Saisudha Acharya: “Discipline in history is not as easy as people make it out to be.”

Saisudha Acharya Dump historyThe book series D was created while she was teaching at the alternative school her son attended. “We were not restricted to textbooks, so it allowed me to try to get them to read other things,” says the Bengaluru-based author and teacher, who has released his second book in the series. Deconstructing History: The Why, When and What of Medieval India (Duckbill), released earlier this year.

I soon discovered that these children grew up reading Geronimo Stilton and Diary of a Wimpy KidAvoid things that don’t have many pictures or aren’t funny. “While I was trying to get them to read the things I grew up reading, that proved to be a challenge because the culture of reading had changed,” says Saisoda, who fell in love with history in high school, discovering historical fiction and nonfiction along the way. “History was something that started as a side interest, which I started teaching in 2016.”