Introducing Your Child To Bad Touch? This Book Might Help

Author: K Krishna

Illustrators: Ayesha Sadr and Ishaan Dasgupta

Publisher: Scholastic India

About the book –

The book, ‘No Touch’ talks about the issue of child abuse, good touch and bad touch in a story format.

In the story, a school going girl named Sargam dons a detective’s hat trying to unearth dark secrets in her house. It all begins on a regular note with a child having fun at pretend play. However, later, it gets serious when she calls up her friend to know if the friend has a secret to tell her. The secret turns out to be real dark with the friend confiding about a neighbour abusing her and telling to keep it a secret, not even letting her parents know about it.

Sargam feels awful and recalls one such conversation her father had with her about good touch, bad touch and what to do when faced with such a situation. Sargam gets concerned if her younger sister is aware about the same and goes off to enquire and educate her.

My review –

This book is a brilliant attempt to teach the children about child abuse for 3 reasons –

1. It is in a short story format with bold illustrations going well with the story.
2. All the 3 main characters are children who speak in a language the young readers can easily identify with, and
3. It emphasizes on the means available to the children using a simple and catchy phrase – Yell and Tell.

My verdict –

In this age when child abuse is a rampant truth in our society and not limited to a particular gender only, there is an increased necessity to talk about it as adults and also to talk about it with our children. It is an uncomfortable topic, yet this does not mean we can afford to sweep it away under the carpet and assume everything is fine. We need to speak up. I would say it is first a must read for parents and then for children.

Also Read: Book Review: Pop-up Pull-out Picture Atlas

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