Koobandhee
Koobandhee is such a fun book! We’ve read Bookasura twice; now we’re rereading Koobandhee too!
Bala is excited about meeting Bookasura again, but when he goes near the well at Navaneeth Uncle’s farm, he discovers another monster there, a monster that’s even scarier than Bookasura! Worst of all, Koobandhee seems like an asura who is out to destroy all Bala’s precious library books, and the librarian Mrs Shashee is not going to be happy …
A hilarious book about books, Koobandhee is perfect for my book club!
Insults
I’ve always loved imaginative insults. Of course, Shakespeare is the first to come to mind in this context, but Koobandhee has its share of wonderful ones too. Creepy cockroach! Poisonous predator! Foul flea!
We’ll do a blind activity on insults, where we make two separate lists – of adjectives and of insects. We’ll put them together at random to get hilarious results!
Monsters
Monsters are always fun. At my reading programme, we’ve been monster-hunting, discussed funny monsters, and more. This time, we’ll create a monster of our own. Quickly shifting from one group to another (children love breakout rooms!), we will invent a monster, complete with a name, physical description and personality.
Book Scavenger Hunt
We had such fun with our book scavenger hunt when we read Bookasura that I’ve been waiting for a chance to repeat the activity! In a conversation with Koobandhee towards the end of the book, a terrified Bala answers all the asura’s questions with titles of books. We’ll go through the same list in class and I’ll ask the children to run and bring books of their own. I’m waiting to see what book titles the children come up with!
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We’ve read so many of Arundhati Venkatesh’s books at my book clubs!
- Bookasura
- Petu Pumpkin: Tiffin Thief
- Petu Pumpkin: Cheater Peter
- Petu Pumpkin: Tooth Troubles
- Petu Pumpkin: Freedom Fighter
Registrations are now closed for the October-November 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Ghosts, Thieves and Aha! Adventures
We’ll begin with another Silly Billy book next month! I hope there will be many more of these because it is a delightful series for young readers. With its full colour illustrations and its wacky, agenda-free stories, the series is a treat for early middle grade readers. We’ve read Jumble Sale and Agassi and the Great Cycle Race. Let’s read the third and (for now) last one in the series–Ghosts, Thieves and Aha! Adventures by Asha Nehemiah and Pankaj Saikia.
Book Scavenger Hunt
A book scavenger hunt is one of the most popular activities at my book club. How can I not do one for a book set in a bookstore? Take a look at a couple of examples of book scavenger hunts we’ve done in the past. I’m looking forward to doing another one!
Origami
Many children at my writing programmes can do origami of all kinds. Following Ashish, the protagonist of the story, we’ll try to learn from one another, making all kinds of little origami creatures!
Bookstore Story
Every book lover loves stories set in a bookstore, so we’ll write one of our own! What kind of story could play out in a bookstore? How can we make the setting come alive to our readers?
Read, Write, Explore devotes one class every two weeks to creative writing. As we read Ghosts, Thieves and Aha! Adventures, we’ll focus on setting and genre.
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Read, Write, Explore is designed for children who want a taste of creative writing but are not necessarily ready to do all the work that an intensive writing programme demands.
Registrations are now closed for the October-November 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Left-Out Paru
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 hand!
Lists
Just like Paru in the story, I love lists! As we read, we’ll use her list titles as prompts to write lists of our own–things we can’t bear, things we’re constantly told, famous lefties … I’m sure this will be entertaining!
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Left-Out Paru is the twenty-third hOle book we’re be reading at my book club! I love this series; it’s perfect for children moving from picture books to chapter books. The friendly font, the large illustrations, and of course, the hole in the corner make this series a treat!
Registrations are now closed for the October-November 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Friends Behind Walls
Inu and Putti are not allowed to play with each other. But what can they possibly do when everyone else in Shanti Park seems to have been born at the age of 30? They have no one to play with except each other!
Soon they discover that they actually like each other and want to be friends, so they need an answer to the Most Important Question: why are their families fighting?
They go to one person after another, searching for answers (or answers-shanswers, as Putti’s father would say). Mr Om Namaha, Dr Solanki and the Tekdichi Mhatari – who can answer their question?
Friends Behind Walls is such a gorgeous book that I simply had to include it in my reading programme! Here’s some of what we will do.
Word Games
Putti loves words and so do I. He breaks words up and comments on how nonsensical they are. Legend = lej+end, but it has nothing to do with the end of a ledge. Cacophony = cac+o+funny, but it doesn’t have anything to do with a joke.
Now imagine the possibilities of working on words with children. I’m also thinking about the multilingual games I could use and the ways in which we can play with songs!
Imagination
I LOVE the illustrations in Friends Behind Walls, and pictures make for great conversation starters. The cover itself is a good place to begin because it invites children to think about what the story could possible be about. Within the book, I love the rickshaw ride, the car ride and Tekdichi Mhatari doing a little jig. To be honest, I love them all, but these stayed with me. Working on character sketches and caricatures is going to be such fun!
Book Discussion
What do you do after a fight? What about adults? Do you think they do the same thing? What makes you angry and what do you say when you are angry?
