‘Grandmother School’ by Rina Singh and Ellen Rooney

Inspired by a true story, this beautifully illustrated children’s book is an uplifting story about women’s education and empowerment.

Being from India, I have been consciously exploring children’s literature that I can expose to my American-born son. The beautiful cover of this book caught my eye — and this book was exactly what I was looking for.

About ‘Grandmother School’

Grandmother School is written by Rina Singh, a Canadian writer famous for other children’s books on Indian culture. As the name suggests, this story is about a school for grandmothers. This is a special school set up in a small village in India to promote literacy among the older generation of women. Every morning, all the kids in the village walk their grandmothers to a school where these women learn to read and write.

Singh inspiration was the village of Phangane, where a school exists just for grandmothers, the Aajibaichi Shala. Established the local schoolteacher, with the goal of promoting literacy to everyone in the village, this single room building became their home for two hours a day where they learned to read Marathi.

The highlight of the book is in its message and illustrations. Literacy among women is truly a privilege in developing countries in India. Few generations ago, society considered the education of women unnecessary and it left many women behind.

Grandmother School beautifully captures the enthusiasm these elderly women have at a chance to learn. It also relays the sense of pride and accomplishment that Aaji feels when she can write her name or sign her documents at the bank.

Ellen Rooney’s illustrations are eye-catching, colorful and authentic. I sat with my 6-year-old and we went through page-by-page identifying things that we had seen on our trips to India- like the vegetable seller, the man on the bicycle, the mango trees, etc.

It was also cool to see Hindi on the pages, even though the spelling of some words in Hindi was wrong (Bank, cycle, etc). If it’s possible, the publishers should fix those before they release the book.

The story could have been a few pages shorter. The whole story about Shivaji seemed superfluous and just a good excuse to get some stunning illustrations in.

It was a lovely read, easy to understand and beautiful to flip through.

P.S. — Thanks to Orca Publishers and NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Grandmother School will hit retail on May 5, 2020.

Originally published at https://shadesofwords.com on March 22, 2020.