House of Stories - A Book Club for Children

Getting Granny’s Glasses by Ruskin Bond Getting Granny’s Glasses is a short story written for children. The story is about Grandma's journey together with her grandson to buy new glasses for her. Mani, the 11 year old lost his mother in his early childhood and was brought up by his grandmother.  Her eyes were getting weaker, her glasses older. So Mani insisted on getting new glasses for his granny. It was a 2 day journey to Mussoorie and granny’s first trip outside her village after ten years.  The journey on foot and in the bus was quite eventful. Though a landslide in between the journey brought an abrupt stop to their exciting adventure, it was his granny’s willpower that made them continue their journey in a different route. After all, giving up is not an option for a granny who still manages to climb trees even in her late sixties. At last they reached the town, bought new glasses for granny and came back. Mani enjoyed travelling and shopping with his granny. Granny got her vi

The Tree Lover by Ruskin Bond The Tree Lover is a short story based on the author's memories about his grandfather who was a tree lover. Serving as a forest officer in India, he used to plant as many trees as he could. In this book Ruskin Bond talks about his vacation with grandparents and how deeply his grandfather loved trees. He would spend time with them caring for them as his own children. Every monsoon he sets out on a short trip to nearby forests or isolated dry areas and plants seeds, saplings, cuttings so that once the monsoon is over, everything he planted would flourish. The huge old peepal tree that forced its way through the walls of the outhouse was maintained and it became a gala ground for all the creatures.  Once night sets in, the insects would start their orchestra to which little Ruskin would join too. His grandfather had told him that trees can walk and as if assuring what he said, he found it later that all the seeds, saplings, cuttings they planted together s

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond The Blue Umbrella written by Ruskin Bond is a short and simple read. It is humorous and enriched with values for children. This is a story about ten year old Binyadevi, a mountain girl in the village named Garhwal. She is very courageous and possesses good character strength for her age. Binya is in charge of fetching cows in the evening. One such day she happened to see a pretty blue umbrella among the rich picnickers and fell in love with it. Fortunately for her, the woman who owned the blue umbrella coveted leopard’s claw Binya was wearing on her neck to ward off evil and asked her the same in exchange of the blue umbrella. The pretty blue umbrella became the talk of the village and she went everywhere with it. Some became envious and one man Ram Bharosa, the tea seller coveted it so badly that he made his worker boy to steal it from her. The boy stole it from her, but together along with her brother Bijju managed to get it back f