A brand-new hOle book for a brand-new edition of my book club! Left-Out Paru is a book that struck a chord with me because even though I'm not left-handed, I've thought about lots of things designed for right-handed people. Scissors. Cameras. Desks. Here's what we'll do as we read this book by Bijal Vachharajani and Rajiv Eipe (two left-handed creators) at my book club next month! Being Left-Handed What words and phrases do we know that favour right-handed people? We'll do a vocabulary quiz to find out! Some words come from languages other than English; it'll be fun to explore a range of languages, including our mother tongues! Using Our Non-Dominant Hand A lot of left-handers can do a surprising number of things with their right hands! Let's see how quickly we can write, draw and cut with our non-dominant … [Read more...]
Left-Out Paru
Why is the word left associated with so many negative things? Gauche in French, sinistra in Italian, and of course, phrases in English like being left out, having two left feet … I could go on and on because there are just so many examples—dextrous, adroit, being right are all corollaries of the same thing.And this brings me to Left-Out Paru, written by Bijal Vachharajani and illustrated by Rajiv Eipe. The protagonist of the story, Paru, is left-handed, and she is bullied for it, most particularly by her bench mate Nina. Other classmates soon join in the bullying, calling Paru names like 'Scrammy Sinistral' (I didn’t know the word sinistral, by the way, and I was happy to learn it!). Paru gets angrier and angrier, until one day, she decides to put the argument to rest with an arm-wrestling match—left-handed Paru vs right-handed Nina.Left-Out Paru addresses so many ideas I … [Read more...]