Three decades later

There is pure delight in the oral tradition of storytelling. Children gather around a parent, grandparent, aunt or teacher, eager and attentive, hanging onto every word until the main characters 'lived happily ever after'. In the Subcontinent, though the oral tradition has long been a staple as in many other places around the world, children's literature in the book form has developed only recently.

Since before Partition, the famous Urdu weekly magazine Phool has been published from Lahore, marking a significant and long-lasting contribution to children's literature. Other Lahore publications, and Khilona from Delhi, likewise offered critical platforms for a nascent Southasian children's fiction in those early years. After the birth of Pakistan in 1947, Hakeem Saeed of Hamdard Laboratories started to publish, for children, the famous monthly magazine Hamdard Naunehal, the first issue coming out in 1953. The Paramount Publishing Enterprise, founded in 1948, is worth mentioning as one of the largest wholesale and retail distributors-cum-publishers. But undoubtedly one of the grand old publishing houses in this regard is Ferozsons, founded by Maulvi Feroz-ud-Din in Lahore in 1894 not only as a business venture but also to spread literacy among the masses. Given this aim, one of the publisher's first projects was the publishing of children's books, with the idea of educating the Muslim children of India. Like Hamdard Naunehal, Ferozsons's monthly Taleem-O-Tarbiat became a staple source of entertainment for many children, both before and after Partition. Beyond periodicals, however, books specifically for children have come of age in Pakistan only in the past three decades.