A. Khyrunnisa is ready to regale her readers with yet another book, Of Course It’s Butterfingers!'--a collection of 13 short stories starting with a 75- page novella with an entertaining girls v boys cricket match at the core.
Her sixth from the successful Butterfingers series, the book will be released by Shashi Tharoor MP at Senate Hall here on Sunday. All her previous books have been launched by Tharoor.
“Writing well is a challenge. There’s a lot of hard work behind it,” says Khyrunnisa, prize-winning author of children’s fiction, speaker, academic and a columnist, who created the iconic popular comic book character ‘Butterfingers.’
The series revolves round the hilarious escapades of Amar Kishen,13, a Class VIII student of the fictitious Green Park Higher Secondary School. Amar’s antics earned him the nickname Butterfingers.
The other stories in the latest book include Amar’s escapades as he messes around with a mummy, gets locked out, battles with chickenpox and celebrates World Environment Day in a delightful style.
Khyrunnisa says she does not compare her writing style and tries to maintain the standards she has set for herself in every book and story she writes. “And of course, I try to meet the standards that readers have now set for me,” she adds.
Khyrunnisa is ‘India’s Enid Blyton’ and she leaves her fans spellbound with the adventures of Amar. “If someone out there would like to make an animated version of the Butterfingers series, I would be only too happy, provided it’s well made,” she says.
Her books deal with relatable incidents and she weaves out gripping and unpredictable plots with a lot of humour.
“Everyone is a Butterfingers with one’s share of comic troubles. I am pleased with the compliment people have given me saying that I capture the joys around us,” says Khyrunnisa whose favourite author is P. G. Wodehouse.
“I try to look at the bright side of life and find humour in the most mundane situations. I like people smile spontaneously when I meet them,” she says with her radiant smile.
She is not a disciplined writer who puts in her daily quota of words, she says. She does most of her writing mentally, carrying the plot in her head. Once she has worked it out, she writes, sometimes at a stretch, sometimes in fits and starts. Once the plot begins to take a definite shape, she finishes the book in three months.
Khyrunnisa, who is at present reading Mohammed Hamid’s Red Birds, has a piece of advice to the writers of children's book: “Try to look at the world from a child’s point of view. Never underestimate kids and never talk down to them.” Some of her writings in a popular column in a leading English newspaper will be brought out as a book by Westland Amazon in the first half of 2019. Khyrunnisa resides in Thiruvananthapuram with her husband P. Vijaya Kumar, a former professor of English and the grandson of Mahakavi Kumaran Asan.
