Title: The Boy Who Played With Light – Satyajit Ray (Dreamers Series)
Author-Illustrator: Lavanya Karthik
Publisher: Duckbill
Type: Paperback
Age group: 6+ years (no upper limit) [7 yrs+ is recommended by the publishers]
The book-review is on behalf of my 9 yo daughter E.
Can you imagine big?
I raced through the house, up the stairs, down the corridors. The shadows followed.
The book follows a story about a boy, curious, unique, imaginative, creative… Manik (I liked the name) who is haunted by shadows. But are shadows bad? This book has perfect words to describe the turmoil and illustrations to support the thoughts. You may want to spend time on each page relating words to pictures.
This is a story of a boy who is happy, who could see light in the slightest of things. But then it became dark after his father’s untimely death and he started seeing shadows in his mother’s sadness and everywhere else. He could not understand or talk or describe those to others around him. Until one day, he accepted those shadows and opened a world of imagination.
Take-aways (and I am going to quote my daughter’s words)
- Shadows (dark) are as important as light
- We should make friends with our fears. We can become successful and happy (as Manik in the story)
- Imagination has no bounds. Although it is difficult. Try not to get influenced by others’ opinion about your imagination. How can someone tell whether it’s good or bad, remember, it’s in your head.
The book is illustrated in blue… my favorite color 🙂
Do you know about pinhole camera effect? A short mention in this book made me curious and I read about it. Now want to experiment 🙂
Not a spooky / horrid book, rather a notion-changing book
-E
Last note: When a kid comes to this world, it comes with its own thoughts, creativity notions and perceptions. People (parents and others) around him/her suppress all of it and mend the kid into a society-suitable person. If you want someone to shine stop trying to cover them in a pot.
Happy reading !!
You can find the rest of the books from the Dreamers series here.
We have other reviews of books in the Dreamer Series which might interest you:
The Girl Who Was A Forest – Janaki Ammal
The Boys Who Created Malgudi – R. K. Narayan and R. K. Laxman
The Girl Who Loved To Sing – Teejan Bai
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