The Book Leaf

Our New Website

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 04:13:00 +0000

The Book Leaf now has a new Website address. Unfortunately, due to certain security concerns, the Goverment of India has put a ban on this web domain and hence we had to move. We are appreciative and thankful to the Webs domain for their wonderful service helping us host our website.

The New Book Leaf Website

The Madhatters Club Update!

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:33:00 +0000

As we near the next meeting of The Madhatters Club, I realized that I did not write about the fun we had while discussing The Chronicles of Narnia during the last meet! We met on the 25th of July and had a group that turned up for the discussion! As it was pouring, sitting inside The Book Leaf cosily and talking about the book turned out to be a great idea. Most of the members had seen the movie though some had read only a little bit of the book. Of course the ever enthusiastic Meena Aunty (as she is called by the kids) had made sure she read at least The Lion, the Wardrobe and the Witch before she came for the meeting! We at The Book Leaf really appreciate the willingness with which she participates in all the activities irrespective of the age group it is meant for and the excitement that she brings to the group!

The kids were surprised to know that there are a total of seven separate stories in The Chronicles of Narnia and that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second one in the series though it was written first and even made into a movie first! Prince Caspian seems to have impressed the kids in the movie. All of this made at least a couple of kids decide that they are now going to read the whole series!

Of course some of us reacted to the very male centric society that is depicted in the book with the girls being given girl like roles and the boys getting to go to war and doing the fighting etc! However, as we read excerpts together, we were able to talk about how society undergoes changes and how certain values and even language changes. Today, girls are able to do everything that a boy can do. And did the girls agree! So no worry there about our girls being treated in a manner lesser than boys!

The discussion also touched upon the various different characters that are drawn into the story from different mythologies from all over the world! The Centaurs from Greek mythology, the dwarfs from germanic myths, etc. The kids appreciated the wealth of reading that CS Lewis must have done in orer to incorporate charaters from stories of so many different part sof the world. And they all came to conclude that he hadn't read Indian Mythology for sure!

Madhatters' Discuss Oliver Twist

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:37:00 +0000

One of our Madhatters was so engrossed in reading his Amar Chitra Katha inside The Book Leaf that we had to entice him outside where the place was all set for the Madhatters' meet, with the promise of a game of chess! But I am glad to report that he was as enthusiastic as the others once the discussion started and we had him and the others visualizing Dickensian England and relating incidents, situations and characters described in the story to ones that they are familiar with in today's world. Our young friends also appreciated greatly the use of the quaint Victorian English and the almost poetic usage of language that Dickens does to describe even the smallest of incidents.

Of course, they were quite glad that they need not read the unabridged and original version right now and can make do with the simplified version:) All of them also read a bit from the abridged version a little bit to appreciate this! It was heartening to see how quickly they caught on to why Dickens originally wrote Oliver Twist under a pseudonym! Today was also a day when they came across a few homonyms and had fun with them!

A big thank you to Meena, Preeti, Prachi, Aniruddh, Rajeshwari and Radhika for their invaluable inputs! Next time on popular demand - Chronicles of Narnia!

Writer in Focus - Vikram Seth

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:05:00 +0000