We can talk about so many things when we read a book like Friends Behind Walls!
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We read Friends Behind Walls for the first time in March 2021, over four years ago! It was a favourite with my book clubbers then, and I’m waiting to read it with a fresh group of seven- and eight-year-olds!
However, registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Agalya in the Spotlight
I read Agalya in the Spotlight a couple of months ago, and I knew I would introduce it to my book club very soon. It’s a light, easy read, one that I’m sure my book clubbers will enjoy. I’ve read Misfit Madhu with two batches of Read, Write, Explore, and reading a book by an author we’re familiar with is always fun!
Fairy Tales
Rapunzel is a well-known fairytale, one that children are familiar with also because of the movie Tangled. At my book club, we’ll try to do a group activity in which characters from one familiar world meet characters from another. Where would they meet and what would they talk about? Exploring this promises to be fun!
Performing
A book club is never about just reading. I like to link the stories we read to all kinds of activities. Since Agalya in the Spotlight is all about drama, I will ask the children at my book club to perform in class! They can perform anything at all–they could present a poem, play an instrument, sing a song, anything at all!
Write a Play
How do we write a play? What are stage directions, and what is dialogue?
Once we’ve read Agalya in the Spotlight, I will introduce the children to playwriting, and we will try to write a short play of our own.
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Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Bald Bandit
Who doesn’t love a good mystery story? I love the A to Z Mysteries because they’re exactly the right level for my book club. The characters are fun, the mysteries are engaging, and the fact that we have a whole series of twenty-six books to read makes The Bald Bandit an easy choice for me. Even though the book is over twenty-five years old, it doesn’t feel dated. I’m sure we’ll have fun with it!
Clues
Fingerprints, shoe prints, bits of fabric–they’re all clues! Let’s have some fun with them. We’ll draw the outline of our foot and try to make it look like a footprint. We’ll play with thumb prints and try to look around us to see what signs we can find of the other people who live at home with us.
Mysteries
A storytelling worksheet is a great way to explore a rough outline of a story. I will give the children the framework of a story and ask them to fill in the details. Let’s see what mysteries we create!
A Detective Club
If you set up a club to solve mysteries, what would your club be called? Who would be part of it? What would your password be and where would you make a secret hideout? I’m looking forward to seeing where my book clubbers’ imaginations will take them!
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Other books in the series that we’ve read at my book club:
Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Hodgeheg
I love Dick King-Smith‘s work. There was a time when I read nothing except his books. I devoured story after story, the way children do when they get hooked on to an author. I remember just one book I didn’t enjoy – Godhanger. But everything else? I loved.
And that’s why we’re rereading The Hodgeheg, one of my favourites! It’s a sweet story about one determined hedgehog who makes it his mission to find out how to cross a road safely. How do humans cross? Can’t a hedgehog do the same? Here’s what we’ll do with this book at my book club.
Slang
The Hodgeheg begins with another hedgehog having ‘copped it’. Later on, we have the phrase ‘that’s flat’.
What do these phrases mean? The way in which words and phrases develop regional variations is fascinating. I remember reading the phrase ‘I bet a monkey’ while I was reading Georgette Heyer. I first thought Heyer was just being funny. I looked it up and discovered that a monkey is British slang for five hundred pounds, American slang for five hundred dollars, and Australian slang for – wait for it – a sheep!
We’ll look at a few funny phrases from different parts of the world; I can’t wait to see what we’ll discover!
Unscramble
When the hedgehog Max is hit on the head, his words come out all scrambled, which is what gives the book its name.
Of course, this leads to a simple, fun activity – unscrambling letters to make words, putting words in the right order to create sentences, and putting lines in the right order to create a poem.
Creating Characters
The first thing that sets Max apart is his name. But there’s more to Max than a unique name. What makes a character leap out of the pages?
As my reading programme for ages nine and ten has a strong creative writing component, we will use the text to work on creating memorable characters. If you have a character that your readers will root for, your story is already half done!
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Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Adventures of Mooli and the Sticker Trickster
The very first book we read at my very first online reading programme was Trouble with Magic by Asha Nehemiah. We’ve read several of her books over time, and this time, we’re rereading The Adventures of Mooli and the Sticker Trickster. This isn’t the first of the Mooli series, but it works well as a standalone book!
Mooli and Soups are busy ideating. They must come up with an idea that will win a prize at WAYOUTS – World’s As Yet Original Untried Tricks and Stunts. What can they do that will be simply outstanding? Surely, two intrepid young children can come up with not one, but a hundred ideas!
In the middle of all this, however, they have a mystery to solve. Who could be vandalising Mooli’s Amma’s signboard with silly stickers? Why does her board now read ‘Yummy Scrummy mon Keys’?
A hilarious adventure ensues as Mooli and Soups get to the bottom of the mystery and find the vandal. Characters leap off the pages in this funny page-turner. In the hunt for the thief, maybe, maybe Mooli and Soups can do more than just solve the mystery!
WAYOUTS
I love the idea of WAYOUTS! What thoroughly original idea can you come up with? What can you (safely) do that you think no one has ever done before?
