If you ask someone to give his honest opinion about what he misses in life, I am sure that more than ninety per cent of arguments will be that they are missing their childhood so badly. No tension, ego, pride and always searching to extract happiness from any moment. Moreover, the best part of childhood is listening to stories from grandmother and grandfather, mother and father and elders. There is an absolute charm in listening. As a child, you feel like you are travelling in the world of fantasy where you lose yourself in the surroundings of happiness. In the contemporary period, we seldom find these storybooks that sound appealing and attractive. These everlasting moments have been hijacked by technology. Childhood is completely spoiled and children are failed to understand the real meaning of happiness. Instead of playing in the ground, they are busy playing FIFA on PS4 and PUBG on mobile phones. However, they are still some writers who are cautiously aiming their effort to bring these things back by storybooks. Today, I am talking about an interesting book written for children named ‘Sonu Monu ki Rochak Kahaniya’ by Partha Sharma. She has done pretty good work in the book. Let’s discuss it in detail and I am sure that children will love this story which, ultimately, aims at teaching the lessons of morality to the readers.

About the Book:
The author has created a friendly environment among human and animals. From the beginning to the end, you can find some exciting characters living friendly with the human. It may look different because we have seen in the stories of Champak that only animals are living there in the jungle. However, they talk and act like a human. But here, the author has done something different and created an environment where they can live together. You will find these names often in the book, Bhalu Aunty, Bandriya Aunty and many other names.

This is the story of a monkey named ‘Lunu’ monkey who is so cute and young. Sonu and Monu are humans and very good friends. They use to go everywhere and do whatever they want for entertainment. They came to Lunu to join their club but her mother refuses because he was so young but they regularly came to his house to entertain him. This is the journey of Lunu becoming one year old. In the way of this, they have done so much interesting things. They come together to enjoy themselves. From elephants house to human house and they were loved by every single person of the society. They also went on a school trip that’s really interesting. The story goes on with a simple idea of keeping the children engaged with the dose of entertainment with the help of creating fantasy ideas. The story ends at a chapter ‘Fancy Dress’ where everyone comes together to celebrate the birthday of Lunu. Everyone was excited to see a birthday boy. Because there was a compulsion that everyone needs to come in wearing fancy dress. All were wearing a fancy dress like some are in the outfit of rat, tomato, rabbit and many more. Finally, Lunu comes in baby dress everyone felt astonished to see this and asked his mother why he is wearing this? His mother replied, today he has become one year old and it does not matter how old children can become they will always remain baby to their mother. Here the author has provided a moral for the children. She tries to show the love and affection of a mother toward her children.

Conclusion:
Written in Hindi, easy to understand and decipher, the book is interesting and further made alive by the use of hand-made graphics and images. Pratha Sharma has done well in her purpose to create something for the children who can read Hindi and enjoy her story. It’s short, engaging and animated. As a child, who doesn’t want to read the stories of chirpy animals? Everyone wants!

review by Amit for Featured Books