Mango Books

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MangoBooks is a children's imprint in English of DC Books. They publish fiction, children's literature, poetry, reference, classics, folktales and biographies. Mango has also licensed content to Real Reads, UK. [1]

Contents

The Mango Editorial office is located in Ernakulam, Kerala, India. Mango has a four-member editorial team with Saraswathy Rajagopalan as its executive editor. [2]

History and overview

Originally called Tumbi, the company was founded in 2007, taking on the name MangoBooks in October 2008. [3] In 2014, Mango launched a new series titled Spooky Stories which included The Girl in the Mirror, As Strange as it Gets, Stories to Scare, Whispers from Under the Bed [4] and Ghost Stories from Bengal and Beyond.

The Mango Classics edition of Ramayana sold record copies worldwide. Titles from Mango from the series Mango Classics, Folktales and Collected Stories include classics such as Hamlet, Emma, The Time Machine, The Tempest, Great Expectations, Tom Sawyer, Dracula, Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, Macbeth, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Lost World. Among the classics, there are also tales from Indian Mythology, including Karna and Krishna, as well as tales from Indian history including Rani Lakshmibai, Shivaji and Ashoka. The collected tales of Panchatantra and Jataka Tales have received positive reviews. [5] Mango publishes its own yearbook every year, which is a reference book to meet the academic requirements of students.

Mango also has an original textbook series for schools, The English Express: A Skill-based Interactive Series for developing English language skills in children, as well encouraging their creativity, and communication and social skills. The lessons, exercises, illustrations and design in the course are for classes 1 to 8.[ citation needed ]

Notable contributors

Acclaimed authors such as Anita Nair, Jaishree Misra, Anjana Vaswani and Nandini Nayar [6] have worked with Mango, as well as creative artists and visual story-tellers like K.R. Raji, [7] Lavanya Karthik and Aniruddha Mukherjee. [8]

Awards and recognition

The Talking Handkerchief written by Mumbai-based author Anjana Vaswani won the Sharjah International Children's Book Award at the Sharjah International Book Fair 2016. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fairy tale</span> Fictional story typically featuring folkloric fantasy characters and magic

A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, pixies, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.

<i>Panchatantra</i> Ancient Sanskrit text of fables from India

The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. The surviving work is dated to about 200 BCE, but the fables are likely much more ancient. The text's author is unknown, but it has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma in some recensions and Vasubhaga in others, both of which may be fictitious pen names. It is likely a Hindu text, and based on older oral traditions with "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine".

The folklore of India encompasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize the vast folklore of India as a unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Frog Prince</span> German fairy tale

"The Frog Prince; or, Iron Henry" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Traditionally, it is the first story in their folktale collection. The tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 440.

Hitopadesha is an Indian text in the Sanskrit language consisting of fables with both animal and human characters. It incorporates maxims, worldly wisdom and advice on political affairs in simple, elegant language, and the work has been widely translated.

<i>Thakurmar Jhuli</i> Bengali fairytales

Thakurmar Jhuli is a collection of Bengali folk tales and fairy tales. The author Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder collected some folktales of Bengali and published some of them under the name of "Thakurmar Jhuli" in 1907. The Nobel-Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore wrote the introduction to the anthology. Since then, it has become iconic in Bengali children's literature, becoming a household name in West Bengal and Bangladesh over the years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trusty John</span> German fairy tale

"Trusty John", "Faithful John", "Faithful Johannes", or "John the True" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1819. Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Brave Little Tailor</span> German fairy tale

"The Brave Little Tailor" or "The Valiant Little Tailor" or "The Gallant Tailor" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. "The Brave Little Tailor" is a story of Aarne–Thompson Type 1640, with individual episodes classified in other story types.

The Heart of a Monkey is a Swahili fairy tale collected by Edward Steere in Swahili Tales. Andrew Lang included it in The Lilac Fairy Book. It is Aarne-Thompson 91.

"The Four Skillful Brothers" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is Aarne-Thompson type 653.

