Our School. "Amchi Shala"

It has been such a pleasure to discover Madhuri Purandare's work. She illustrates and writes these wonderfully simple books for children and you instantly connect to her because in her every illustration you see your everyday life . To me, its very middle class Indian. Its very me.

Amchi Shala (Our school) is one such book. It is a book to read out and show  pictures to a child who is about to start pre-school (a balwadi). The myriad emotions that the child goes through in her first year of school - the conditioning , the tantrums, the fuss, the cajoling, the hesitation, the chaos, the wonder and awe, the stress, the joy- its all there! I feel this book encourages the child to get to like her school in the most gentlest of ways.

I like it that Madhuri Purandare's books have a whole lot of family/ extended family/ neighbourhood/ school/ friends as part of the story line. I picked this nuance up immediately and it was re-confirmed when in an interview published here : www.eklavya.in/pdfs/Sandarbh_64/01-03_Madhuri_Purandare.pdf , Madhuri P. wrote "People in this field need to see the children’s world in totality. Children do not live in closeted and compartmentalized existence. They are surrounded by adults and constantly interact with the adults’ world."

I own a copy of this book in Marathi but it is also available in English. Very reasonably priced (Rs. 50/-from Jyotsna Prakashan); it is available online from Flipkart. I have seen it in stores like Sutradhar, in Bangalore and in some book fairs. I brought my copy from the Ideal book store in Dadar and I know its easily available in bookstores of Pune.