Book Review of Hats, Hoods, and Humiliation by Hiranya Verma

Book Review of Hats, Hoods, and Humiliation by Hiranya Verma

Title – Hats, Hoods, and Humiliation

Author – Hiranya Verma

No. of pages – 321

Version- Kindle

Genre – Self-Help / Children’s book

Starting with the title of this book that piqued my interest, in the author’s own words, “An embarrassing hat is like a source of humiliation. Whereas a hood you use to hide your face, thus blocking the humiliation”. What a lovely title, isn’t it?

About the Author:

Hiranya Verma is a 10-year old girl (surprised? well even I reacted in the same way too), studying in standard 6th in Navy Children School, Kochi. Born to parents who are doctors by profession, and has an older brother, with whom she shares a brilliant equation. She likes to draw, paint, read, write (all these skills are pretty evident in this book), and plays the keyboard. She loves the experience called life. This is her debut book and she plans to write more books in the future.

After reading about the title and the young author, I am sure you must be intrigued enough to know more about the book, so let me share my take on it in my review.

About the Book:

This is a self-help book in which the author has shared many emotional aspects of life along with the ways to deal with them, effectively. You might have read many other self-help books but what makes this one stand out is the real-life experiences and anecdotes, the author has shared from her personal life. This makes it an interesting, relatable read and not a patronizing one, as the author has mentioned in the book, “Ugh, I don’t want this to be an English textbook”.

Summary:

The book is divided into 7 chapters and in every chapter, the author has shared her wisdom on various sensitive topics like Humiliation, Bullying, Self-pity, affirmations, apologizing, confessions, guilt, relationships, etc. She has shared the importance of apologizing, forgetting, and forgiving others thus saving a relationship.

Throughout the book, I was amazed at the maturity with which the author has penned down her thoughts that reflects her strong emotional intelligence. I will quote a line from the book that I too personally follow, “Listen to your heart and you will never be wrong”.

Hats, Hoods, and Humiliation

The author has shared a slice of her life and through her personal experiences, she has explained the problems she had faced (and many other kids of her age face) and how she managed to overcome humiliation and discovered her inner strengths to sail through every situation without stressing over it. She did not shy away from sharing an incident when she blasted her anger on her friend, kicking a ball at his face, only to realize it was not right, later.

I particularly liked the analogy where the author has compared laughter with water and anger with lemon and how one should make lemonade out of it. She emphasized on keeping a perfect balance of lemon and water and how we should balance our life, similarly. She advises laughing on the things that make you feel humiliated and ignore them as much as you can. Her workable solutions are simple yet practical.

She has concluded every chapter with “Points to ponder” that summarizes the entire chapter, pointwise. One of the many things I liked in the book is the last part which is a short quiz to check whether you” whine or shine”. I really loved the idea as it’s a quick recap of the book. One more notable thing in the book is the cute graphics, hand-drawn and painted by the author herself. The language of the book is simple and the writing style is conversational. The reader would feel as if he /she is having a one to one discussion with the author. I liked the honesty with which the book has been presented in its original form, without beautifying it.

Verdict:

I would definitely recommend this book to everyone – kids and their parents as well. I am sure the kids, especially the teens and preteens would nod their heads in agreement while reading it and relate to most (if not all) of the instances. It will surely help them in dealing with their issues in a better, matured, and sensible way. I will read out the book to my kids once they are old enough to grasp the essence of it.

On the other hand, parents will get a better insight into their children’s lives and the problems they face which they do not even realize. It will help the parents understand their folks’ perspective better, and guide and comfort them in such situations.

Also, I would recommend reading this book to every adult, even if you are not a parent because sometimes, in the hustle-bustle of our lives, we tend to forget these life lessons and often need a reminder on how to tackle those unpleasant incidents in life. And who would be better than a kid mentoring us through the path?

Rating: 4.5/5

A big pat on the author’s back and congratulations to the parents for raising a wonderful child.

Availability:

You can grab your copy of Hats, Hoods, and Humiliation on Amazon Kindle here. It is available in an ebook format, priced at Rs. 49/- and free on Kindle Unlimited.

You may want to check more books for children here.

 

Image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay