By Allison Musante, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR-PLAINSBORO In the children’s book “The Hog Prince,” Eldon believes he is under a spell that only true love’s kiss can break.
”He kisses everyone he sees in hopes of becoming a prince, but we, as the readers, know it’s a frog prince and of course he doesn’t transform,” says author Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. “His challenge is to accept that he’s a pig and to be happy with that.”
Though not the most idyllic fairy tale ending, Ms. Bardhan-Quallen often gives her readers a twist. Spoken through quirky talking animals, she conveys grounded messages for a generation of children growing up in an age of technology and ever-changing social issues.
The New Jersey native has just finished touring the four district elementary schools and recently gave a reading at the Princeton Marketfair Barnes and Noble.
”It was my first time in the school district and I had a lovely time,” she said. “Many of the kids who saw me at their schools came back for the reading, I’ve gotten so many letters, and it was just a wonderful community that’s very into literacy.”
”Unexpected and nontraditional” describe Ms. Bardhan-Quallen’s life and books in many aspects.
Writing children’s picture books was far from the career she envisioned as a PhD candidate in developmental neurobiology at the California Institute of Technology. Using her life with three small children as inspiration and her science background, Ms. Bardhan-Quallen has authored more than a dozen books since 2002 and has another dozen in the works.
”I’m glad I don’t live the life of a research scientist anymore,” she said.
”That’s more in line with how scientists think anyway and it’s a better attitude to bring into science education,” she said. “Kids should be taught how to think, not how to simply follow directions.”
That philosophy is a launching point for her numerous picture books.
”Many of my books deal with issues of finding your place in the world, how you fit in and being happy with yourself,” she said. “Those are issues I struggle with as an individual, as someone who was a minority growing up, and then later in life as a single mother of three biracial children.”
She said she gravitates toward using animal characters for their universal appeal.
”Kids are really smart and they don’t like being patronized,” she said. “When they read something academic in nature, oftentimes a publisher sets up a classroom with three Caucasian kids, two African American kids, one Asian child and a child in a wheelchair. In an effort to be politically correct, publishers create these artificial things and I don’t think kids respond to it because they feel they’re being hit over the head. But you can have a duck, a chicken and a pig working together, without being heavy-handed.”
As a parent, Ms. Bardhan-Quallen said she believes picture books, though seemingly antiquated, will always have a niche in society despite educational technology such as LeapFrog toys, E-readers and Baby Einstein DVDs.
Books also create entry points for addressing complex and uncomfortable issues.
”Fifty years ago, there never would’ve been ‘King and King,’ a book dealing with gay parents, or books showing multi-racial families,” she said. “Things change, so we can’t rely on older books even as recent as 10 years ago. We have kids growing up in a post-September 11 world and they need books to help them process those issues, like terrorism.”
In July, Ms. Bardhan-Quallen’s newest, “Chicks Run Wild,” will take on an unconventional perspective on parenting. It follows the classic parents’ hair-pulling situation of energetic children at bedtime, but it concludes with finding a happy middle ground.
”Everyone has been the kid who wants to stay up or the parent who wants them to sleep,” she said. “Kids need parents to create rules and enforce them, but they also need parents who are their accomplices in breaking those rules. As a non-traditional family, I find that being flexible is the best way I can be a good mother, and the best parents are the ones who understand it’s not written in stone.”

