Imagine that you are writing to a reader who has not yet been born. Perhaps you’re writing to your own grandchild or great-grandchild. Or maybe you’re writing to someone whom you don’t know at all. What would you say? Here are a few of my favourites from this year’s Writers’ Club. There are many, many […]
Memory Challenge!
I sometimes happen upon random blogs and I loved this one, so I decided to do it myself! The idea is to try to answer these questions without sneakily checking online or peeking over your shoulder at the bookshelf behind you. I’m taking the challenge I got from The Book Blogger memory challenge and then […]
Writers’ Club 2018-19
The Writers’ Club at St. Mary’s School is now in its fourth year! We started so that we could commemorate the sesquicentennial year with a collection of work put together by the children, but then just carried on from there. Today, we discovered how we have stories within us, just waiting to be told. This […]
Kittu’s Very Mad Day
Packed with more characters than I could count, reading Kittu’s Terrible Horrible No Good Very Mad Day is a crazy experience. Kittu’s family is the most chaotic one in the world – and the description of the entire family ordering a meal made me chuckle because it is absolutely en pointe. I remember being embarrassed, nearly mortified, […]
A Library of Lemons
The cover of A Library of Lemons caught me with one line – ‘The bittersweet story of a family lost in books’. A family lost in books. Like mine? A Library of Lemons was nothing like anything I imagined. Young Calypso lives with just her father; her mother died of ovarian cancer when Calypso was just five. Half-remembered […]
The Bone Sparrow
‘I wish this book had never needed to be written. I wish that the circumstances that led me to write this story had never occurred.’ I close my eyes at the end of The Bone Sparrow, and I echo Zana Fraillon’s words. I wish she had never needed to write the book. What do we […]
When She Went Away
I was a little sceptical about reading a book called When She Went Away. A book with a name like that could well be a melodramatic romance novel, which really is not my type. I typically don’t even finish reading stories that are too melodramatic for me; enjoying them is a long way away. And I […]
The Not-a-Pig
I’m still chuckling over Mango and Bambang #1 – The Not-a-Pig. It was just such a crazy, sweet book! Another story about an unlikely friendship, The Not-a-Pig is about a girl called Mango and a tapir! And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never read a book about a tapir before. There is a huge traffic […]
The A-Z Djinn Detective Agency
Ashwin Kamath is determined to earn enough money to sponsor his own school trip. Unfortunately, his determination translates into one disastrous idea after another. On the surface, each idea seems perfectly harmless. When the idea turns into action, the madness begins. Things take a delightful turn when Ashwin finds a book on summoning a djinni. […]
Daddy Come Lately
Priya knows that her father is dead. She is a ‘post-humorous’ child, as she calls herself until her mother gently corrects her, saying that it is ‘posthumous’, not post-humorous – and that she isn’t posthumous anyway. Her father is alive, and has just found out that he has a daughter. Worse, he wants not only […]
A Wonderful Month
Every so often, I think about doing a monthly round-up of workshops I’ve conducted and books I’ve read. And then I think, maybe next month. But the month that went by was just so full of wonderful things that I want very much to share everything that happened and everything that’s coming up! Last month, I […]
Dear Mrs. Naidu
Dear Mrs. Naidu has been on my list of books to read for a long time now. I finally read it today, and it came at the perfect time. Sure, the book is important. It is an eye-opener. But to talk about just those things to the exclusion of all else is to take away […]
The Elephant Thief
The Elephant Thief was one of those books that I would have loved to read as a child, and thoroughly enjoyed as an adult. At the back of the book, there are three words that describe it – animal, adventure and thrilling. I think the first two sum up the book perfectly. I wouldn’t go as […]
Just Henry
Have you read Goodnight Mister Tom? If you haven’t, you must. I can’t quite believe that I never wrote about the book. It’s a classic, one that touched something deep inside me, the way only classics can. I remember the first time I read the book – I borrowed it from the library, and read and read […]
Meet the Monsters!
The huge, purple monster is on the loose! It has 12 arms, 12 legs, one eye, one horn, two mouths and 43 teeth, and it’s going to take over the town. It eats 12 people every day: it ate my neighbour and my children; it even destroyed a nearby building! It stinks to high heavens, […]
How Not to Disappear
Wow. What a wonderful book. It kept me reading and reading and reading. I had to wipe away tears more than once, and I kept shaking my head at the power the story had over me. For me, How Not to Disappear is not a Young Adult book, and I cannot understand how it is classified […]
The Lie Tree
The Lie Tree looked fascinating, but I wondered if it was my kind of book. Everyone who was quoted on the cover said it was ‘dark’ and compelling, and I cannot say that I am a fan of dark literature. I get scared too easily, and I don’t enjoy getting scared. I decided to borrow it […]
And then, there was Goa
I have never been a huge fan of Goa, especially as I’m not particularly fond of beaches. In addition, we went on a banana boat ride at Baga once, and I was disgusted by the amount of dirty seawater I ended up swallowing. Plus, New Year’s eve at Calangute eight years ago was a nightmare. […]
Au revoir, Bali!
There’s so much I could write about Bali, but pictures would work better to convey much of what we saw. Statues towered over junctions, gateways reached up to the sky. Art hid in little corners surrounded by every shade of green. We had only two proper days to explore Bali, so there was so much […]
A Balinese Home
It was only after the visit to the coffee plantation that our cycling tour actually began. There was supposed to be a quick stop at Kintamani to see the volcano, but our guide Nyoman learned that there was too much traffic en route, so we skipped that and went straight to the place where we […]