Right! So the books has proved that our scientist President is very fond of children and would go to the extent of writing a book, keeping the young in mind. They say neva judge a book by its cover, but I guess you can make an exception in this case.
If any one of you have heard the usual sppeches of Kalam, u’d know that most of the time all he’s saying is ’’Dream dream and dream, for dreams turn to thoughts and thoughts turn to action’’. The pretty much preaches the same thing. But he’s thrown in a lot of childhood memories and stuff bout bombs and rocks and you know how the list goes.
One of the chapters is even included in the AP State Board English Syllabus for class 11th. I had the privelige of memorising word for word, the entire chapter last year, for else, we dont receive full marks.
So you’ll find a lot of encouragement for the youth to think out of the box and all that in this book.
He also shows his firm belief in secularism as well as a universal god in the book, ofcourse theres this huge chapter on patriotism and all that, I mean he’s the president after all, Desh ki Taareefdari to karna hi hai na bhai!
Its not that the book is only about youth, somewhere in the middle, the person who isnt so tech-savvy might feel like yawning since Kalam drifts into this realm of Missiles and missions whose names are pretty long abbreviations like ABCDEFGH yadda yadda.
somewhere along the way he starts teaching us physics, which frankly speaking is not needed, coz the average human doesnt really care by XYZ moves at 44.4 mph and not 44.41 mph. at the end of each chapter, there is a summary of it, highlighting the important aspects of the chapter.
In the book he speaks of the great role the teachers have played in his life, right from his high school physics teacher, to one Prof. Totadri to Vikram Sarabhai et al, and also emphasises on the need to promote education to a higher level in an unbiased way. So he is basically writing a lot of stuff, that you learn in school(apart from the studies), which most students dunt listen to coz they’e staring at the babe in the front bench.
But otherwise, its a good buy. I mean it doesnt give you the fits of Five Point Someone, or the intensity of Lord of the Rings, but in its little special way, the book is a good attempt to mould the youth into better citizens of the country.
I’d give the book a 7.5 on 10.