Education

Hippocampus Children’s Library

He’s purple, he’s got a huge toothy grin, and he’s gets children of all ages to fall in love with books. He is Hoo, the friendly mascot of the Hippocampus Children’s company.

The Hippocampus Children’s company, a library for children between the ages of 0-14, has started a revolution for developing good reading habits among children. Hippocampus is a child friendly library, or an educational center that caters to the reading needs of young children. The center collaborates with various experience centers, schools, NGO’s, and corporates. Hippocampus has three centers in Koramangala, Shnkarapuram and one in Chennai. The center also works with fifty government schools, community centers, Montessori and mainstream schools in Bangalore city. In addition, the center also organizes children- centric events.

Speaking to Umesh Malhotra, who strated Hippocampus along with his wife Vimla Malhotra who said, “We were in the US till 1999, and my son was exposed to public libraries in the US. We felt that India needed something like this. Thus, Hippocampus was born and I can quite confidently say that we have started a revolution to children’s library”. He added that franchising the center would not be an option, because bigger and better is not the answer to every question.


The Kormangala center has over 11,000 books, and the other centers would have around 15, 000 books. The shelves in the center are divided according to the convenience of the children. The lower shelves consist of books for children who belong to the lower age group, and the uppers shelves are filled with books for the older kids. The library has about 2500 members. The center also has a play area, a screening room, a computer room, and an external sand pit cum play area. The smaller children are provided with table top puzzles, and learning skill improving games. The children are also taken for outdoor activities every once in a while, events like Halloween parties, Diwali, and Ganesh Chaturti.



“The kids love it here” said Syama Selvan, the librarian at the Kormangala center. “We have a science club, a cooking club, a photography workshop, and a theatre among other activities. Most of these activities are paid for, but the kids love it none the less. The sand put, the frog shaped and pig shaped benches are a huge hit among the kids. The AV room and the computers are restricted use of one hour or one movie and there is always some one watching over the kids.”

Various mentors come in to assist the children on activities, but mostly it’s the reading that the center encourages. The center has books of various authors including Anthony Horowitz, Ogden Nash, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle among various other illustrious writers. There are various series in the library that keeps children hooked on to the reading habit.

Malhotra added, “we hope that in the next few years, we will be making reading available to more states in India. Helping more schools run their libraries, we are starting a large full fledged home library for children and a greater library movement in to public”.

Tags: Koramangala, Hippocampus, children’s reading library