A Mirror, Window, and Door.
In the past:
When my parents (and co-au-thors, Mangla and Rajesh) were young parents, they desperately looked for books about India and Indians for my brother (Siddhartha) and me to read. Not finding suitable titles, desperation resulted in their making up bedtime stories featuring two brown kids (Dhanu and Diddhu), relying on a handful of books published in the West with one of them being Marcia Brown’s Caldecottwinning Once a Mouse, and reading the ever-reliable Amar Chitra Katha comic book series which featured a re-telling of Indian history and mythology.Since these oral and written stories were in English, we were introduced to literary India through a language-altering lens.
My parents constructed homemade scrapbooks that introduced the Devanagari script, and Siddhartha and I gamely attended Chinmaya Bala Vihar Hindi language classes. Later, I continued my study of Hindi at the university level. But the admirable bookshelves in our California homes, at our brick-and-mortar bookstores, and throughout our public libraries were sadly empty when it came to encouraging young children to learn and love Hindi.
Fast-forward decades, and into the void arrives hope by way of KitaabWorld, an online bookstore, which has made its way into local libraries and into the hearts of young parents. As a teacher of nonfiction studies, I also hope that it soon makes its way into classrooms where educators can convey to their students that books are indeed mirrors, windows, and doors.
“Mirror books” enable a reader to see herself in the text. Seeing this reflection of herself, the young reader is likely to experience what education professors Drs. Claude and Dorothy Steele call identity safety, and thus entertain a life-long love of reading, of seeing herself in literature.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2016 - January 2017 من India Currents.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2016 - January 2017 من India Currents.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Elephant and Donkey Tribes of Politics
The Motorcycle Guru Speaks.
On Feminism
It has been eight months since I started my MFA at Bennington College. In the last eight months I have cooked half a dozen meals. I pack my children lunches and I clean up the kitchen after my husband when he makes dinner for the family after he comes home from working in a Silicon Valley tech company. Cooking has never moved me. Motherhood has—but not the baggage of social dos and don'ts that accompanied it. I have done fewer play dates than the meals I have cooked in the past few months, and I rarely go to a birthday party. My husband takes the children to their social engagements. “But is this fair?” you might ask and I answer, “It is not about fairness, it is about what moves you as a person and how to keep that flame of what keeps you alive, burning within you, while negotiating roles in an adult world that still largely favors men over women.”
Of Wedding Bells And Hospital Bills
Not another invite,” I groaned, picking up a thick cream and red colored envelope.
A New Lease Of Life
How an Indian grandmother started making heart-healthy choices.
A Mother Loses Her Child: Fact And Fiction Coalesce
LUCKY BOY by Shanthi Sekaran. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House, New York. 472 pages. Hardcover. $27.00
From The Hood Without A Loo
TOILET: A LOVE STORY. Director Shree Narayan Singh. Players: Akshay Kumar, Bhumi Padnekar, Anupam Kher, Sudhir Pandey, Divyendu Sharma, Subha Khote. Hindi w/ Eng. Sub-tit. (Viacom).
Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness
A LIFE OF ADVENTURE AND DE- LIGHT by Akhil Sharma. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York. 202 pages. wwnorton.com $24.95 hardcover.
Who Was Enid Blyton?
Raised in and out of India, I don’t remember reading too many Enid Blyton novels—barring those from the Noddy series. I knew, though, they were all the rage among girls—mostly girls. They’d spend hours reading them and like fish in a school, prattle over what they’d read over their lunchboxes.
Victoria And Abdul: It Looks A Lot Like Love
VICTORIA AND ABDUL. Director: Stephen Frears. Screenwriter: Lee Hall, based on book by Shrabani Basu. Cast: Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard, Adeel Akhtar, Tim Pigott-Smith and Michael Gambon. Focus Features, 2017. MPAA Rating: PG-13
Looters, Schemers And A Curse
Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond.
