And Girls Will Be Girls

About the Book ‘She was there every morning, chasing butterflies, stalking squirrels and mynahs, her voice brimming with laughter, her slight figure flitting about between the trees.’

Childhood memories are cherished by everybody. They are a reminder of a simpler time, a time when we easily appreciated the mundane, when excitement and joy were aplenty and when little caused us worry or even fear. Every experience of childhood is unique and special and only as adults do we realize how little we let come in our way to fully enjoying life in those days of unbothered pleasure.

In And Girls Will Be Girls, Ruskin Bond anthologizes short stories and personal essays that speak to this unbridled delight. Whether it was a cricket match that changed a life, or an umbrella that became a friend, or nostalgia over old love-this book has something for everybody!

About the Author Ruskin Bond is known for his signature simplistic and witty writing style. He is the author of several bestselling short stories, novellas, collections, essays and children’s books; and has contributed a number of poems and articles to various magazines and anthologies. At the age of twenty-three, he won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his first novel, The Room on the Roof. He was also the recipient of the Padma Shri in 1999, Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi Government in 2012, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Landour, Missouri, with his adopted family.

Introduction As children we often experience everything with an intensity adults may not be able to comprehend. When you're a child, every adventure, every mean word, every connection seems to us to be everlasting and’ makes us feel as though the feeling caused by it will never go away. But what makes the experience of childhood remarkably different from that of adulthood, is the light that children carry within them, as compared to the cynicism of the adults around them.

This book is a collection of stories that reminds us of this spirit of childhood that enables the mundane to turn into magical. It paints a picture, of the adventures of girlhood, and makes it clear that girlhood is a rich and varied experience, one distinctly beautiful from the other.

This book tells the tale of a girl who gives up her most prized possession to bring a sad man some joy; it takes us to the world of a shape shifting girl; a unique friendship that makes a boring summer vacation memorable; and ghosts that are looking for someone to go dancing with. This book is for children and adults alike, it's for anybody who needs a happy dose of nostalgia, or characters that speak to them. All you need to understand to read this book is that 'girls just wanna have fun'!

Book's Contents and Sample Pages