Gangsta Granny - Book Review

I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the bright red cover with its cute drawing while I was browsing through the book shelves. And its very title “Gangsta Granny!” was intriguing enough to urge me read the book. How often do we come across words like Gangster along with a granny? We may hear some news of an old person being a victim of such but never a Gangsta Granny!

I believe there are two types of children in the world. Ones who would really love to visit their grandparents and the others who don’t. I’m pretty sure the latter is very few, because naturally grandparents tend to spoil and dote on us with so much love and care we are ever so eager to visit them anytime. Sadly, Ben belongs to the other category. He hated visiting his grandma. Nevertheless to his great dislike, his visits had to be quite frequent. To be precise, his parents would drop him off at granny’s every Friday, a day which he would dread through the whole week.

Now, there are too many reasons for Ben to hate the place. It was nothing but cabbage to eat and smell, scrabble so boring to play always. As a matter of fact we can’t blame his Granny either for making these visits that horrible. It’s actually his politeness to appreciate his Granny’s efforts have lead her to have all these misconceptions about Ben’s likes and dislikes. However, life won’t be so miserable for too long as one day Ben finds out that his Granny is the most interesting Granny in the whole world!

The story is narrated in an amusing way to the kids with bunch of funny words and cute drawings scattered here and there. The language is simple and expressive, the incidents are well connected to create great excitement with every turn of page. The character Ben is formed in quite a natural way which resembles the kids of his age everywhere. I believe that kids would really feel Ben as very close to their hearts.

Though the book is focused on entertaining kids it would be a light and fun reading for the adults as well. It would be a fine way to understand the children’s mindset through this book. Not just that, the story carries a clear message to the parents. It’s a pity that most of the parents try so dearly to fulfill their dreams through their kids. They often forget that the kids have their own dreams too. Just because they are not the same dreams as ours or not the common socially appreciated ones doesn’t mean that those dreams are not worth achieving. A person would excel in anything only when they have a passion within them. The story is an eye opener for parents to understand their children and support them to try their strength and follow their passion.

Despite being a kids story, I featured this book in my blog with the hope of reaching the parents and other adults who would have close interactions with kids. The book certainly provides food for thought.