Touched by Magic
Far, far away, in the busy city of Toronto, there lives a magic girl. This girl started reading at the age of 2, and had her first book published by the time she was 8! A 105-page book it is, mind you, and masterfully segmented into 10 chapters. Not a child’s play by any means!
3 years younger to her is a chatterbox boy growing up between Bangalore and Kolkata. Do top-grade chatterboxes make good readers? Usually not! Our boy was no exception either. He needed an army of humans to leave their work and listen to his ideas and questions all through the day, or else he’d get just terrihorribly bored. And our boy didn’t read well even at the age of 5!
But one fine morning, history changed its course. Our boy got hold of his mom’s Kindle, and because he loved exploring all things electronic (and explaining them over and over to his grandparents who feigned interest as they had nowhere else to run to), he took quite a liking to it. The mom, sly as ever, grabbed the opportunity. She showed him from Facebook a picture of the magic girl — an 8-year-old Anushka Bhattacharjee with sparkling, intelligent eyes! Our chatterbox was so fascinated by the idea of a kid almost as thin as him authoring books, that he immediately begged his mom to get him Anushka didi’s book — ‘My Magic Mirror’. Boy, wasn’t this the perfect moment the Mom had been waiting for?
“I can get you the book. In fact, I can get it for you on the Kindle! I can even let you have the Kindle for half a day every day for one full month. But you’ve to promise me that you will read the book all by yourself and not have anyone else read it to you.”
Thus, magic flew from the shore of Lake Ontario to the banks of River Ganges, and the boy raced through pages at an amazing, never-seen-before pace. By the end of a month, he no longer faltered while reading! And by the end of the next year, oh boy, he was on ‘The Diary of the Wimpy Kid — Book 3’! ‘My Magic Mirror’ remained his favorite though, and on many lazy weekend afternoons for the next many months, he and his mom talked about Ara and Felice, the sister-brother duo who were the protagonists of the story, and how they had got curiously trapped inside the story of the three little…. Oops, can’t give out more!
Anyway, the mom was super-happy that her strategy had worked, but alas, she never got her Kindle back!
Meanwhile, Anushka’s magic kept doing wonders in Toronto. Over the course of the next 2 years, she went on to publish one more story book, a STEM book for kids, and two activity books. She shared her author journey on different platforms and podcasts, inspired many little kids to take up writing, earned love and admiration from within and across the borders of Canada, and donated much of her proceeds to various non-profits.
But do you know what tops it all? That Anushka’s magic touch created one more magic girl in her very own household! In April 2022, her little sister Arushi Bhattacharjee had her first book published, and trust your ears when you hear this — she is no more than 6!!! Together, Anushka and Arushi have 9 published books to their name till date!
In case you are curious to know more about these extremely gifted sisters and their ongoing works, well, they have an active Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ArushiAnushkaChildAuthors?mibextid=ZbWKwL. Feel free to have a glance.
And let me add here a list of their books… See, I so loved Anushka’s writing in ‘My Magic Mirror’ that I just couldn’t resist the temptation to bring these works to your notice. Little Arushi will enter our Kindle very soon. My chatterbox-cum-reader son, now 7, can’t wait to read an author who is younger and thinner than him!
Sister authors, may you march on. May you keep drawing other little kids towards books and Kindles, pencils and writing pads. And may your eyes never lose their shine, and your smile, the innocence.
With love,
The-sly-mom-of-the-chatterbox-whom-you-transformed
Books by Anushka Bhattacharjee:
1. My Magic Mirror: Adventure and Mystery in the Magical world of Fantasy (My Magic Series Book 1) — https://www.amazon.in/dp/B097PZQPST...
2. The Wishing Tree: An Adventure in Imagination Land
3. My Magic Mirror — Activity Book: Coloring; Maze; Crosswords and Lots of Fun! https://amzn.eu/d/8JJiQTA
4. The Wishing Tree — Activity Book: Coloring; Maze; Crosswords and Lots of Fun! https://amzn.eu/d/eZNTIET
5. The Sun, Our RockSTAR!: A STEM Book for Kids https://amzn.eu/d/37dG5vb
Books by Arushi Bhattacharjee:
1. The Adventurous Kids: A Mission in the Magic Town: 1 https://amzn.eu/d/42ZCLyk
2. T-Rex Trouble!!!: An Adventure in Dinosaur Land: 2 (The Adventurous Kids) https://amzn.eu/d/3cEDqr3
3. The Adventurous Kids — Activity Book: Coloring; Maze; Crosswords; Additions and Lots of Fun! https://amzn.eu/d/eXAsm7B
4. T-Rex Trouble — Activity Book: Coloring; Maze; Crosswords; Additions and Lots of Fun! (The Adventurous Kids) https://amzn.eu/d/fGRSzxc
- Antara (12-Dec-2022)
