Tara Books has nestled into the heart of Chennai. This little children’s designing house continues to have a multifarious impact 25 years after it first began. From playing with pictures and experimenting with the structural forms of its books, to taking care of their prolific artisans, Tara does it all.

“Our initial vision hasn’t changed much, but the way it manifests itself now is richer. There are more directions added to our basic vision, although that is a result of the large number of people we have gained over the years,” says Gita Wolf, co-founder of Tara Books.

Hitting the 25-year mark, Tara Books has some staunch plans for the year. Expanding their international relations, Gita and co-founder V Geetha travelled to Australia early in 2018 and spent a month with remote artisan communities of the country. Now, they are working with an Australian designer on three to four books, with the support of Australia Council of Arts. This partnership, called Australian Focus, will seek to depict local, indigenous Australian art.

It was designer Rathna Ramanathan, a faculty at Royal College of Art in London, who had earlier revolutionised Tara’s work. “We mainly produce books anchored in the Indian context, along with indigenous art traditions. We’re constantly looking at popular art and picture books for adults. We’re also looking at pedagogy — the social concerns with art,” says V Geetha.

Apart from this, Tara has very recently acquired a Classic 1965 Heidelberg Letterpress — a perfect, gleaming embodiment of silver — for their 25th anniversary. They also plan to create personal libraries for teachers in Government and Government-aided schools around the city, providing them with their picture books.

“The combination of aesthetics and politics has been crucial to our work; politics in the sense of the power relations of anything we deal with — who’s telling the story, their background, their names…,” says Wolf.

Another one of its projects this year is the New Books through Old, through which Tara wishes to depict everyday people to children. “We are such a class-and-caste society. But children should be told that daily labourers are people just like us, worthy of respect, and not in a ‘sloganistic’ way but in a general manner. Writing about them gives them agency and dignity,” says V Geetha. It is here that Tara Books’ international books make themselves heard. “In Japan, the hand workers are immensely respected. The working community there is dignified. It is a very important thing to learn from the Japanese,” says Wolf.

Building their own place six years ago, the duo consolidated their process, making work and interaction more effective. They hold regular workshops for children and adults, which Geetha says ‘makes them feel a more self-conscious connection with the process’. Interestingly, many of their books are edited and some altogether changed after the interactive workshops. “It is very important to us how children respond to the books,” says Wolf.

Visuals are a fundamental part of Tara Books, which has made this format their ‘forte’. The team also experiments a lot with structural elements of the book: some of them resembling the waterfall cards, some opening up like a map and some spreading like a periphery all around you.

Over the last few years, Tara Books has also taken small steps in the domain of textile art. “The physical book will never die!” exclaims Wolf.

All said and done, the duo derives its energy from the little children who read their books. “We have a book, called Tiger on a Tree, which one kid really liked. So whenever his mother would come and visit the store with him, he’d urge her to buy a copy for him. He did not understand that they need not purchase it every time he comes to the store,” says V Geetha, smiling fondly.