Often, when children pose questions that adults don’t have answers to, they avoid the questions by saying things like, ‘God only will have the answer to this’, and when asked, ‘Who is God? Who should we go to, to ask this?’, children are often pointed to an idol or an image of God. Then, the…
A good friend, when he saw this book fresh on the shelves, immediately thought of me and how relevant it would be for our joint work in critical science and environment education. As someone who has always been fascinated by the living world, whose bucket list has been full of to-dos like scuba diving to…
In another of his metaphorical descriptions of trauma, Hans Sande takes up the topic of puberty and growth. The Norwegian storyteller symbolizes the age of adolescence and the infinite changes that one goes through. As the story begins, a child falls sick after swallowing plums. He gradually believes that a tree is growing from within…
The titular story in the collection, ‘The Tree of Stories’ serves as a visual metaphor brought to life. The tree embodies how stories grow from their roots, evolving into something new while still carrying the essence of their origins. It also manages to suggest an important idea that stories and narratives can be questioned.
When we see what the world is going through right now and what kids are up against, real life is scarier than fiction. Kids cannot choose their environment or the people in it. They do not always have the power and resources to seek out solutions, but they have an appetite, and a real need…
The second important point raised in the introduction is the death of languages. Venkatesh notes that around 6,000-7,000 languages in the world are on the verge of extinction. This is alarming because the disappearance of a language is not just the loss of words, but the end of an entire knowledge tradition of the speakers’ community.