Ammini Against the Storm is a reflection of the world we live in, a world where the urban rich are immune to the raging storms that destroy the lives of the poor. Ammini’s parents work hard to send her to a private school so that she can rise above her circumstances and be something other than a farmer. Even as we learn about Ammini's family and their ambitions, we hear the wryness of the narrative voice. This is a system where the farmers, without whom we cannot survive, are on the bottom rung of the ladder, and the only way for them to survive is to climb. Through Ammini, we experience both anger and vulnerability. When everyone grows paddy, Ammini’s father gets a fraction of the expected price for his crop. Why shouldn’t he move to cash crops like everyone else? Why should he and the other farmers, rather than the rich elite, be responsible for maintaining the … [Read more...]
A Big Splash
I read the entire PARI series a few months ago, and I've been mulling over them ever since. I'm not usually a big fan of nonfiction, and I haven't yet worked with it at my online reading programme, but A Big Splash stayed with me.And then, there were stray conversations that made me think of the book over and over again. A child at my writing programme told me how much she liked it. Earlier this month, we worked with Flyaway Boy by Jane de Suza, and during one of our activities, a label many of the children gave themselves was 'sports-lover'. A sportsy book? Sure! I've done just Cricket for the Crocodile before, and it's time to introduce something else!A Big Splash is a quick read, and that makes it the ideal first book for any batch of my reading programme. It's a tale of grit and introduces so many big themes that I can't wait to work with … [Read more...]
No Nonsense Nandhini
What do you do when circumstances force you to let go of your dream? You create another dream. And another. And another. Hold on to your sense of humour and don't give up.At least, that's Nandhini's way.No Nonsense Nandhini, shortlisted for the Neev Book Award for Junior Readers 2021, is a book about resilience, about never glossing over the fact that life is hard, and about having the power and flexibility to change routes when life throws obstacles in your path.Nandhini is a powerhouse of energy and determination, plus she is full of fun and mischief. As a child, she dreams of being a Collector. She is a good student and studies hard at school, but a week before her board exams, she falls off a guava tree and injures herself so badly that she has to skip her exams. That's just the first of many things that go wrong. When she appears for her exams the following year, she is … [Read more...]
A Big Splash
Dhivya loves swimming.But when her brother nearly drowns, she isn't allowed to swim in the lake anymore.Dhivya enjoys playing cricket with her friends.But they don't seem to want to play with her anymore.Now what?A Big Splash is a sensitively told story about a thirteen-year-old who blossoms not just into a champion swimmer, but into a sensitive human being. I love flawed protagonists, and Dhivya is exactly that - driven and passionate, but rather careless when it comes to letting her temper fly.Like all the other books in the PARI series, A Big Splash begins in a small village. The village tank is the only place where Dhivya is permitted to swim, and so, naturally, she has little to do with the world of competitive swimming. When she finds out about a district competition, however, she jumps at the opportunity. Swimming is everything to her, and here's her chance to … [Read more...]
No Ticket, Will Travel
For ever so long, I didn't even know what the general compartment of a train was. When I saw people lining on station platforms, I assumed that they couldn't plan their travel in advance and so, they didn't get tickets. I knew all about not getting tickets because each year, we would stand in line at the ticket counter for hours, months in advance, to buy our tickets for the summer. Sometimes, even after our long wait, we would have to change our travel dates because no tickets were available.Years later, getting into the general compartment was an eye-opener. There were so many people! Where were they going? How did they manage? And how did so many people share four toilets?No Ticket, Will Travel is a collection of six stories about people who have no choice but to travel. Getting caught travelling ticketless is a risk they take because hard-earned money cannot just be spent … [Read more...]
House of Uncommons
We all know about the House of Commons. What could the House of Uncommons be? I didn't want to read up about the book to find out, so I picked it up and dived right in.The book started slowly, and I frowned as I read about Krishnan travelling with his Chikkappa to Snehagao. I didn't know where the story was going. Until we get the first indicator of the uncommon. The protagonist Krishnan sees Raman, his soon-to-be roommate, and realises that Raman is like him. What does that mean? We, as readers, don't know yet, but we find out soon enough. In Krishnan's new school, all the children have HIV. And for once, it seems like they are not going to be shunned for it.What do we even know about HIV? At Krishnan's age - about 13 - I knew next to nothing. I knew what it stood for because I had to learn it at school. I equated AIDS with HIV, and had no idea that there was any difference … [Read more...]