Dancing in Thatha's Footsteps tells the story of Varun who falls in love with bharatanatyam, a classical dance form from India, after tagging along to his sister's dance class one day. The only thing is, boys don't dance, or so he is told by everyone around him. Disheartened, he stops dancing but his fascination with bharatanatyam persists until one day his grandfather, his thatha, surprises Varun and the other students, proving that dance is indeed for everyone.
We are always eager to submit the titles we champion for book awards with the hope that they will be well received. We were delighted when this book won its first award, the 2022 South Asia Book Award. It was a very fitting award for this beautiful story.
Just as Thatha surprised the dance class in the story, we were surprised by a second book award from a very unexpected place: the Gerontological Society of America. As it turns out,
In publishing you are always learning, and an award coming from a community that hadn't crossed our minds as an audience for this book, has pushed us to expand the lens through which we view our catalog and our forthcoming titles.
Extending the heartiest congratulations to the author and illustrator team behind this empowering story, Srividhya Venkat and Kavita Ramachandran, and our warmest thank-you to the Gerontological Society of America and the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE) for this meaningful recognition. We are so proud of this book and the example it sets for our young and young-at-heart readers.