Going to School in India
By Lisa Heydlauff
Charlesbridge Publishing Inc., 2005

Review by Pooja Makhijani
From Kahani April 2005

While some of your cousins in India may take the bus to school, eat sandwiches and fruit in the cafeteria, and play after-school sports – not much different from the way you do – many children in India experience school in a much different way.

In the many stories in Going to School in India by Lisa Heydlauff (Charlesbridge Publishing Inc., 2005), children talk about going to school on a mountaintop in Kashmir, going to school on a railway station platform in Orissa, or going to school by the sea in Pondicherry. They share an issue of Wallpaper, a newspaper written and edited by 12 boys who live and work on the street. Wallpaper is pasted on the walls of New Delhi for everyone to read. They describe a government session under a mango tree where Suresh, age 9, from Pura Village in Madhya Pradesh says, “In my opinion, all children in India deserve a chance to go to school and to learn things that they would like to learn.” Most importantly, they reveal their lives outside of school, their likes and dislikes, and the changes they would like to bring to their communities.

But each day, at the same time, millions of children do not attend school. Many children have to work to help their families survive. Some cannot afford textbooks and pencils. Some children find that the school is taught in a language they cannot understand. And others are treated differently because they practice another religion.

All the stories in this book can help us learn to see and appreciate the many differences that exist among children in other parts of the world. The book is a celebration of what school can be.

“In India, flags are always waving, people are dancing and singing, doing pujas, shouting slogans, and eating lots of sweets at festivals,” says Suresh. “What is it like where you go to school?”