Dark fantasy and aliens... pandemic gives birth to student authors

From amysterious town holding a dark secret to a storm- fighting princess, many students wrote their first books during the stay- at- home period following Covid- 19 last year. Faisal Masudi, Senior Reporter, finds out what got their creative juices flowi

‘ Programming is not difficult’ Amritesh Banerjee,

Grade 8 student at GEMS Cambridge International School

Making computer programming easy to learn was Amritesh’s goal behind his first book, Introduction to Python Programming. “I used to think of programming as a very difficult subject, but aftermy dad encouraged me to study it, it completely changed my perspective” Amritesh said.

He started taking some courses from Microsoft online and “was amazed at how easy programming was”. The book is published by Kindle “I had never written a book inmy life before, so putting down this much content on paper was quite a notable experience,” he said.

‘ Imagination is truly powerful’ Amrita Kripa Minimenon,

Grade 7 student at GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai,

Amrita had been yearning to write a book for a long time but just couldn’t find enough time. But as Amrita “undeniably had a lot of time this year onmy hands” because of school closure due to the pandemic, she grabbed the chance to become a self- published novelist from home.

Her book Enigmatic Serowood is about a group of friends accidentally meeting up again after many years in their hometown, where a person has mysteriously disappeared. Herwork was inspired by the idea of “anonymity” and her love for plots unfolding “a continued and repetitive conflict, but instead of one antagonist, a teamof antagonists have carried it out”.

Amrita has written numerous poems and is now writing a book about “travel and its inevitable emotions”. She said: “This experience of writing books has taught me that the extent of our imagination is truly powerful. We can truly imagine miraculous things and it doesn’t matter if it’s close to reality or not, as long as it satisfies you.”

‘ I like kindness’ Keara Gajria,

Grade 4 student at GEMS Founders School— Dubai Keara wanted to combine two goals into one— encourage kindness and write her first book ( preferably with magic in it the plot). Her 40- pager Kindness and Magic: In the Winter Village sees Crystle, a kind- hearted princess, face a “frightening hailstorm” that has come to threaten her kingdom and her friends.

“I like magic, I like kindness, and I like winter and snow. So I decided to combine them and make a story. I enjoyed creating the characters and [ guide someone to produce] the illustrations frommy imagination. I handwrote the story on paper first, every day for an hour or two, and then I typed it out. I had my dedicated desk forworking onmy book,” said Keara, whose mother got in touch with a publisher to get the book published.

Kara likes to read and write, and enjoys arts and crafts. She took three months to finish her first book.