At my book club, we’ll share every idea we can think of – the wackier the better!
Word Collage
The sticker trickster cuts out words and sticks them on Gita Aunty’s signboard.
Equipped with a newspaper and a stick of glue, let’s see what we can do together. We could make a birthday card, a book cover, anything!
Alphabet
Playing with the alphabet is always fun, and no one is too old for it! Mooli and Soups use yogasanas to create the alphabet; what can we do? Quite a lot, actually depending on the amount of time we have.
For one, we could play with the wonky alphabet, in Craig Smith’s style. For another, as I was reading The Adventures of Mooli and the Sticker Trickster, I remembered that as children, we had a sign for each letter of the alphabet – a secret code! I still remember so much of it that I would love to pass it on. Who doesn’t love a good code?
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Other books by Asha Nehemiah that we’ve read at my book clubs:
- The Adventures of Mooli and the Blue-Legged Alien
- The Adventures of Mooli and the Bully on Wheels
- Trouble with Magic
- A Pinch of Magic
- The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula
- The Mystery of the Silk Umbrella
Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Jumble Sale
Jumble Sale is such a delightful Silly Billy Book that I can’t wait to read it with my book club! Just like Agassi and the Great Cycle Race, which we read recently, it is a hilarious read that promises to cause much laughter as we read it together!
Jumble Sale
If your school organised a jumble sale, what would you sneak into it? What do you think you could sell with no one noticing? And how audacious do you think you could get?
Songs
I can’t think of Jumble Sale without thinking of Tinaz Toddywalla singing, “Just you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, just you wait!” I don’t know how many children at my book club will be familiar with the song, so we’ll listen to it and perhaps make it a listening exercise too!
Mysteries
Is a missing bottlebrush an intriguing enough mystery to solve? Each edition of Read, Write, Explore comprises three creative writing classes, and during one of them, we will explore a silly mystery! What tiny theft could be a mystery worth solving, and how would we go about it?
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Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Vincent Can’t Go
Another book that’s hot off the press is coming to my book club! Vincent Can’t Go is a charming story about a boy who isn’t allowed to go anywhere because his mother is too afraid. I enjoyed this sweet, simple story, and I’m sure my book clubbers will too!
Interactive Game
What are you allowed to do? What are you not allowed to do? Let’s play a game!
After that, we will use an interactive whiteboard to explore new ideas of things we would like to do if we were allowed to do them!
Friends
Friendship is an integral part of Vincent Can’t Go. I’d like for the children at my book club to show me a picture of their friend, what they have in common, why they’re friends, and anything else they would like to share!
Portraits
I love Habib Ali’s pictures of ‘Most Important Friend’ and ‘Man of Action’! In class, I’ll ask the children to draw a self-portrait with an ornate frame and a label of their choice!
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Registrations are now closed for the August-September 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Second Person Short Story
We haven’t ever worked on the second-person short story, which is what made this writing workshop particularly interesting for me! I love it when I get to work with something new at a guest session!
Michelle D’costa conducted a detailed session, introducing the three narrative perspectives and focussing on the second person narrator. From common misconceptions about the second-person narrator to hands-on writing exercises, Michelle covered a lot of ground in the course of one short hour.
We read a mentor text, explored how we can write in second-person, and discussed a few things to keep in mind when we write a short story. I especially like it when guests I invite reinforce ideas I’m teaching! Here are a few things Michelle mentioned, for instance!
- Avoid clichés
- Be as specific as you can, both for setting, and for character
- Use all the five senses–smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch
- Show, don’t tell
- Avoid head-hopping
We worked on paying attention to detail with an oral exercise for which Michelle showed us a picture of a man. Michelle emphasised the importance of describing what is actually visible rather than making assumptions. Show us what we can see; let the reader make assumptions!
With this, our third guest session, we’re now hurtling towards the end of yet another writing programme. How many courses have I conducted? I have now officially lost count. And I love that.
Dum Dum to the Rescue & Yet More Adventures of Little Shambu
Did you read Shikari Shambu? I did, and I loved each silly adventure. That’s why we’re reading yet another Little Shambu book at my book club. We read Strangus Derangus in April 2024, In the Bear’s Den in November 2024, and it’s time to read the last one–Dum Dum to the Rescue.
I enjoyed all these stories for their silliness and simplicity, as well as the lovely illustrations. An urban child’s interactions with animals may be few and far between, but there are a range of hilarious stories in store for us in this collection.
Role Play
Any book that is rich in dialogue is perfect for role play. Helping children recognise when characters begin to speak and when they stop, beginning to recognise speech marks and paragraphs … all this is part of a book club!
Animal Encounters
Have you ever had a fun/frightening experience with an animal? A monkey in your neighbourhood? Or a snake in your school? I’d love to know! We will also try to write a small poem about it!
Listening Activity
Bringing the four language skills together is an important part of language acquisition, and there are so many animal stories we can listen to online! Let’s see how much we can understand as we listen to an audio recording of an age-old animal tale.
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Little Shambu is a delightful character, and the themes of this book are perfect for 7- and 8-year-olds!
