Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Resources for Afterschool

Spark-India is a teacher resource unit that brings quality teaching-learning materials. It offers audio, video, printed material.

What I like about Spark-India's books for children is that they are books with sense and sensibility. The publishing space in India is cluttered with any number of books for children that are just a bunch of badly written, badly illustrated and badly produced bunch of papers (with four colour printing on art paper!) bound together.

Spark-India's books are refreshingly different. An example is Spark-India's Empathy series 'designed to get children to understand and appreciate differences, whether related to physical and mental ability, personal choice or feeling'. The current titles in this series are The Helping Hand and The Little Grey Hare.

I have both the books. Both my daughter and I love them. And not without reason...

Let me tell you a little more about The Little Grey Hare. Anita R. Singh's writing is smart and sensible. Sarada Natarajan's illustrations are detailed and delightful. The best part for me was at the end of the book - with photographs and notes on the animals featured in the story complete with a map showing their range in the Indian sub-continent.

It is books of this quality that Indian children deserve - nothing less!

1 comment:

Anant said...

This is Anita Singh's husband, and we are both very pleased to read your review.