A Children’ s Bookshelf Selection: Each month our editor’ s pick the best books for children and young adults by age to be a part of the children’ s bookshelf. These are editorial recommendations made by our team of experts. Our monthly reading list includes a mix of bestsellers and top new releases and evergreen books that will help enhance a child’ s reading life. Ruskin Bond's first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novels (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), essays, poems and children's books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.