Vatsala Kaul Banerjee started working with children and writing for children at Target, the iconic children’s magazine, published through the 1980s to the 90s by the India Today Group. She then became editor of the teen magazine, Teens Today, after which she worked as commissioning editor with Puffin (Penguin India), and editor of a parenting magazine, Child, before joining Hachette India, the Indian arm of Hachette UK, in 2009. She is now Publishing Director, Children’s & Reference Books, at Hachette India.
Vatsala’s publishing philosophy is to approach children’s books across all categories – fiction, non-fiction and reference – with imagination and creativity, and to bring out books that are original, well written, wonderfully illustrated, and produced with care and quality. She feels that it is important for children’s books to not be prescriptive and that it is most important that children should enjoy and love the books they read. She believes that quality and commercial robustness are the two sides of the same coin: books must be read by as many readers as possible to make their place and acclaimed by the readers themselves.