Tiny tales of imagination

At an age when girls are busy making new hairstyles for their Barbie dolls or concocting an imaginative delicacy with their miniature kitchen set, this little girl prefers to sit by her study and pen down her thoughts with the conviction that a reader of any age would be transported into a land of magic and fantasy as they read through her stories.

Tanya is ready with her second book and this time her story is about the adventures of a little girl named Mia. When Mia's father gets a transfer to a far away island, Mia has to leave her city and her friends and enter a world of adventure. The story takes a thrilling turn when Mia finds herself stranded alone on the scary island and decides to do whatever it takes to find her way back to her parents.

"My grandma and grandpa are authors. They have a huge library of many books from different authors as well. I hope someday they will have a whole shelf of my books in their library too," says Chatterjee. She derives inspiration from Ronald Dahl, O Henry, Enid Blyton and many others. "I write whenever I get time, be it weekends, or when I am on holidays or even at times when an idea pops into my head and I need to jot it down right away.

But there have been many times when I had an idea for a story but due to my school work I could not put it down on paper and then forgot what the idea was," adds Chhatterjee, who finds time for her school work, play and to concentrate on her writing skills. The Pune girl shifted to Plano in Texas, USA with her family in 2010, and she looks forward to coming back to the city to visit her grandparents during her vacations. She has already started work on her next project, which is tentatively a compilation of fictional short stories.