Books for Young Students

Many Boards of school education are trying to inculcate the habit of reading among students. CBSE, for instance, has introduced reading-based projects in the senior secondary section. At any rate, it is of vital importance to bring back the habit of reading among our students. Here is a list of books that can be recommended to students.

1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: The book narrates the adventures of a young girl named Dorothy in the magical land of Oz, after she and her dog Toto are swept away from home by a cyclone. Here are some quotes from the book:

· It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.

· I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.

· A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.

2. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle: Published in 1912, this science fiction tells about an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin where prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs still survive. This novel was converted into many movies of the same title. A few quotes:

· There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.

· There are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man.

3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: This 19^th century children’s classic is a masterpiece of American literature and deserves to be read by every student. Some quotes:

· The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

· “Well, everybody does it that way, Huck."
"Tom, I am not everybody.”

· “What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?"

4. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume: A little different from the usual children’s books, this tells the story of Margaret who is born to a Christian mother and Jewish father. She wonders which religion she should be, if any. There is much talk about boys, bras, bodies and friendship. Girls are likely to enjoy this more. Let’s look at some quotes:

· “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where.”

· “I like one hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain and things that are pink. I hate pimples, baked potatoes, when my mother's mad, and religious holidays.”

5. My Name is Aram by William Saroyan: This is a collection of short stories published in 1940. One of those stories is a prescribed lesson in class 11 of CBSE. The stories detail the exploits of Aram, a boy of Armenian descent growing up in California.

Here’s a quote: “How can you talk if you don’t say anything?” I said.
“You talk without words. We are always talking without words.”
“Well, what good are words, then?”
“Not very good, most of the time. Most of the time they’re only good to keep back what you really want to say, or something you don’t want known.”

6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: One of my favourites, this small book has sold millions and millions of copies. It tells the story of a young prince who visits the earth from another planet. Every line of this novella can make students think for hours. Look at some examples:

· And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

· What makes the desert beautiful … that somewhere it hides a well.

· It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

Image courtesy

7. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach: This delightful novel is the story of a seagull that refused to accept the mundane life and hence learnt the great lessons of life. This was one of my favourite books for a few years of my youth and I have recommended it to students every year. Here are some quotes:

· You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.

· The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

· Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect. -And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits.

Comments

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi. Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let...

Yet another Christmas

“Please, I beg you not to turn us away,” Joseph says to the innkeeper once more. He has been pleading with the innkeeper for some kind of a place where his wife Mary could give birth. Joseph, Mary, innkeeper - they were all kids from the primary school of the parish. Jenny was sitting in the audience watching the Christmas skit presented by the little children. She knew what would come: the innkeeper would shut the door saying rudely that he didn’t have any more rooms left. Especially for a couple that didn’t have anything much to give in return for all the troubles they were going to create with a delivery and what not. Then Joseph and Mary would go to a cowshed and the cows will be far more benign than humans. Cows are great creatures, Jenny learnt recently from her country’s dominant political party. If they give birth to a female calf, they are greater still. That bastard in your belly ! Her mother shouts at her a million times a day referring to the baby she is carry...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog