California dreaming: Stuck indoors due to the wildfire, can the magic of children's books rescue adults?

Six years ago, I lived in a heritage house near downtown Sunnyvale. The houses in that neighbourhood had been built in 48 hours each, around the time of World War II. My neighbour Joel - who had lived there since decades, when the area was more fruit orchards and less Silicon Valley - had informed me. At that time, I spent my weekends writing for and working with children. One afternoon while he handed us sweet, juicy plums from his tree over the wooden fence separating our backyards, I couldn't help asking him if he read. "Only children's books," he said.

He was touching 70. His second wife, who was named Christina for being born on Christmas, had just arrived from China and he had introduced her to children's books to help her learn English.

Today, as the smoke from the most destructive wildfires in California's history renders our air quality the worst in the world, worse than India and China, and the ominous weather rules over our lives, I am reminded of Joel.


Some school districts and universities are shut. Meanwhile children at our school have not stepped out for recess for days. Parks are empty with a ghost town effect. The classic blue skies have turned into a ghastly grey. The weather app on my phone has been stuck at "Haze" for days, making me wonder if I have time-travelled to winters in Delhi. Gas masks are handed out. But using them implies that we will be outdoors and so we are encouraged to stay indoors instead.

My number one reason for living in California - the luxurious combination of clean air and sunshine - now sounds like an excuse.

However, my son's only reason for being devastated is that he cannot step out of the after-school care he attends on campus to work on a project he has been toiling at for a month. The Lizard Club, which he is the founder and one of the only three members of, has been working hard building a house for lizards out of leaves, twigs, lego pieces, trinkets like ketchup containers filled with water for them to drink out of, etc. And now, he cannot finish it thereby rendering invisible lizards homeless.

Besides this mighty situation, it is very hard to completely contain children, especially small children, indoors that too, for days. To burn off the excess energy that kids have (and delay the clouds of depression) we dance, do kid's yoga and jump indoors with the furniture transformed into an obstacle course. But the truth is, that nothing is rescuing us more than children's books.

Thanks to Mary Pope Osborne's 'The Magic Tree' series, my six-year-old has finally "met" the type of Indian monkeys (langoors) his mother was forced to have as neighbours in boarding school. More importantly, he is now learning life lessons I never could manage to teach him, courtesy of a mysterious Ninja master Osborne has made up. Lessons like - "Use Nature. Be Nature. Follow Nature."

I return to my beloved book 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak, which had taught me the word, rumpus - a word that I had found and continue to find rather cute. I lose myself in the beautiful illustrations, the monsters or wild things that are more adorable than ferocious, and remember that like the protagonist Max we too, can always sail into the private worlds where our own wild things are and party with them until it is safe to return home.

And then, to another beloved book that my boarding school friend who now lives in L.A. had introduced me to, pulling me out of the world of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Enid Blyton. 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a poetic classic which reminds us to see the world with the heart, only the heart.

It isn't just the brevity or the pace of children's books, there is a simplicity, a purity, an innocence in them. Sure grownup books have their own aesthetic. But the essence of children's books is the essence of who we all are, of joy, of a place where everything is magical and nothing is ordinary.

When Poubloo and I look out of our window, cozy with Mozart and hot cocoa, our little hill of children's books and blankets, at the apocalyptic weather outside, I realise that as long as the world has dragons addicted to tacos or dinosaurs who need to learn their manners, we know we are safe.

- The author is a San Francisco-based writer, journalist, vegan cook, Reiki master and teacher and meditation coach. She is the co-author of 'Nawazuddin Siddiqui: An Ordinary Life' and a former foreign correspondent with The Economic Times. She can be reached on Twitter @ReadRituparna.