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Big Little Book Awards: Honouring excellence in Children’s Literature
Over the last two decades, a handful of authors, illustrators and publishers have attempted to give voice to Indian children’s literature with stories that talk to young readers about who they are, and help them navigate a multicultural and multilingual environment. These authors and illustrators have attempted to balance the traditional with the contemporary to reflect the Indian reality in content, visuals and production. They have given us stories that are not didactic but layered and sensitive, illustrations that fight gender and caste stereotypes, are inclusive, bring humour and fun into books, and books that make for great reading.
The Big Little Book Award is a first of its kind award instituted by the Parag initiative of Tata Trusts to recognize and honour significant contribution of authors and illustrators to children’s literature in Indian language(s). The first awards were announced at Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest in 2016.
The award is given under two categories – author and illustrator. An eminent panel selects the winners. Past winners in the author category have included Madhuri Purandare (in Marathi in 2016), Nabaneeta Dev Sen (in Bengali in 2017), Nagesh Hegde (in Kannada in 2018), Prabhat (in Hindi in 2019) and Subhadra Sen Gupta (in English in 2020). The winners in the illustrator category have included Atanu Roy (2016), Proiti Roy (2017), Nina Sabnani (2018) and Priya Kuriyan (2019) and Rajiv Eipe (2020).