Adults love data. They love graphs and statistics and numbers. During workshops with adults, the moment I put up a graph, I have everyone’s attention as if I’m finally saying something ‘real’. And that’s why I started working with real-time polls through Mentimeter. I show my audience a question and all those with smart phones […]
The Little Rainmaker
It is the year 2028, and it hasn’t rained for ten years. The last time it rained, Anoushqa was in her mother’s womb. She kicked when it rained. That’s her only experience of rain, an experience that she does not even remember. Sometimes, she wonders if rain is even real, or just part of one […]
The Lies We Tell
I finished reading The Lies We Tell last night. I woke up this morning, still disturbed. For a moment, I just had a vague sense of unease that I could not place, but a few seconds later, I knew I was still in another place, in another character. I was still Irfan Ahmed. I read Talking of Muskaan two years […]
Bungee Cord Hair
Five months ago, an editor mentioned to me that publishers in India believe that Asian literature, apart from books written in the subcontinent, will not sell. I was taken aback by the idea, but I didn’t know what to say. I had not thought about it at all, so I did not have an opinion. […]
Reading Workshops: Why? What? How?
Many, many parents ask me what a reading workshop is. What happens during a reading workshop? Who should attend a reading workshop and why? What will the outcome of a reading workshop be? This post tries to explain all that. What children read and why Often, at reading workshops I conduct, we talk about books […]
World Read Aloud Day at the Writers’ Club
The Writers’ Club at St. Mary’s School meets only twice a week, so World Read Aloud Day sometimes becomes Writers’ Club Read Aloud Day, but so what? I celebrated it for the first time last year and it was so much fun that I did it again this year. This time, children came forward and […]
Top Ten: Young Adult Books in 2018
There’s so much happening in the world of Young Adult books! Some people may classify a few of these books as MG rather than YA, but again, I put forth the usual disclaimer – associating an age with a reading level is impossible. Many of these books are crucial – they deal with ideas and […]
Top Ten: Middle-Grade Books in 2018
My list of favourite middle-grade books was the most difficult one to make! Until the second I hit ‘Publish’, I kept changing my mind about which books to include. I almost made this top fifteen – it is my blog after all, no one is dictating how many I should have here … But I restricted […]
Top Ten: Books for Young Readers in 2018
I know that ‘books for young readers’ is a very vague title, but these aren’t all chapter books, though the age-group for all the books on the list is similar. I also don’t read as many chapter books as I do other children’s books, but as I was making this list, I realised that I […]
Top Ten: Picture Books in 2018
It’s when I make lists like this that I realise how many books I read each year. It makes me deeply conscious of how privileged I am to be able to devote so much time each year to reading. Year after year, I read more books. More often than not, I don’t buy them – […]
Invisible People
How does one begin to write about a book as powerful as Invisible People? Stories of hope and courage – that’s what the cover promises, yet I did not expect to be moved as much as I was. I knew I would come across extraordinary stories because I have faith in the fact that there […]
Carthick’s Unfairy Tales
Have you ever thought of Cinderella from the point of view of the mouse? No, not one of the sweet singing mice in Disney’s version. Instead, from the point of view of a hapless mouse who becomes a steed for one night. What happens to the mouse after Cinderella gets her ‘happily ever after’? Does […]
Tilly and the Time Machine
Just thinking about Tilly and the Time Machine makes me chuckle, even though I finished reading it a couple of days ago. It’s been a while since I read such a lovely book written for seven-year-olds. Tilly’s father is a scientist who works for the government. Unfortunately, it seems as if his work is below […]
The Peculiars
Kieran is one of only two male Reception class teachers on the Isle of Wight.His days mainly consist of singing nursery rhymes, tying shoelaces, trying to locate who has had an ‘accident’ by sense of smell alone, and vast, endless mountains of paperwork. Author profile on Goodreads Aren’t you interested already? Writing good author bios […]
Paradise End
Especially when I’m struggling with my writing, I find myself wondering all kinds of things. What makes a good book? What keeps me reading? When do I roll my eyes at melodrama, and when do I have to swallow a gulp in my throat? Where are all these boundaries? Also, I’m a picky reader. I […]
History Mysteries: The Last Tiger
The Last Tiger broke my heart. The thylacine – what a wonderful, curious animal. A pouched dog with a wolf’s face. A dog with stripes. The Tasmanian tiger. At the Asian Festival of Children’s Content last month, I attended a talk by the history hunter, Mark Greenwood. It was a talk that filled me up. His […]
Boy 87
Boy 87 came frighteningly close to becoming too much for me as a reader. As I read on, there was one stage where I was filled with a sickening sense of dread. I remembered Chalkline, which I could not finish reading because it was so well told that the story was overwhelmingly traumatic for me – more […]
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 […]