Page Turner

Among the other participating writers are Ruskin Bond,every child’s favourite wordsmith,who will field questions from young readers,and Anthony Horowitz,whose session on his teen super spy Alex Rider,Sengupta suspects,will be gatecrashed by adults.

“It is one of the few festivals where children’s writers can interact with their readers and with one another. It is heartening that so many children attended the previous two festivals. In fact,the increasing footfall prompted the change in venue,from Sanskriti Anandgram to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) this year,” says writer Paro Anand. Her performance-based storytelling will also draw upon children from the audience to play various characters. “One of my stories is called Wingless,about the daughter of the king and queen of angels who is born without wings. You would think that the world of angels would be empathetic to a differently abled person but the young princess is driven out and finally makes her own place in the world,” she says.

Among the other highlights is a close look at the art of Robert Sabuda,the illustrator whose pop-up books are packed with superbly executed three-dimensional images. Arjun Vajpai,a 16-year-old Delhi student,talks about his experience of being the youngest Indian to scale Mount Everest this year,while actor Javed Jaffrey teaches kids to shake a leg.

Bookaroo is on till November 28.