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What makes a Duckbill?

Duckbill is a publishing house, run by Sayoni Basu and Anushka Ravishankar. We have been publishing books for children and young adults, since October 2012. Our books are much loved by children, parents, libraries and schools. And by random people who come across them.

Many of our books have won several national and international awards. And we were happy to have been shortlisted for the London Book Fair International Excellence Awards in 2015.

We look forward to building a publishing list which will be comparable to the finest children's and young adult literature in the world. Our list contains an eclectic mix of books for readers ranging from six-year-olds to young adults.

The duckbilled platypus is truly a remarkable creature.

The platypus confounded the scientific community in the early nineteenth century, and almost single-web-footedly overturned the prevailing classification of animals. Its wild mix of physical traits and behaviours didn't fit in anywhere. Charles Darwin labelled it a prime example of a 'living fossil' that had managed to find an unoccupied ecological niche and live, relatively undisturbed, while other creatures crawled towards extinction.

We find this egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal fascinating. We hope our books will be interesting and thought-provoking, but we would also like them to be curious, whimsical and joyful, just like the name Duckbill! And we hope to make an unoccupied bibliographical niche for ourselves.

The Duckbill Workshops are writing workshops that we intend to conduct several times a year, in different cities in India, for those who are interested in writing for children. To know more about the workshops, and read some of the writing that the participants produced during them, click here.

The Duckbill Blog is where we write about our books, events and workshops; we also talk of reading, children, platypuses, aliens, cabbages and kings.

So we are a hodge-podge of things, just like the duckbilled platypus. And like our namesake, we hope to be anomalous and independent.

But we will not lay eggs.

For a downloadable catalogue of Duckbill books, please click here. (PDF file)

Anushka has written more than thirty books for children, many of which have been published internationally and several of which have won international awards. She has worked in publishing, at Tara Books and most recently at Scholastic India as the publishing director. She has participated variously as author, speaker and resource person, in many national and international publishing events and conferences, including Les Belles Etrangeres in France, the Children's Book Tour in the UK, AFCC Singapore and Jumpstart and Bookaroo in India. She is the Indian coordinator of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Sayoni was in charge of the children's list at Puffin India, before she joined Scholastic India as publishing director, a position she held for several years. Most recently, she worked at ACK Media as the group publisher. She has participated as speaker and resource person in national and international publishing events, like AFCC Singapore, Bookaroo, JLF, among others, and has taught at various publishing courses in India.