Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Revisiting the Craft of History Writing for Children

A project of the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK). Debarati Bagchi is a collaborator, author, and series co-editor. 

The project involves the writing and publication of a series of illustrated history books for children, 12 to 14 years of age. Children’s encounter with the past is often shaped by the stories, notions and symbols of the societies, communities and nation-states that they learn to see as sacrosanct. They internalise patriarchal, majoritarian and statist values from their social surroundings and even from the formal spaces of education. This project intends to write lucid and accessible history books for middle-school children in India that will unsettle such ideas by creatively revisiting the ways of learning history. Through the series Itihase Hatekhari [First History Lessons], we wish to disseminate the understanding of and the need for critical histories among young kids. The books are written in Bengali and translated into English and Assamese. The authors and editors are trained historians. The first three books published in 2022 dealt with the questions of partition, citizenship, and language politics. In 2023, we wrote and published three more books on the histories of commodity (tea), environment (river) and war. The final set of books of 2024 are on food, attire, and sports.