and defeats the purpose of reading.

If you want to train your kid in the vernacular subjects (Tamil, Hindi etc), then Indian books are good. They have a great story line with nice pictures.

#4

I second your opinion.

I picked up a few Amar chithra Katha books on Indian mythology, and realised that they were badly written. I had to translate the english in those books to my daughter. The ACK comics are a great way to introduce Indian mythology and history to kids, and I would be willing to volunteer to re-write them in easy plain English ... if only they would allow me.

For some online resource (text, audio), see:

http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp

(Some may require you to have a US public library account)

I agree with VWbuggy78 member. Its worth taking them from US.

Recently I bought Harry Potter book from Landmark. Price was in pounds. I noticed so many typo's, grammatical errors. I am not sure if this is an Indian edition but those errors were unexpected.

As far as books are concerned, there are good number of books available for Kids in Depot, Landmark...but good books are expensive. The availability and range cannot be compared to what is available in US. We have been able to find decent enough books for our 4 year old son.

Since you already have,I would recommend you to get them.

CBT has several good books with good english, including picture books. Radical Books Pvt. Ltd. has also recently come out with some good books.