User:Mediamatters2U/sandbox

Seventeen Petals is a lyrical collection of growing up stories composed by Sukriti Sharma together with her brother, Simon, to support healthcare efforts for children in the refugee camps of developing countries. In this cute musical book, the two young authors glean some gems of wisdom on the profound, eternal, and yet everyday, urgent themes of the human spirit. Sukriti and Simon come together – even as they are coming of age – in their quest for a meaningful storytelling endeavor. The budding minds invite us to partake in the cogent narratives, embedded in traditions and their own family lore. They bid the readers to take a pause and to bestir their own imaginations. The subtext of these stories, written during the difficult times of the new coronavirus pandemic, is no less inspiring: life is about the indomitable human spirit, about our heightened sense of awareness, about simply waking up. The book includes 17 timeless stories that lucidly talk about the same number of human personality traits: Acceptance, Humility, Reverence, Virtue, Purpose, Simplicity, Commitment, Diligence, Service, Consistency, Assurance, Willingness, Loyalty, Sensitivity, Compassion, Wisdom, and Devotion. The book is so rich in its purpose for modern life and calming to the mind that Iswari P Pandey, Ph.D., the award-winning author of 'South Asian in the Mid-South: Migration of Literacies', who is now Professor at California State University, writes in the Foreword, " Going through these stories has made me feel calmer, richer, and more purposeful."

Author The author of this book is Sukriti Sharma, a biology major at James Madison University. Her unrelenting articles in the past had successfully influenced both newspaper and magazine editors to dedicate more space to reading materials for younger audiences, as well as younger bylines. One of her articles that ran at ozy.com in 2017 was selected by Aspen Institute for its “Five Best Ideas of The Day. Sukriti's book can be found on the shelves of Fairfax County Public Library.

Content The book is a collection of 'a sort of bed time stories' which she heard from her parents while growing up and some other stories she wrote with stories ideas from her brother who always teased her intellectual curiosity with simple yet profound questions like how do we wake up? The seventeen stories of the book talk about 17 personality traits through interesting incidents and characters. One unforgettabe feature of this book is such that the adults find more meanings in this book while children enjoy reading them.

Reception Individually published through Amazon in 2020, the book trended among coming-of-age readers and has received encouraging reviews. The book has been purchased and read globally since it can be bought online on both kindle and paperback versions. Newspapers and web journals across Northern Virginia and beyond ran the news about its publication.