Reading Time: 4 minutes
Sandhya Parippukaran can’t remember a time in her life where she didn’t love going to the library.
“That’s what we did back when I was little,” she reminisces. “There were no screens or anything, so you had to occupy yourself somehow – for me it was reading. I just love losing myself in the story, I would read anything! I liked dinosaurs and space and trees, and I liked all those fact books, but I also loved [fiction] stories.”
“I’m from a single income family, so buying books was out of the question. There were free events at the library too – I think I watched my first movie there. It’s always been a very welcoming and safe space; once you start going to the library you realise how much they have on offer there.”
These days, the children’s books she has penned take pride of place on the shelves of many libraries across the country, and equally on the honour rolls of numerous state literary awards, including the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2024 for her book Stay For Dinner.
“It’s been quite a lovely surprise, and it’s a lovely recognition as well,” Parippukaran says on receiving the award. “The recognition means that it goes to more readers’ hands. That’s a lovely consequence, because more people know about the book. It’s also a nod to the team as well.”
Though a lifelong reader, Sandhya Parippukaran came to writing just five years ago as a change of pace from her Food Technology job.
“One day my son and I were reading on the couch and I just thought, ‘What if I wrote one of these?’ The idea just popped into my head. My son was in Year 1 at the time, and I asked him ‘do you think I can write a book’? He goes, ‘you write the stories, and I’ll draw the pictures!’ That was my cue to give this a go,” she recounts.
A proud Malayali-Australian, Parippukaran followed the classic advice for first-time writers and wrote what she knew, resulting in poignant and uplifting stories like Amma’s Sari and The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name which elegantly impart themes of cultural identity and acceptance.
“The experiences from my life just started flowing onto the page. It wasn’t something that I thought I would do, but it just happened sort of organically, and I was able to put that into a child’s perspective and make it work for a picture book. If you put all my stories together, it would almost be like a memoir for me,” she reflects.
It takes one year for her to complete a book, a meticulous process involving lots of redrafting to achieve the tricky balance of sparking both conversation and joy in young readers.
“What we all love about a story is being in a setting and being with the character and just going through an adventure with that character … I focus on that and hope that all the other things will just fall into place around it,” Parippukaran says of her process.
Of course, it’s something she manages with aplomb, her stories chosen to be read on Play School and as the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s ‘Children’s Book of the Year’ in 2022.
“Books are a great way to build empathy – I’ve had feedback from parents and teachers for all my books, but especially with The Boy Who Tried To Shrink His Name which is about respecting people’s names and learning how to say them correctly. ‘Ever since we read your book, the children are more mindful about pronouncing names,’ I’ve been told, or children have been more empowered to tell the teacher how to say their names,’” Parippukaran says.
Inspired by the strawberry cake fuelled adventures from childhood heroes like Enid Blyton, her latest book Stay For Dinner celebrates the diverse palates of multicultural Australia, protagonist Reshma learning to overcome her reservations about her friends seeing her family eat with their hands when she discovers the myriad ways families share meals.
“When you add food to children’s books, it makes a strong connection [sic]. I wrote Stay For Dinner because I hadn’t seen a children’s book which featured the way my family eat dinner – with our right hand,” Parippukaran says.
“Every single one of my books has food in it and I think it just comes naturally. A lot of people say ‘Are you a great cook? Because you write so much about food.’ I’m not a good cook! I guess it’s part of my story, so when I write the food comes.”
With gorgeous illustrations from Indian-Australian artist Michelle Perera, it’s a sumptuous story which has seen a voracious take-up from readers.
As for what’s on the dinner table at this Malayali-Australian author’s house, “At least once a day we eat a Kerala meal; there’ll be Matta rice, either a green mango curry or Thrissur fish curry, some sort of vegetable – we call it upperi – some pickle, and some yogurt. You’ll get something like that.”
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