Child Story Book
Children’s Book Reviews: The Gold Dust Letters, By Janet Taylor Lisle
October 30, 2011 | 
Author When choosing books for young children it is important for parents, guardians and teachers to screen each book for quality and appropriateness. The book should be judged on a number of points. As a parent, for each book you read, you should be assessing whether or not the book is at the appropriate level for your child. Does the book meet your standards in terms of skill in encouraging language development, cognitive development, personality development, and social development.
The Gold Dust Letters, by Janet Taylor Lisle is most appropriate for children at an upper elementary level, from age ten to twelve. Angela writes a letter to her fairy god mother, and to her surprise, receives a response! The rolled up letter sprinkles gold dust every time it is opened, but no one can figure out where the gold dust comes from or where it goes. Throughout the story, she and her friends are determined to find out where “Pilaria” is from and how she delivers her letters. In the end, they determine that Pilaria is really Angela’s father.
This story is incredibly essential to a child’s personality and social development. Angela and her friends believe in magic and their beliefs encourage dreaming and creativity. Angela and her father do not have a close relationship, but the discovery that Pilaria is really Angela’s father helps to bring Angela closer to her father. The book encourages communication between parents and children and helps a child to understand that sometimes adults seem like they don’t understand when in reality they do remember what it is like to be a child.
The story is also introduces important themes, such as how to deal with problems at home and divorce. Throughout the story, Angela’s parents are having problems, and in the end we find out that they have separated and that her father has moved out. The value of friendship is introduced as Georgiana and Poco reaffirm their friendship to Angela while trying to console her.
I feel that this book presented strong ideas and important themes while being creative and imaginative at the same time. Not every somber theme has to have a somber explanation, and Janet Taylor Lisle proves that.
Find More Child Story Book Articles
Posted in 
Tags: 
Indian Short Stories: A Window to Our Morals
With the advent of the Internet age, the appeal of Indian short stories seems to have diminished to a large extent. An enormous variety of matter available freely on the web makes it easy for students to download story books and other material at the click of a mouse. This does make one wonder whether the fascination with story books is a feature of an era bygone, or still existent among the present generation in any way.
Though the use of the Internet inculcates new age understanding among children, the thirst for stories can not really have perished away. There are a large number of websites from which one can download story books that otherwise may not be available in hard copy. The Indian short stories that had formed an integral part of the adolescent year of many children are also accessible in their online forms. To download story books and short stories, children are well equipped these days, with adequate know-how on the relevant websites and links to follow.
It is often said that one must change with the times. It must, therefore, be understood that reading Indian short stories from physical books or hearing them from an elder, is something from an ancient era. With stories concerning new-age technology, gaming, tech-heroes and science fiction so easily available on the Internet, children are hardly expected to download story books that contain the same lessons that Indian short stories did. An inherent characteristic is the moral that every story carries with it. Often depicted as animals, the main characters would be representative of common men and women, and their situations reflective of ordinary problems of life. Such was the charm of Indian short stories that they were popularly distributed in a manner that even the lower and lower middle class families could afford them for their children.
Generated out of common folk lore, some of the Indian short stories have been manifested in various versions through the years. These can be discovered when one attempts to download story books on the Internet. Not only do these narratives form a part of the culture, but also the education system. Laden with morals, these tales aim at developing the mind of the child toward good will, honesty and integrity. They play a crucial role in the development of a mindset of the generation that grows up reading them. To be able to download story books, therefore, is a boon, since a huge part of that culture yet has hope of being retained. When your children download story books do ensure they are following the path of righteousness and benevolence thereafter.