A field guide to reading freely

This Independence Day, Lounge recommends books that encourage young readers to reflect on ideas of freedom and resilience

- Rituparna Roy

The freedom to read isn't one of the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution. But it certainly is one of those pesky acts of rebellion that gives governments around the world sleepless nights.

Last week, the Jammu & Kashmir government banned 25 books written by scholars, writers and journalists from being sold in the state, blaming these works for "misguiding youth." As an official notification put it, "This literature would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting a culture of grievance, victimhood, and terrorist heroism."

In a just world, a book's merit ought to be left to the judgement of the reader, not pre-emptively decided and dismissed. So, this Independence Day, Lounge decided to offer a small gift of freedom to India's youth in the form of a curated reading list.

We wanted to take young readers on a journey of discovering stories of freedom, resilience and grit.

We didn't want to set a bar in terms of genre, language, level or geography. The best children's books, we believe, resonate with readers of all ages.

We did set ourselves one condition: The books had to be quirky, exciting and absorbing in a way regular "educational" books are not. They had to be so good as to make young readers forget online distractions for some time and focus only on the book at hand.

While we put our heads together as a team and brainstormed, we also invited writers, illustrators, editors and publishers to tell us about a book that mattered to them.

They may have read it growing up or discovered it as an adult but it is one they want every child to read. For obvious reasons, it had to be a book they had no hand in producing.

What follows is a list of titles we came up with-necessarily subjective, selective and incomplete-but one that will hopefully inspire our readers to start many conversations and discover the special freedom that books can send our way.