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Mystery of the Missing Geometry Boxes
Who doesn’t love a good mystery? When geometry boxes begin to go missing, the AKA Detective Club finally has a new mystery to solve! But things always go missing in schools, don’t they? What’s the big deal? When a pattern begins to emerge, however, the young detectives know that something is fishy. Surely, no one would want more than one geometry box. And is there a reason why only Yuga geometry boxes are being stolen?
The Mystery of the Missing Geometry Boxes is a lighthearted mystery, funny and engaging. I look forward to introducing it to my book club!
Detective Club
AKA stands for Aarav-Karthik-Asha, or Asha-Karthik-Aarav, depending on whom you ask. What would your detective club be called? Would you have a password and a secret code? Let’s make one together!
Geometry Boxes
I enjoy linking reading with other activities! I’m not yet sure if it will be exciting, but we’ll look at using the tools in our geometry boxes to create art of our own. Let’s see what we can come up with!
School Mystery
Mystery is one of the most satisfying genres to read, and quite an exciting genre to write too! At Read, Write, Explore, one class every two weeks is devoted to creative writing, so once we’ve read The Mystery of the Missing Geometry Boxes, we will attempt to write a mystery story of our own. What mystery could take place in our school? How would we solve it?
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The Mystery of the Missing Geometry Boxes is the second book in a series featuring the AKA Detective Club. The joy of a series is that if children like one book, they’re likely to hunt for and get the others that feature the same characters.
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Saving the Sun Dragon
We read Rise of the Earth Dragon, the first book in the Dragon Masters series, nearly four years ago! It was another of those books that set children off on a reading journey because there’s a whole series to devour.
That’s why we’re reading Saving the Sun Dragon next month. It’s the perfect reading level; it’s imaginative, features driven characters, and has a good bit of adventure in it!
Colouring Pages
I love it when authors share fun activities on their websites! As we read Saving the Sun Dragon, I’ll ask parents to print a few sketches that we will colour together in class!
Create a Dragon
We’ve read about an earth dragon; we’re reading about a sun dragon. What other dragons can we create? What is its name? What powers does it have?
Diary of a Dragon Master
If you were a dragon master, what would one day in your life look like? We’ll explore a few ideas and then get writing!
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Like I’ve said before, reading a series is a great way to get children hooked to reading! The Dragon Masters series is a lovely introduction to fantasy and adventure, and it promises to be a fun book to read together!
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Dear Mr. Henshaw
I’ve said this dozens of times: I love epistolary novels. I made a video about a few favourites for World Post Day 2021, I love doing letter-writing activities at workshops, and I’ve written an epistolary novel of my own.
When we read Dear Mr. Henshaw for the first time at my book club, I knew it would be a book I would introduce time and time again. So come June, we’ll be rereading this delightful book at Read, Write, Explore!
Leigh Botts writes to his favourite author, Boyd Henshaw, and in the beginning, he doesn’t get a reply. Later, he gets a printed response, rather than a handwritten one, which is almost as disappointing. When he is in the sixth grade, however, he receives a proper letter, which he needs for his author report, and this is the beginning of a funny, moving series of letters he writes about himself, his school and family. As we read Leigh’s letters, we get to know not just him but Mr. Henshaw too. I love it!
Questions
The questions Leigh asks Mr. Henshaw set the ball rolling, and this will lead us to our first activity with the book. If the children had to write an author report, what questions would they ask? And if they don’t like the responses they receive, what will they do?
Taking this idea further, I would love for the children to write to their favourite writers and see whether they receive replies!
Other Scenarios
Even if the children haven’t read The Diary of a Young Girl, most have heard of Anne Frank. Using Dear Mr. Henshaw, Anne’s diary and a few others, I would love for the children to come up with other scenarios in which a story in the form of letters could work. Why would two characters write to each other? And how would the story progress?
Letters
At Read, Write, Explore, one class every two weeks is devoted to writing. Naturally, as we read Dear Mr. Henshaw, we will write letters. This time, I would love for the children to write real letters to one another and post them too. I’ll guide them through a little letter-writing activity, following which I will encourage them to write whatever they want. Each time I work with letters, I realise that many children have no idea what a stamp is or what purpose a letterbox serves. And that makes the whole process even more fun!
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Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Lights, Camera, Action! was a whirlwind introduction to filmmaking, one which I thoroughly enjoyed. I know next to nothing about filmmaking, making this guest session all the more exciting for me. What an informative, detailed session it was!
We began by watching a short film in French, Detour by Michel Gondry. Samina Mishra, our guest for the evening, asked us what we thought of the film and then we revisited a few details from a filmmaker’s eye.
What goes into mise en scène, or the frame of a film? What about cinematography? What does one pay attention to? Sound? Editing? What else?
After looking at a range of elements from setting to costumes, effect sounds to editing, Samina left us with a writing exercise in which she asked us to write a single shot. With clear examples, she asked us to pay attention to the following things as we wrote:
- Will we see the exterior/interior? What time of day is it?
- What kind of shot will it be? A long shot or a close-up?
- How is the scene set?
- What is the camera angle?
- What do we hear?