Ramsay Wood is the author of two sui generis modern novels which aim – via vernacular spiels within complex frame-story narratives – to popularize the pre-literate, oral story-listening drama of multicultural animal fables mimed and declaimed along the ancient Silk Road. His books blend The Jatakas Tales, The Panchatantra and the likely role of Alexander the Great's legacy in "bringing the Aesopian tradition to North India and Central Asia" via Hellenization in Central Asia and India. Wood's Kalila and Dimna – Selected Fables of Bidpai was published by Knopf in 1980 with an Introduction by Nobel laureate Doris Lessing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal</span> Indian fairy tale

The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal is a popular Indian folklore with a long history and many variants. The earliest record of the folklore was included in the Panchatantra, which dates the story between 200 BCE and 300 CE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karadi Tales</span> Indian childrens publishing house

Karadi Tales is an independent children's publishing house based in Chennai, India focusing primarily on picture books and audiobooks. It was started in 1996 with an intent to create a space for Indian culture in the world of children's publishing, by a group of writers, educators and musicians. Since its launch, Karadi Tales titles have been consistently one of the largest selling publications in India. Many titles have sold more than 100,000 copies and most titles have crossed 20,000 copies. The audiobooks are narrated by a roster of celebrities and set to classical Indian ragas which are performed by trained musicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Brahmin and the Mongoose</span> Indian folktale

The Brahmin and the Mongoose is a folktale from India, and "one of the world's most travelled tales". It describes the rash killing of a loyal animal, and thus warns against hasty action. The story underlies certain legends in the West, such as that of Llywelyn and his dog Gelert in Wales, or that of Saint Guinefort in France. It is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 178A.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. N. D. Haksar</span>

Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar is a well known translator of Sanskrit classics into English. Born in Gwalior, central India, he is a graduate of The Doon School, Allahabad University and Oxford University. He was a career diplomat, serving as Indian High Commissioner to Kenya and the Seychelles, Minister in the United States, Ambassador to Portugal and Yugoslavia, and he also served as Dean of India's Foreign Service Institute and President of the U.N. Environment Programme's Governing Council.

Margaret Read MacDonald is an American storyteller, folklorist, and award-winning children's book author. She has published more than 65 books, of stories and about storytelling, which have been translated into many languages. She has performed internationally as a storyteller, is considered a "master storyteller", and has been dubbed a "grand dame of storytelling". She focuses on creating "tellable" folktale renditions, which enable readers to share folktales with children easily. MacDonald has been a member of the board of the National Storytelling Network and president of the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khyrunnisa A.</span>

Khyrunnisa A. is an Indian author of children's fiction, speaker, academic and columnist who also writes for adults. She created the comic book character 'Butterfingers'. The character first appeared in the Indian children's magazine Tinkle. Thirteen-year-old Amar Kishen, aka Butterfingers, now features in the eponymous Butterfingers series of novels and short story collections published by Puffin, the children's imprint of Penguin Random House India.

Deepti Menon is an Indian author. She is the author of Arms and the Woman and Shadow in the Mirror. She was also the contributing author of Crossed and Knotted, which made it to the Limca Book of Records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinitha</span> Indian writer

Vinitha Ramchandani is an Indian author of over 25 books tailored for children and young adults, spanning genre fiction, non-fiction, and picture books. Notably, her book Sera Learns to Fly won the Best Children's Book of the Year award at the FICCI Publishing Awards in 2019, while Lost and Found in a Mumbai Koliwada received multiple award nominations in 2020. Also her children's picture-book Ammu and the Sparrows gained recognition by being listed on the Parag Honour List and receiving the prestigious Neev Literature Award in 2021. Four of her stories have been integrated into the curricula of educational boards such as CBSE and ICSE.

References

  1. "Real Reads 2015-16- realreads" (PDF).
  2. "More than just Pottermania– The Hindu". The Hindu .
  3. "Interesting, Well Produced Books Kindle Children's Interest Says Saraswathy, Mango Books– Indianmomsconnect".
  4. "Whispers from Under the Bed- Goodreads".
  5. "Panchatantra– Kittabworld".
  6. "Nandini Nayar Books– Goodbooks".
  7. "Stories ABOUT gods– The Hindu". The Hindu .
  8. "Vahana Review– booksandstrips".
  9. "Book award– The Hindu". The Hindu .