A little book that says it all—from beautiful descriptions of Nature’s bounty, and the history of an ancient nation and its civilization—to memories, old and precious. It is only the talented Ruskin Bond who can do it.
What picture comes to your mind when you think of a scientist? Well, when children are presented with this question and asked to draw a scientist at work, more often than not, they draw an elderly or middle-aged man wearing a lab coat and spectacles, mixing chemicals in fancy glassware. Alarmingly, the proportion of children who hold such a stereotypical mental image of a scientist seems quite large: 86.5% in a study done in 1998[1] and 78% in a more recent study[2]!
Whenever I imagine about war, images of the aftermath of war come to my mind. Everything is scattered around. I can see only those people and things that have somehow escaped from the bombings. I can see the ominous silence spread out after the heart-rending blasts. I can see the school which has nothing left now. I can see the children who had come to school with dreams in their eyes, with the belief that everything will be alright if they study.
B.R. Ambedkar: A Life in Books, is a very imaginative and accessible introduction to one of the tallest leaders India has ever had. The book, without being pedantic, provides a young reader a bird’s eye view of life and times of Babasaheb. It does a fabulous job of introducing young minds to difficult themes such as caste-based discrimination, equity and justice.
The Puffin Book of 100 Extraordinary Indians, 100 inspiring stories of outstanding achievements, is a compilation of stories of different Indians across diverse fields from various eras.Arranged alphabetically, and seemingly written by different authors (no author has been credited), the book feels random.
A collection of stories with a mythological backdrop to it has the potential to attract readers from diverse age groups, especially those who have had a taste of such stories in their childhood. The stories are written in an interactive manner and the connectedness between each of them takes the reader back and forth, weaving into a universe of the epic Mahabharata and sometimes drawing from the Ramayana as well.