Children Story Book Review : Aru’s Balcony Garden by Arundhati Nithiyanandhan

Reading level: 1 - 12 years

Paperback: 26 pages

Publisher: White Falcon Publishing

Published On: 24 October 2018

Language: English

ISBN: 978-9388459136

Price: 199/-

The story revolves around Arundhati, a school going cute girl. She lives in an apartment community of a metro city and has a small garden in her balcony. Her balcony garden is full of blooming plants. She loves to observe them. Every morning she likes to spend some quality time with her plants before leaving for her school. The story is about one day when she feels that the wilted plants are asking her for water. In her favourite teddy mug, she fetches some water from the kitchen and waters them. The plants bloom and thank her.

Reading Aru’s Balcony Garden, reminds me of my terrace garden in which I used to water plants when I was in school. One day, my teacher theoretically taught me plant structure and its functions. To explain the things practically to me, my mother gave me an empty coconut shell and asked me to fill it with soil. Then, she gave me a cutting of sprouted potato and asked me to plant it in coconut shell with care. To balance the shell on slab, I placed it in a bowl. I put them in the sunshine on my windowsill. I daily watered that plant. I loved to watch it growing one leaf after another. When the plant was about 6 inches high, one day out of curiosity, I picked up the coconut shell and lifted it from the bowl. To my utmost surprise, the snowy white roots had grown out of the eye of the shell!

When my father returned home after an official tour, he was glad to see my interest in plants. Next day, he bought several pots made of clay. They were of different sizes and shape. He also bought some small packets of seasonal vegetable seeds. He prepared the terrace garden for me and sowed seeds like sem (beans), spinach, eggplant, fenugreek, tomato etc. in different pots. I never forget to water them and was eager to eat vegetables grown from my terrace garden. Till now, my craze to eat organic vegetables grown by self have not faded.

The author, Arundhati Nithiyanandhan is just seven years old and lives in Bangalore, India. She got inspired to tell stories after drawing her first storybook in a storytelling workshop conducted by #blrlitfest 2017. She loves telling new stories to her father while they both go for a walk in the evening. She has authored two more books namely ‘Lost and Found’ and ‘Likes and Dislikes’. She loves to play in the sand. Her hobby is to paint colour sketches. She creates her stories from her day-to-day incidents and most of them are treasured part of her childhood.