Once a month, Meher Marfatia recounts stories from the preteen book club she runs with Rupal Patel. Part review, part reaction, she discusses plots and themes as much as the minds of their 11- to 14-year-old readers.   “To the 

Once a month, Meher Marfatia recounts stories from the preteen book club she runs with Rupal Patel. Part review, part reaction, she discusses plots and themes as much as the minds of their 11- to 14-year-old readers.   Take a 

Once a month, Meher Marfatia recounts stories from the preteen book club she runs with Rupal Patel. Part review, part reaction, she discusses plots and themes as much as the minds of their 11- to 14-year-old readers.   They live 

Once a month, Meher Marfatia recounts stories from the preteen book club she runs with Rupal Patel. Part review, part reaction, she discusses plots and themes as much as the minds of their 11- to 14-year-old readers.   Small is 

Once a month, Meher Marfatia recounts stories from the preteen book club she runs with Rupal Patel. Part review, part reaction, she discusses plots and themes as much as the minds of their 11- to 14-year-old readers.   I chickened 

I write this on a morning that makes me think more than usual. It is 9 May, exactly seventy years after World War II ended in 1945. It seems apt, then, to talk about a pair of stories for kids that 

Picture the peculiar, eerie desolation of a dry, flat desert. This is the blistering hot bleakness, the gritty abyss, painted masterfully by Louis Sachar, that sucks readers in within the first page of Holes. Climax and anti-climax weave powerfully in this 

Here’s a book you can judge by its cover. One glance at the jacket of Pete Johnson’s My Parents Are Out Of Control and we were hooked by this story for kids with hilarious, illustrated messages like ‘Mum and Dad dancing like mad people’ and 

“It can’t be a perfect world,” they sighed wistfully, almost in unison. After all, popularity and unpopularity – ideas at the crux of the book we were discussing – rule the lives of preteens. It was why we chose The 

We were derailed before we got started. Battling a bunch of myopic, moralistic adults isn’t easy. Yet there we were, Rupal and I. The storm in the proverbial teacup was over our choice of book for middle school kids: “The 

We know children live beautifully in the present, and we work hard at giving them a future. What about extending an equal taste of the past? Kids are keen to be offered strong glimpses of times gone by; I see 

On the last Saturday of every month we (my counsellor friend Rupal Patel and I) get set for a date… with the Blabbering Bookworms. It’s a name they’ve given themselves, this bright bunch of 11- to 13-year-olds. Avid readers all,