A child at the exhibition on Sunday. (Bhola Prasad)

Jamshedpur, March 7: Next time your child demands an expensive toy, don’t head for the store. Go to the library instead.

From next week, Adityapur will be home to Kids Gurukul, a library of educational toys. According to Meenal Jain of Kids Gurukul, the library would be the first of its kind in the eastern region. Another 25 outlets will follow at Calcutta, Patna, Raipur and Bhubaneswar in the next six months.

The library, meant for children in the age group of 2 to 10 years, today exhibited some of its toys at the Gujarati Sanatan Samaj in Bistupur. The exhibition, needless to say, drew a large number of children.

“The library will be a boon for those parents who cannot afford to buy expensive toys for their children. We have something for every child at our library — be it hand and eye coordination games for the very young or CD-ROMs for the new age kid who prefers to learn and play on his or her personal computer,” said Jain.

The library offers three membership plans — silver, gold and platinum. Parents can join the library by paying a monthly subscription of Rs 250 for the silver plan, Rs 350 for gold and Rs 600 for the platinum plan and rent educational toys, books and VCDs worth up to Rs 6,000 every month.

The toys available at the library are priced between Rs 50 and Rs 8,000. On offer is a wide array of wooden toys, puzzles, board games, constructive games, riders, soft toys, battery operated musical toys and many more. For parents who want to cultivate the habit of reading among their children, the library boasts a collection of pre-school books, picture dictionaries, story books and comics. The CD-ROMs and VCD range include pre-primary and educational titles, moral stories, mythological stories, animated movies and computer games.

The library is a one-stop destination for children as Kids Gurukul has a tie-up with leading global brands like Fisher Price, Funskool, Dr Woods, Skillofun, Playgro and Matashi. “It’s good that Jamshedpur can now boast of a toy library. We no longer will need to invest in expensive learning aids. Our children can get the best of international quality merchandise under one roof, which may not be available at local stores,” said Anumeha Choudhary, a parent, who had come to visit the exhibition at Gujarati Sanatan Samaj.