- Does the camera move or wait until the whole shot is over?
It was unfair to ask Samina to pack it all into an hour, and we did overshoot, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable session nonetheless. Here’s to many more!
Boo-Boo Investigates
We read Boo-Boo the Eco-Warrior by Tanushree Podder a few months ago, and my book club enjoyed it. For one, it’s easy to read because of the way the text is laid out. For another, the stories in the book are simple and engaging. That’s why we will be reading another book featuring this friendly ghost—Boo-Boo Investigates.
Forest Experiences
As Boo-Boo lives in the forest, we will listen to some forest sounds and write what comes to mind. What can you see? What do you hear? What do you think you would be able to smell? While we don’t write much at my book club for ages seven and eight, I do like to work with a little creative writing, an introduction of sorts, which will prepare the children for other writing activities later.
Mysteries
If you had to solve a mystery, what clues would you look for? As we discuss that, we will also do an activity in which we try to identify the pugmarks various animals make. Paying attention to detail is part of being a good investogator!
Word Games
Playing word games is always fun! We’ll do a spelling bee and unscramble a few words from the book as a fun way to revisit the vocabulary we pick up as we read.
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Reading a series is a great way to get children hooked to reading! Characters grow to be friends, and children are eager to find out what other adventures these familiar characters go on. Boo-Boo is one of those characters my book clubbers loved meeting!
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Agassi and the Great Cycle Race
Agassi and the Great Cycle Race is a brand-new book that I’m eager to introduce to my book club. I read it not very long ago, and it’s such a rollicking read that I’m sure it will be fun!
What's in a name?
Agassi hates his name. In fact, he prefers to be called by his other name – Joel.
As Agassi and the Great Cycle Race is the first book we will be reading, we will do several name-related activities. If your parents had named you after their favourite sportspeople, what would your name be? If they had combined their names to create one for you, what options would they have had? And finally, I’d love to know what the stories behind their names are. What led to the choosing of their names?
But, then ...
We’ve played “Fortunately, Unfortunately” at several editions of my book club. It’s time to do something different! When we play “But then …”, each child makes two sentences, not one. Agassi needed a cycle and there was one in the attic. But then, it was falling to pieces, so he needed another solution. A solution came his way in the form of a cycle from Manoj. But then …
Let’s create a story of our own!
Humour Writing
What are the elements of humour writing? Can we craft a funny story of our own!
Creative writing is an integral part of Read, Write, Explore, so during our writing session with Agassi and the Great Cycle Race, we will attempt to write a humorous story of our own.
Let's Read!
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all the Silly Billy books that have been published so far, and I’m waiting to read this one with my book clubbers!
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Monster Hunters
We’re rereading The Monster Hunters by Parinita Shetty at my book club in June 2025!
Abhay is convinced that his mother has eyes at the back of her head. She knows everything and sees everything. Yet, she does not seem to believe that there are monsters in every child’s room! Why can’t she see them?
It’s time for Abhay and Nitya to get to work. They must find the monsters. In fact, they decide they will go one step further. For a school project where they have to narrate a real-life story, they will hunt down a monster and talk about the experience.
I love books with driven characters, determined to prove something against all odds, and Abhay and Nitya are perfect. The book had me chuckling, shaking my head, but rooting for the characters anyway – and what more could I ask for from a book?
Monster Games
I love monster games! The wonderful thing about a monster is that it can be anything you want it to be. It could be tiny or huge, one-eyed or a thousand-eyed. As we read this book and imagine monsters of our own, we’ll also play with the fun illustrations, spotting monsters on each page!
Under My Bed
I’ve played this game before, and I love it each time. It’s a little make-believe game, where each child says something along these lines, “Oh no! I can see something under my bed! It looks like the eye of a monster! Whew. It’s just an old torch.”
What will I ‘find’ under the beds of the children who join my reading programme?
What would you need?
We had so much fun exploring The Absent Author at an earlier edition of my reading programme that I realised (again) how much fun it is to work with investigation, hunting for clues and finding evidence. What would your monster-hunting kit consist of? Do you need bicycles and helmets and nets? Or do you need something else altogether? And finally, what would you do if you found a monster?
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We’re rereading The Monster Hunters because we had so much fun with it when my book club read it in 2021! Some of those who were with me then are now in my writing programme for older children; I’m looking forward to introducing this book to a fresh batch of readers!
Registrations are now closed for the June-July 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Cartooning with Vineet Nair
What makes a cartoon different from a regular drawing? What is easier to draw? What do you think is important when you are drawing a cartoon?
We had such an enjoyable workshop on cartooning with Vineet Nair, comic book illustrator and Art Director of Tinkle! The first rule, which I loved, but which the participants struggled with was Don’t mute yourself! Speak! The entire session was interactive, with everyone eager to show what they were drawing.
For me, what made the session stand out was the focus on how simple cartooning can be! Identify the major shape and then modify it. Exaggerate the details to bring in the emotion and the humour!
We began with humans, went on to animals and finally looked at cartoonifying objects. I enjoyed the whole session! The image above is just a collage of all the cartoons Vineet drew during the session. The children drew so many more!
