Lavanya Karthik on the Dreamers Series

byStaff Reporter

How do you fit the story of a remarkable life into a handful of pages? How do you frame that life in a way a child can find relatable? How do you find an illustration style that best represents the person you are writing about and the story you want to tell? These are the questions I asked myself as I began working on the Dreamers, a series of biographies of some iconic Indian men and women, which I wrote and illustrated.

The People My subjects were people I have personally been inspired by, even if they remain largely unknown in mainstream media. I began the series with a book on one of my greatest heroes—Teejan Bai who, despite a life of extreme deprivation, rose to fame on the strength of her voice. This was a b