CHENNAI: We’ve all heard the famous dialogue from Forrest Gump, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.’ Well, you literally might be in for a surprise in Ananya Ganesh’s new book, 9 Chocolatey Bites! The book of short stories authored and self-published by the 11-year-old through Notion Press, features stories with a heady mix of fiction and magic, written for peers.
“The book is collection of nine short stories — all based on everyday things and also on things I’ve noticed when I travelled with my family,” says Ananya. For example, one of the popular ones is titled The Messy Desk.
“My desk is always messy, and mother used to ask me every day to clean it up — instead I sat down and decided to write a story with it as the central figure! Then there’s another one called The Mango Pickle; most of my stories are funny!”
Ananya has been writing short stories since she was seven, often jotting down stories on a whim.
Ironically, it was her science teacher who first encouraged her to write stories. “She used to write very cute stories at that point, and by her 10th birthday, we decided that we would try and publish a few stories in a book,” adds her mother, Jayashree.
It was through a chance encounter with Notion Press that they were introduced to the idea of self-publishing. “Traditional publishing is a long process and often it has a factor of luck in it. So we wanted to self-publish so that she could own the book herself,” she adds.
The family then went through the process of collating all of Ananya’s stories, several of which were written haphazardly in notebooks and papers lying around. “Some of my stories were handwritten and had to be put into the computer, and it was scattered around several notebooks in the house, and my mother had to tear pages from various notebooks and start compiling Apart from stories already written, I also wrote a few new stories which were added to the collection.” There were quite a lot of stories and the family had to decided what would fit as a story — some were kiddish and predictable; while other she wrote ran to 25 pages.
“We saw that the maturity level in her later stories had really jumped! We also asked her to write a blurb and it was her idea that this book is a box of chocolates, with each story of a different flavours,” adds Jayashree. Ananya, also a talented sketcher, drew the front page illustration, which was finally tweaked and is on the cover of the book. The book also has a foreword by Puducherry Governor Kiran Bedi, who met her and launched the book.
“I drew inspiration from my favourite authors J K Rowling and Enid Blyton; also to keep the style of writing fun and conversational!” she adds. “Some stories I’d written were more influenced by the books I read, so I’ve even written a few Indianised stories.”
The student of Chettinad Harishree Vidyalayam is also enthused by the addition of J K Rowling and Tintin to the ICSE syllabus. Besides spending her time reading, Ananya splits her time between sketching and dancing, and is also a budding experimental chef. “I often try to concoct my own recipes, like for example, chappathi tacos!” she giggles.
(9 Chocolatey Bites is available on Amazon and at Odyssey, Adyar)