A few interesting tips Vineet left us with:
- Pause animation movies to practise cartooning and sketching.
- Experiment with simple shapes and exaggerated features.
- Try drawing simple everyday objects with emotions and expressions.
Details about our next guest session will be up very soon!
The Astoundingly True Adventures of Daydreamer Dev
It’s been nearly four years since we read The Absolutely True Adventures of Daydreamer Dev by Ken Spillman. We had fun reading it, and I hope The Astoundingly True Adventures of Daydreamer Dev will be as much fun with a new group of book clubbers!
Dev is a highly imaginative character. The smallest things set him off on the wackiest of daydreams. A question asked during his geography lesson sends him daydreaming to Antarctica. A conversation about volcanoes, and he lands up in Whakaari. Where can our book club escapades take us?
Where are you?
Physically, Dev may be in an autorickshaw, but his mind is far away in New Zealand!
What was the last place you read about? What if you were transported there? What do you think you would do, see or eat?
Daydreaming Adventures
Picture prompts always spark the imagination. I will give each child a different picture and we will write the outline of a rudimentary story. Story worksheets are great scaffolding tools to begin to write stories of our own!
Travel Adventures
What is the best holiday you’ve ever been on? What made it special? Can you tell us a story about it? Or better still, can you write an email to a friend about?
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Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Nimmi’s Bizuper Birthday
Some time ago, we read Nimmi’s Dreadtastic Detective Days, and although it is longer than most of the other books I choose for Read, Write, Explore, we enjoyed it. It’s funny and engaging, and there’s so much we can do with the book!
Nimmi’s Bizuper Birthday is no different. Like in Lucky Girl, Nimmi finds herself eating (and sharing) all kinds of … interesting … foods. How can she admit that the chocolate-like things she distributes are jowar banana bites?
The hapless Nimmi finds herself in one coil after another as she navigates her way through a birthday that is nothing short of bizuper.
Portmanteau Words
I love portmanteau words! When we put two words together—like bizarre and super to get bizuper—we have a portmanteau word. We’ll do a quick quiz about words that have come into being in exactly this way, before we go on to invent a few of our own.
Word Games
How can we read a book about Scrabble and not play word games of our own? I’ll create a puzzle based on the book, following which I’ll ask the children to create word puzzles for the others to solve too.
Funny Poem
Writing humour is always difficult, but a birthday that doesn’t quite end up like we expected it to is a great prompt! We’ll work with rhyme and meter, and then we’ll go on to writing a funny poem of our own.
Join a programme!
Read, Write, Explore combines the fun of a book club with an introduction to creative writing. One class every two weeks is devoted to writing of some sort, making the programme perfect for creative children who aren’t yet committed to writing.
Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Chocolate Touch
The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling is an old book, unlike most of the others I select for my book clubs. Its copyright dates back to 1952! And that’s not the only thing that makes it different from the books I usually choose. Another important distinction is that it has a clear moral, something I usually avoid.
But the story is such fun! Plus, it’s about chocolate, so it’s already a win, isn’t it?
John Midas loves chocolate. He can eat it all the time. Or so he thinks. It is only when everything that touches his lips turns to chocolate that he begins to realise that there might just be a limit to the amount of chocolate he can eat.
At first, no one believes him. How could they? He has to be lying. How can everything he puts in his mouth turn to chocolate? That’s absurd!
Eventually, however, everyone realises he is telling the truth. Even the doctor has no choice but to believe him. The question is, of course, what can he do about it except to look at him as an exciting specimen?
With all the Midas touch references, The Chocolate Touch is both unique and familiar. It’s perfectly paced and an utter delight. Here’s what we’ll do as we read the book at my reading programme.
Colouring Coins
John acquires the chocolate touch when he discovers an odd looking coin. What odd coins can we find?
I love combining non-reading activities with reading ones. I remember how much fun it used to be to put a piece of paper on top of a coin and shade with pencil. I would love for the children to find some unique coins – old ones or new – and see how they look on paper!
We’re rereading this one at my book club, and I can’t help but remember how a child told me he was going to use an antique coin from 1992!
What else?
Toothpaste. A trumpet. Cutlery. A pencil. What else do you put in your mouth?
Make a list and then, for each one, imagine a different sort of magic. I chewed my nails and they turned to plastic! I put my handkerchief in my mouth and it turned to dust! What else?
Invent your own!
Invent your own chocolate! Give it a name, design a wrapper and tell us what makes it unique. What would you put in it?
Look at this wonderful email exchange that took place the first time I did this activity!
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Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944
We’ve read one book from the I Survived series at Read, Write, Explore before—I Survived the California Wildfires, 2019. This one, I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944, was written way before that, and from what I can tell, it’s one of Lauren Tarshis’s most popular books. I thought long and hard before choosing to read this book with 9- and 10-year-olds. The horrific events of the second world war don’t make for easy reading, and like I’ve said before, it’s always more difficult to gauge the mood of my book clubbers online than offline.
Yet, it’s an important story, and while I wonder what conversations will be triggered by the book, I’m looking forward to reading it at Read, Write, Explore.
