Summer Book club!

 

Parenting, amongst other things,  is also about trying to experience the good things in life vicariously through our kids, especially the kind of experiences that we didn’t have while growing up!  Take for instance,  a Book club for second and third graders…..we didn’t have anything like that in our childhood, despite growing up in an urban environment.  We did have summer camps for sure…revolving around creative arts and crafts and music, dance and sports of course….but nothing like a curated platform showcasing age appropriate books for all the young participants to read and share their thoughts about…. that too in a place surrounded by books! No………. I’m not talking about fancy places like the New York or Boston children’s public library, but the summer book club at “Kahaani Box”,  for second and third grade readers! So when book lover and entrepreneur Neha Jain put up a whatsapp post on the upcoming summer programs at Kahaani box, including “The Book club”,   I so wished that I could become a second grader again!  

 

As we approach the fag end of school summer vacations (in fact many schools have already reopened!), we did look back at the summer of ’24, and one of the most memorable of Aadya’s summer activities was attending the book club at Kahaani box!  

It was indeed a memorable week of reading, sharing and exchanging views, involving themselves in vocabulary exercises and mystery-solving activities, designing alternative book covers, going on a book scavenger hunt around the library, and creating a TIME-VELOPE of all their favourite things they would open twenty years later!  

As part of the book club activity, each of the eight kids read Shabnam Minwala’s “The Shy Super Girl”,  a Duckbill publication’s HOLE book -and  Louis Sachar’s  “Marvin Redpost- Why pick on me”, and Aadya enjoyed reading about the nine year old Nina who though shy was endowed with super powers! With the help of her almost clairvoyant abilities, Nina manages to solve the mystery of the missing artefact at Mrs. Khanna’s house. All the girls were fascniated by the  adventures and misadventures of Nina and gang so much that they reviewed the book and even wrote to the author.  This early chapter book aided by Tanvi Bhat's apt and stimulating illustrations, encapsulates so many relatable elements of a young girl’s world that had all the book club members hooked and booked for the summer of ’24! Here’s to unboxing many such activities from Kahaani Box this year!  

 

The girl who loves to draw!

 

It is an understatement to say that Aadya loves drawing. When it comes to Aadya and her penchant for drawing, I am always reminded of a movie quote from the 90’s American movie “Sister Act 2 - Back in the habit” which goes like  “When you wake up in the morning, and you cant think of anything but singing, then you should be a singer, girl” ….. this couldn’t be any more truer with Aadya and her drive to draw that is uppermost in her mind as she wakes up every morning!   

 

What began as simple doodling has now blossomed into a creative, engaging, and sometimes all-consuming form of expression for Aadya. Initially, Aadya was stuck on drawing princesses and all their trappings, and then she moved on (phew!) to depicting her thoughts, state of mind, her wishes, or her understanding of a story or a book onto her drawing board!  (quite literally! 😊)  Drawing is not only Aadya’s favourite pastime or her hobby but also a form of solace on days that she is upset over something…. as she pulls out two sheets from the big pile of one-sided printed sheets (a very useful recycling method for my office waste!) and starts to draw………all is forgotten!  It’s not unusual to find her suddenly disappear to her desk in the middle of watching a family movie and reappear with an image she has sketched, drawing inspiration from something she’d seen on screen just a few minutes ago, like drawing two children playing tennis as were all watching “King Richard”! 

 It’s not uncommon to find her immediately turn out a replica of an image pasted on a new piece of clothing that we just brought home from shopping! 

It’s not out of the ordinary for our unstoppable little one to churn out 10-12 drawings every day! It’s not odd to find our house cluttered with one-sided printed sheets of all sizes, with Aadya’s drawings on the other side, lying everywhere around the house! It's not easy to swallow your guilt as she doodles out this workaholic image of yours as she waits for you to wind up at work! 

It’s not a birthday celebration at all,  without Aadya’s colourful, vibrant and imaginative birthday cards that make for wonderful keepsakes for everyone in the family!

So much so that a recent visit to the planetarium and the Indira Gandhi park had us unexpectedly and serendipitously gate crash into the Sunday meet up of an art group called “Pencil scratchers” where Aadya found  herself most at home with a paper and pencil, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with fellow pencil artists and attempting to sketch a live model!

 

For someone who brightens our days with her brilliant drawings, we decided to preserve all her creations bound into books – and we already have over fourteen bound volumes of over 100 pages each, comprising of her drawings over last year and a half! Let’s hope she draws her way into filling an entire cupboard in the near future!

 So this year as she turned seven (almost two months ago and its another thing that I manage to write about it only now!), Aadya was insistent on having her birthday cake reflect her artistic quotient and Viola! ….we did celebrate her birthday in a rather artsy-craftsy way at “Firefly terrace” with a few friends and cousins who joined in the celebrations by way of a creative activity  planned for both kids and adults….and we all got our little artsy keepsakes to take home, that we can always remember Aadya and her seventh birthday celebration!

 

As Aadya explores her artistic side more, we revisited the book “ " I gotta draw"” by Bruce Degan that I had read to her brother almost 8 years ago! That apart, we also got a few books that she could relate to and thanks to the wonderful library   “Kahaani box”  we had a decent line up of books related to art and love for expressing oneself through drawings. From Fancy Nancy’s “Aspiring Artist” , where Nancy is inspired to into being an artiste in her characteristic fancy style to  “Tell us a story Papa Chagall” by Laurence Anholt , which is a delightful introduction to the dream-like style of painting of Marc Chagall and “Prince with a Paintbrush” by Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan and illustrated by Ravika Sen which is a charming read on the “Leonardo-Da-Vinci of India”- Raja Ravi Varma!

 

But Aadya most of all related to “Bea Garcia - My Life in Pictures” written and illustrated by Deborah Zemke, an early reader series brought out by Puffin books. We couldn’t have found a similar book, which revolves around a little girl named Beatrice Holmes Garcia aka Bea who has a penchant for drawing and expressing herself through pictures of everything about her life as it is and as she wishes it to be! It was almost as if we were looking at a reflection of our little aspiring artist as we read about how Bea navigates through her school and social life after her best friend Yvonne moves to Australia, all expressed through her magnificent drawings! . Read on as the teacher confiscates Bea’s book “My life in pictures” that almost threatens to expose her quirky view of her classmates only to have the circumspect teacher realise the power of her pencil! So… draw on…. my aspiring little artist …..the world is your canvas! :-)