Eco-Heroes in the Making: Author Shweta Taneja's Message in 'KungFu Aunty Vs Garbage Monsters'.
What sets the story apart is the way it blends environmentalism, the rebellious spirit of punk culture, and the boundless imagination of science fiction. The book brilliantly explores urgent themes such as climate change, sustainability, and humanity's profound impact on our planet. However, it does so with a delightful twist of humor and quirkiness that I think is bound to resonate with young readers
Shweta, your book addresses environmental and pollution issues and explores a what if scenario of a world overrun by garbage and devastated by pollution. How important is it for children's literature to tackle such heavy topics? And what message or questions do you hope to explore or introduce to young readers through your book?
Shweta Taneja
@shwetawrites · 3:06
And it's a book that's filled with hope for our future and also responsibility to reach that hopeful future. To answer your question, and I wanted to introduce the book a little bit to our listeners as well. Young readers, I feel, are the future generation, the one who will handle the climate challenges that we are literally giving it to them, right? They have no choice
Shweta Taneja
@shwetawrites · 4:54
So I have just created them as characters, as climate monsters who are standing before my protagonist because it's a book for young readers and added them into my imagined world. But however, I would like to say that world building, I would like to stress that world building is an important aspect of writing any genre fiction. In the past I wrote a book, a series of tantric books called Anantya Tantris series and I spent a year researching on dark arts and tantrism in India
As a writer myself, I can see how writing dialogue for a book like Kung Fu Aunty can be quite tricky, given the theme and the setting where you need to strike a balance between reality and imagination. How do you create dialogues that resonate with young readers while still allowing room for creativity and fantastical elements?
Shweta Taneja
@shwetawrites · 4:37
But yeah, to answer your question, you have to know these characters really well. And dialogues are but a means to bring them out on the page and to move the action forward, to make them come alive. I mean, our speech is one of the most important aspects of us as human beings and that's how I look at all my characters. Thank you
Also, Shweta, as I was reading up about your body of work, I noted that your book, Krishna, Defender of Dharma, is actually a graphic novel. And I kind of got curious. How does the storytelling process differ when working on a graphic novel compared to traditional prose? And do you have a preference for one over the other?
Shweta Taneja
@shwetawrites · 3:48
That is such a good question. Thank you for asking that. Krishna, Defender of Dharma, was my first graphic novel, my first novel book in a way that was ever published. It was a graphic novel. It was a retelling of Krishna, who is a mythological superhero of Hindu mythology. It was a collection of his stories, which I had researched in depth for a few months. As a writer of comics, or graphic novels, if you will
I think this brings me to my final question for you, Shweta, and I'd like to thank you for taking the time out and being a part of this conversation. It's been fascinating getting to know your creative process, and I do hope to have your voice in the Swell community in more such conversations around your work and your writing. So thank you. Finally, can you give us a sneak peek into any upcoming projects or books that your readers can look forward to?
Shweta Taneja
@shwetawrites · 0:43
Thanks so much for asking this Ramya. I have an essay about an ecologist which has just released on women ecologists of India, and that's just released. So I'm doing promotions for it for the rest of this year. And then I'm also working on a space opera science fiction for adults, a project that's kind of chugging along right now. It's in its second draft, so hopefully I will be able to polish it and submit it to my editor sometime next year