Symbols
Different symbols mean different things. The star and the swastika on the cover, for instance, are relevant. What other symbols do we know, and what do they stand for?
A Period in History
What period in history do you know well? Children (and adults too!) often know trivia about obscure things. Dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, the Aztecs … I want each book clubber to talk to me about a period in history that fascinates them!
Writing an 'I Survived' Story
Taking the same thing forward, we will attempt to write a rudimentary work of historical fiction, with the emphasis on the word fiction. What obstacles do you think a character in the period of your choice would face? How would they survive them?
Join a programme!
Read, Write, Explore combines the fun of a book club with an introduction to creative writing. One class every two weeks is devoted to writing of some sort, making the programme perfect for creative children who aren’t yet committed to writing.
Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Adventures of Mooli and the Blue-Legged Alien
We’ve read the other two Mooli books at my book club (although that was before my current book clubbers were old enough to join), and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed them! The Adventures of Mooli and the Blue-Legged Alien is just as much fun, or perhaps even more fun! A lovely combination of wacky adventures and a mystery, it’s a book that is imaginative and funny, in addition to being just the right length for my book club for ages seven and eight!
Aliens
How do you think an alien would look? Would it have blue legs? What powers would it have? Use your imagination to draw and describe an alien!
WAYOUTS
I’ve done this with my other Mooli books too; we’re going to do it again! If you were to take part in WAYOUTS—coming up with the best of the World’s As Yet Original and Untried Stunts—what would you do? What can you do that is completely new?
Using Toys
At the very end of the book, Mooli’s mother, Gita Krishnan, uses a toy aeroplane in a completely unexpected way. What toy of yours do you think you could use imaginatively?
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Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
We’ve read lots of Asha Nehemiah’s books at my book clubs! Take a look:
- Trouble with Magic
- A Pinch of Magic
- The Adventures of Mooli and the Sticker Trickster
- The Adventures of Mooli and the Bully on Wheels
- The Mystery of the Silk Umbrella
- The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula
Which of these have you read, and which one is your favourite?
The Paradise Flycatcher
It’s impossible to write about The Paradise Flycatcher without mentioning the gorgeous illustrations. I felt the same way about The Golden Eagle, which we read at my book club some time ago. Krishna Bala Shenoi’s art work, right through the book, is stunning, and if for nothing else, I would have picked The Paradise Flycatcher for one of my reading programmes just for the pictures! (On an aside, I loved his work in Friends Behind Walls too, which I used at another reading programme.)
We read it a few years ago; we’re rereading it in April 2025!
Mitalee is distraught. Shikar, aka Snowdrop, a white-headed squirrel, has disappeared! She knows Chintu and Arjun are behind this disappearance, but knowing that is not enough. She must save Snowdrop before something dreadful happens. The good thing is that she has help from a bunch of feathered friends – Bongo, Blackpie, Senora, Kabul … And the adventure begins.
Animal Stories
Animal stories are a delight, and creative writing is an important part of Read, Write, Explore.
We will begin with the characters in the story, like Bongo the drongo and Blackpie the magpie. We’ll create full-fledged (pun intended) bird characters of our own, giving each one a name. We will also work a clear idea of the problem and the solution in a story of our own.
Quiz on Idioms
The Paradise Flycatcher is full of bird idioms, so we will do a quiz based on these idioms as well as a few more!
Descriptive Writing
In a book with such stunning pictures, we must do an activity based on the illustrations. We’ll play a game, using our imagination to describe pictures of our choice in an interesting way.
Join a programme!
Read, Write, Explore combines the fun of a book club with an introduction to creative writing. One class every two weeks is devoted to writing of some sort, making the programme perfect for creative children who aren’t yet committed to writing.
Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
The Clockwala’s Clues
We’re going to read my hOle book, The Clockwala’s Clues at my book club in April 2025! I’ve done many author events based on the book, but they’ve all been in-person sessions. Looking forward to my first online session with the book.
Puzzles
Jasmine and Sheba love puzzles. Do you? Can you solve a set of puzzles about clocks and time?
Tongue Twisters
If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?
How fast can you say that? Have fun with Clockwala Uncle’s tongue twisters, trying to say each tongue twister faster and faster every time you try!
Idiom Quiz
There are so many idioms about time! Let’s race against time and try to beat the clock as we do a quiz on idioms related to watches, clocks and the time.
Join a book club!
The Clockwala’s Clues is part of a lovely series of books–the hOle books. Each edition of my book club begins with a book from the series. This one was shortlisted for the Neev Book Award in 2021, and I’m waiting to read it with my book club!
Registrations are now closed for the April-May 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
My Year in Workshops – 2024
As someone who loves routine and predictability, it’s amazing how unpredictable my workshops are, each year! Teacher training workshops took me to Indapur, Goa, Satara, Talegaon, Nagpur and Beed, in addition to schools all over Pune. This also meant that I did multiple book club and writing sessions from hotel rooms and cafés, just like last year.
I also continued to run my in-person writers’ club at St. Mary’s School, Pune, although I often have to run those sessions online too because I travel for work.
