Pandita Ramabai (For Children)

It is a children’s version of the full-length biography of Pandita Ramabai. It tells how a girl who was taught to read the old Sanskrit books lost her family in a famine, came to know Jesus, and spent her life rescuing widows and hungry girls and giving the women of India a Bible they could understand.

An Indian woman who lived from 1858 to 1922. She was such a great scholar that the wise teachers of Calcutta honoured her with a title, and she became one of the first Indian women to speak up in public for girls and widows. She became a Christian, opened a school for young widows, founded Mukti, a home for thousands of girls and women, and translated the Bible into everyday Marathi.

Every chapter is short and made to be read aloud. It begins with a Bible verse, tells one part of Ramabai’s story, shows one simple thing it means for you, and ends with a short prayer. Three questions follow, to talk about together.

Some of it is sad. Ramabai’s family died in a famine, her husband died young, and she worked among child widows and hungry girls. The book does not pretend otherwise, but it tells these parts gently, for children, and it is above all a story of how God cared for Ramabai and used her to care for thousands of others.

Yes. They come mostly from Ramabai’s own writings and letters, and from people who knew her. The words in quotation marks are her own words, or the words of people who were there.

It is for children, to be read aloud by a grown-up or read by an older child alone. There is also a teen edition, and the full-length biography for older readers.