8 Inspiring must-read books for the children’s bookshelf

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The Boy Who Asked Why follows the life of an extraordinary man, ‘Babasaheb’ Bhimrao Ambedkar, who energised the struggle against caste prejudice. His fiery speeches and writings urged Dalits to protest against the inhumanity they suffered and continue to suffer.

This straightforward telling, visualised with quirky imagination, brings to children a man whose story will raise their awareness of discrimination leading them, perhaps, to ask their own whys.

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A book that examines the effects of Global Warming and shows young readers many easy ways to help make a difference.

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What would you do if you didn’t fit in?
Muskaan is in hospital, fighting for her life.

Three classmates—her former best friend Aaliya, the hottie Prateek, and the class topper Subhojoy—talk about Muskaan, and themselves. About school, home and the larger world, the school bus and the basketball court; about secrets that become burdens. And through their stories are revealed the twists and turns that drove Muskaan to try to kill herself.

Funny and tragic by turns, Talking of Muskaan is a warm, moving novel about life and death and the young people caught in between.

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A novel about Liya, a young Santal, Is a Regular girl from an Adivasi village in Assam, with regular struggles, aspirations and experiences, who finds herself in a journey through life against the backdrop of ethnic riots.

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Eight schoolgirls from the hills on a tour of Agra, drive into Delhi the day Indira Gandhi is assassinated. They run into a violent, crazed mob that pulls their jovial old driver Kartar Singh out and slays him brutally. In a blazing city lashed by violence, the girls flee to seek refuge. They find it in an elegant and apparently empty house but is it safe? Its gallery of forbidding masks and medieval weapons is alarming enough, but worse, it is a house marked by the vicious mob because it belongs to a rich Sikh family with two children. In an adventure gone dreadfully wrong, all that the girls can think of is going home, but the vengeful enemy is right at the door!

Led by sixteen-year-old Puja, a masterful archer but with her own personal demons to fight, the girls have to tackle one threat after another, including a chicken thief in their midst. Mustering their wisdom, stealth, cunning and courage, they valiantly keep their conscienceless attackers at bay until they are finally plunged into a quandary where there is only hair’s breadth between killing and being killed.

A gripping and powerful story, The Battle for No. 19 highlights the moral dilemmas of young people in today’s world where violence erupts round every corner, and the line between right and wrong runs dangerously thin.

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Mystic weaver, radical reformer, loved and hated equally in his time… The simple wisdom of his pithy couplets, the famous dohas, makes him one of the most frequently quoted poets even today. Yet Kabir the person remains an enigma.

This brilliant novel traces one day in Kabir’s life, from Daybreak through Midday to Nightfall. Threading fact, legend and poetry into a superbly structured narrative, it etches Kabir’s compelling persona against the backdrop of fifteenth century Banaras a period that mirrors quite remarkably our own troubled times.

Spare visuals before each section continue Kabir’s own favourite metaphor of weaving, a delicate tapestry of the city unravelling as the day progresses. Kabir the Weaver-Poet is a landmark in contemporary writing for young readers and old thrilling yet gently emotive, incredibly blending high drama with the mesmerising calm of Kabir’s beliefs.

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