With my book clubs, I read 39 books; with my writing courses, I created three e-magazines; it was quite a year!
Book Clubs
My book clubs are always rewarding. Bringing books to children is such a joy! With the little ones, it’s heart-warming to see how they slowly start reading more and more fluently. With the older ones, conversations become more nuanced, and the activities we do get more creative and imaginative.
With ages seven and eight, I read 22 books (we’re in the middle of our 23rd one), and with ages nine and ten, I read 16. I had enough registrations to run every batch that I scheduled, unlike in 2023. I met children from several parts of the world, and even ran a special batch for children from Europe and Dubai!
Something else that stood out for me last year is that four writers volunteered to visit my book club and talk to the children – Chrissie Sains, Vibha Batra, Stuti Agarwal and Lubaina Bandukwala. It was such a treat!
I have no idea how long my online book clubs will continue to run. Now that the pandemic is long past, parents are keen to reduce their children’s screen time—and rightly so! But each year brings new adventures, so let’s see what 2025 has in store for me!
Creative Writing
Some of the children who joined my book club aged seven are now eleven-year-olds, part of my writing programmes! It’s been lovely watching them grow and blossom. Over the last couple of years, I’ve met a few of my online students for the first time, but there are still dozens I’ve never met!
I ran six online writing programmes in the year for ages nine to seventeen. A parent urged me to launch a batch for ages 15 to 17 for the first time, and I did, but it’s tough for teenagers to commit to the kind of writing my courses demand. Exams, school events, sports … everything gets in the way.
As usual, I had six guests visit my programme, and each one was wonderful.
We created three e-magazines, which is something I started doing to encourage children to work on feedback they receive and edit their work to the best of their abilities. At my online writing programmes, we created issue 4 and issue 5 of WORDS, and at St. Mary’s School, we created the very first issue of THE WRITE PLACE. New issues of both e-magazines will be out soon!
I have new online workshops beginning every alternate month, and I’m always open to looking at offline workshops should schools require them. If you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes, please fill this form. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Meanwhile, a new year of workshops has already begun!
Boo-Boo the Eco-Warrior
I don’t like horror stories, but what about stories featuring a friendly, helpful ghost? Boo-Boo the Eco-Warrior is one of those! Written almost like a series of short stories, this book by Tanushree Podder is a child-friendly read, made all the more engaging by the use of varied font sizes and, of course, pictures. Boo-Boo the ghost, along with her human friend Tanya, embark on a set of adventures including a rescue mission and justice for an old man employed by a cruel shopkeeper. I’m sure my book club will enjoy this one!
A Ghostly Friend
Wouldn’t it be useful to have a friend who can turn invisible at will? What adventures would you go on together? Tanya and Boo-Boo have some answers, but I know that my book clubbers will have more!
Newspaper Bags
Schools often use the phrase “art integration”, something that is an integral part of a book club. Tanya makes newspaper bags in an attempt to save the environment. We’ll do that too, in class!
Eco-Warriors
A few ghosts are forced to move to another tree because the tree they inhabit is cut down. Is there anything we can do to save the environment? As children, do my book clubbers think they have agency? Can they make a difference? Let’s find out!
Join my book club!
I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I will say it again—if you want to create readers, start early! The most common reasons children give for not reading are:
- It’s no fun!
- I don’t have the time!
- It’s boring!
A book club is a great way to counter all three!
Registrations are now closed for the February-March 2025 edition of my book club. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
Misfit Madhu
We’re rereading Misfit Madhu at my book club! It was a favourite when I read it two years ago, although it’s longer and slightly more complex than the books we usually read. I’m waiting to read it again!
Madhu makes an app that goes viral. At first, she can’t quite believe it, but soon, she begins to bask in the attention. Things quickly go wrong, though, and Madhu must decide between what she wants and what’s right. Here’s what we’ll do as we read the book!
Apps
When we read Cricket for the Crocodile, we did an activity where we made our own games. One child made a rudimentary online game, which made me wonder: what apps do children feel they need? While we won’t create an app (I know nothing about coding!), we will try to design one, coming up with a name, a purpose and details of what the app can do, no matter how farfetched.
What would you do if ...?
What would you do if you were in Madhu’s place? What about if you were in her best friend Noor’s place?
Misfit Madhu sparks all kinds of conversation topics from the meaning of friendship to doing what is right. At several stages in the story, we’ll stop and reflect on what we would do if we were in the characters’ places. Giving the children similar situations, we’ll engage in a little role play too.
Story-Based Games
As writing is an important component of Read, Write, Explore, we’ll explore a different kind of story – something that could work as a story-based game. We have just one class to work with writing, so we’ll begin with each child discussing a story-based game they enjoy playing, bringing the idea down to setting, characters, plot and structure. Following that, we will try to change the characters and setting and see whether we can create the rough outline of a story-based game of our own.
Join a programme!
Registrations are now closed for the February-March 2025 edition of Read, Write, Explore. New batches begin every alternate month. Join my mailing list if you would like to receive email notifications about my programmes. Alternatively, follow me on social media – Facebook and Instagram – for regular updates.
