Uses of a Book

It seems that Is It The Same For You? is being put to good use on Republic Day. Many thanks to Vinitha R. for tagging me with these pictures.
Here is what Vinitha had to say in a comment about the book -
"We keep discussing about how many ways a picture book can be read. This book has so many layers. One reading will ONLY be the reading of the illustration. Because the illustrations (oh the beautiful beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful illustrations) itself bring out so many layers..."

Below, a closeup of the previous picture, where the young girl on the right, wearing a headscarf, looks toward a friend speaking up in the audience. 

She could be the girl in the book.

Is It The Same For You? is available at Seagull Books.

Here is what Vinitha had to say:

The book came in last night. (I'd picked it up from @khalisi_singh and read it at Jodhpur, #Kitaabo while we were waiting to head for the festival). There are books that startle and move you; there are books that make you want to write, there are books where the illustrations and the text are powerfully matched and matchless, there are book that make you think. Is it the Same For You? by Priya Sebastian and Neha Singh is all of this. Beautifully produced by Seagull Books it is something that I've read and re read many times over in less than 24 hours.

Read it first to my 14 year old daughter and 12 year old son. Then read it to around 40 adolescent girls at a public park in Bandra.

Where could the story be set in? The kids figured sugested Kashmir, Delhi and a bunch of other places. What is curfew? They said bandh. So we talked of what curfew could mean.
They connected with the story of a young girl... when we asked how old is the girl in the story they immediately said 13 or 14. When I asked how did they get that... they said "emotional maturity" (... after we re read the story they understood the period stain....) they immediately connected with the page where the mother lays her head on the girls lap... They've had weary parents. We spoke then of how often we do have to parent a parent... They connected with loss and fear ..
We talked of body changes, about times when we've been groped and have had to "let it go". They connected most to mood changes, the laughing, the girl who looked up to the night sky and shared her secrets and how despite squabbling with a sibling how when that sibling is not around they fear and worry.