Ok. First things first. Let me tell you, the short list of books here is a choice based on my authentic review. I and my children have not only read these books but loved them throughout our reading journey. There are books we have read popular enough to recommend to you, but I am not willing to list them here just for the sake of it and simply because we didn’t enjoy them!
It would be advisable to ask children after every 10 pages of the book they are reading, if they are really enjoying it. Because the idea here is to motivate them to read more, not bombard them with stories they don’t enjoy.
So here’s my list of the month –
- Matilda – By Roald Dahl
Enter the courageous world of this child prodigy with no less a thrill than one can expect from a Tom Sawyer story or Chronicles of Narnia. We might think the girl hero was lucky to have the ‘parfait’ brain of a genius, but her courage..her courage was a gift with no extraordinary tag..it was simply the one we all possess naturally!
And then you love the dialogues, especially Agatha Tunchbull’s. They probably come from Roald Dahl’s real-life school experiences with his harsh headmasters as he vividly narrates in his autobiography ‘Boy’!
A story worth reading twice, for the fun it promises and for its true-to-world characters!
Age Rating – 4-6 years.
- Gauri and the Talking Cow – Devdutt Pattanaik
Here’s some Indian reading from our own mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik.
‘Kali’ – is for the wild, the scary forest-like..’Gauri’ – is for the garden, safe and domestic..they are the names of the same goddess in her different ‘avatars’..
As Sweety the talking cow narrates the story of Kali to Gauri, a girl who visits her village with her father, we know we are in for an amusing, informative and interesting tale.
My son and I loved the monochrome cartoon drawing assisting the text. The best part of the story was when Sweety narrates the tales of Raja Indradyumna and Raja Nruga both teaching two different aspects of good and bad conducts.
Couldn’t fathom why in Indradyumna’s story, Gods condition his stay in heaven on finding someone on earth who still remembers his good conduct. But as the author Devdutt Patnaik tells how stories, symbols and rituals construct the subjective truth (myths) of ancient and modern cultures around the world, in order to dive deep into it and abstract its true meaning, it’s advisable to explore the multiple layers of that truth. But at least stories like these trigger the essential curiosity in children that would turn their inclination towards the cultural myths and discover the real truth behind them.
Age Rating – 6-10 years
- Miss Rumphius’ by Barbara Cooney
An article published in The Atlantic, titled ‘What Would Miss Rumphius Do’ in 2017, led me to buy this picturesque storybook for my children. ‘The Lupine Lady’ has become a household name since.
The beautifully painted characters and the lupines in different shades of blue and pink spread elegantly across the landscape pages of the book, sparkle like diamonds. The fact that it is a true story makes the protagonist even more lovable.
It concocts some unique takeaways for kids – we can all make the world beautiful in our own unique style and it starts with small consistent steps
And..
It’s important to take breaks and embrace boredom – as it was during one such phase when Ms. Rumphius carves out a way to fulfilling her grandfather’s wish, which was her dream too – ‘To make the world more beautiful than it already is.’
What does she do to make her dream true?
Find out in this beautiful story of ‘Miss Rumphius’ by Barbara Cooney
Age Rating – 6 – 10
Here are some helpful resources you can help your child with post reading the story.
https://www.prindleinstitute.org/books/miss-rumphius/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/childrens-books-for-uncertain-times/544104/
- Timmy in Tangles by Shals Mahajan
As a self-read, this handy 70-page book by Duckbill is the right fit for a light-hearted read during that extra time in the lunch-break or for quickly making those yawning fits disappear during class breaks.
I loved the illustrations by Shreya Sen, just the perfect support for the kids to enter into Timmy’s world.
Shals Mahajan takes children in the small but engaging world of Timmy, where she creates and befriends characters out of her own splendid imagination, who have been Indianized in a way it seems they actually reside somewhere in our surrounding. While to adults they might seem too strange and conceptually unidentifiable, surprisingly, they work too well with the kids. They quickly begin to see them with the eyes of Timmy!
My favourites – ‘Kichoo the cockroach’, playing a cameo but his dreaded long-‘mooch’-tickling is enough to compensate for the rest of his absence.
My 6-year-old, Anhad’s favourite character – ‘Idli Amma’ as she too loves Idlis like him and feeds on story food!
And how about ‘hanging’ a book by the bedside? I do that with the signature hole in the corner of these duckbill books!
Age rating – 5-9 years
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Excerpt from the story –
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
No.. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept, answered the skin horse.
******
Can the concept of love be more beautifully interposed with children than this? This story of love spoken from the perspective of a toy velvet rabbit blurs out the world outside and spotlights the two characters of the rabbit being loved so whole-heartedly in the most passionate, purest form of love that it comes to life – from the toy world to human, and the distant but familiar character of the young boy who loves his toy rabbit unconditionally!
The rabbit waits for the day when the boy chooses him as his playmate and wants to be a REAL rabbit to be able to LIVE with the boy he loves forever.
It intrigues children to think philosophically about what is ‘real’ – a physical form, being loved enough that makes us real, or being present in flesh and blood.
And then it answers very subtly – that a physical form is not being real, being in flesh and blood isn’t reality alone but being LOVED ENOUGH is!
What makes you real?
The capacity to love and be loved enough!
*****
While this is a personal round-up of books to read with your child this June, there are lots to explore from the Indian English and Hindi books as well.