Guest Post & Giveaway: Varsha Bajaj on Reading Across Borders & Cultures

Varsha (taller girl) with her mother and sister.By Varsha Bajaj
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

I grew up reading cross culturally because I didn’t have a choice. In the late '60s and '70s, British and American authors wrote the children’s literature available in India.

While I had not seen anyone with red hair like Anne Shirley in Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908), I understood her desire to please Marilla Cuthbert; it was the same as my desire to please my mother.

I...