Book Talk-
Nita Berry
Whispers In The Classroom, Voices On The Field: Stories of School, Friends and Life by by Richa Jha. Illustrated by Priya Kuriyan Wisdom Tree, New Delhi, 2012, 360 pp., 345.00
May 2017, volume 41, No 5

Here’s a real bonanza of stories! That’s what strikes one at first glance. Thirty-one short stories by well-known children’s authors … stories about school life-urban and rural, stories about dating and falling in love, futuristic stories that take one back to the crude past—that is, the present, strange stories about ghosts in boarding schools and school reunions, stories about stories that help make friends … it’s a lavish spread!

Our earlier vacuum in literature for the sensitive adolescent years that oscillate between childhood and adulthood—and are often beset with physical, mental and social worries, is now being fast filled up with specific teenage stories like these. Needless to say, books dealing with this stage of life can be both guide and friend.

Bindi wants to go to school, but ‘what would people say?’ Subhadra Sen Gupta’s eye opening story, ‘A Disobedient Girl’ is set in nineteenth century Bengal when girls began schooling despite great family opposition. Look at these vintage gems: ‘She’ll be ten soon, she is getting too old for marriage.’ Or ‘Educated girls gain bad karma when they leave their homes to go to school. And then that mysterious karma makes them widows because it takes the lives of their husbands.’ But times do change and Bindi gets her way!

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