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Sona Sharma lives in a large joint family full of happy people who argue sometimes. Relatives come over unannounced, the phone rings often, and everyone is always welcome whatever the time.
   These are Sona's people:
  Amma - Sona's mom. She is a music teacher and singer. She's always humming a song or listening to music.
  Minmini - Minmini means firefly and she is Sona's baby sister who is almost one.
  Appa - Sona's dad. He works with computers all day and sometimes at night too.
  Thatha - Sona's grandfather. He knows a lot of things. And when he doesn't know about something, he tells a story about something else.
  Paatti - Sona's grandmother. She makes the best sweets in the whole world. She always laughs at Thatha's jokes.
 The President - Sona's other grandmother. Sona doesn't know her real name. The President used to be the president of some college, so everyone calls her that still. She lives in the only orange house in the entire neighborhood, called the Orange.
 Joy and Renu - Sona's friends from school. They live a street away and go to school with Sona in an auto-rickshaw.
  Mullai - Sona's auto-rickshaw driver. She picks up Sona, Joy, and Renu, in that order, to drop off at school. In the evening she takes them home--Renu first, Joy next, and Sona last. She's never late and recites a lot of Tamil poetry.
  Elephant - Sona's best friend. He fits perfectly in her toy bag and her cuddly chair and next to her on her pillow. Sona never goes anywhere without him, except, of course, to school.
   
It was Friday morning and Sona was in class. She was sitting in the front with Joy and Renu.
   "Good morning, everyone," said their teacher, Miss Rao. "Today we're going to talk about planet Earth."
   Sona loved planet Earth, so she listened carefully. She didn't want to miss a thing.
   "Our planet Earth is in trouble," said Miss Rao. "Our summers are getting hotter and our rainy seasons are causing more floods. Scientists have been studying this and they believe our planet is heating up--"
   "Heating up?" interrupted Joy.
   "Yes," said Miss Rao. "More cars on the road cause more heat in the air."
   "And more smoke," said Renu.
   "That's right," said Miss Rao. "And our oceans are polluted too."
   "I love going to the beach," said Sona. "But the waves bring a lot of garbage back."
   "Yes, that's because we throw a lot of our garbage into the ocean," said Miss Rao.
   "I don't," said Sona. "Paatti always makes me bring my garbage back in a bag."
   "That's good, Sona," said Miss Rao.
   In geography, Miss Rao showed them photos of melting polar ice and talked about why that was a bad thing. In science, they learned that some garbage stayed around forever.
   "Like what, Miss?" asked Sona.
   "Plastic bottles," said Miss Rao. "And babies' diapers."
   Sona worried about Minmini's diapers staying around forever and ever and stinking forever and ever.
   In math, they did problems about forests disappearing.
 I don't think Elephant would like these problems very much, thought Sona.
   In English, they wrote poems about pollution.
   "Our planet is in trouble," said Renu.
   "But we can fix it," said Miss Rao. "If everyone helps."
   "Even children?" asked Sona.
   "Yes, even children," said Miss Rao. "Start small, start now."
   Sona didn't understand. She raised her hand and asked Miss Rao to explain.
   "When we leave our class and go to play," Miss Rao said, "what do we do?"
   "Bump into each other," said Renu.
   "Before that," said Miss Rao, chuckling.
   "We switch off the lights and fans," said Sona, pointing at the sign near the door.
   "Exactly," said Miss Rao. "Where do we throw our unwanted paper and cardboard?"
   "In the recycling bin," said Joy.
   Miss Rao nodded. "Yes, we have to do that at home too," she said. "If we all look after our planet, we can make a difference. Let's make a pledge. Repeat after me: 'I--insert your name--will look after planet Earth.'"
   "I, Sona Sharma, will look after planet Earth," said Sona.
   And then Joy pledged, and then Renu and the rest of the class.
   "So, what could we do about it when we get home?" asked Miss Rao. "Any ideas?"
   "I'll ask my entire family to look after planet Earth," said Sona.
   "Good idea, Sona," said Miss Rao. "Maybe all of us can work out a plan for our families. Those who bring their plan in on Monday will receive a gold star."
   That evening, when they were returning home in the auto-rickshaw with Mullai, Joy said, "I love getting gold stars."
   "Me too," said Renu.
   "Me too," said Sona. "But even if Miss wasn't giving out gold stars, I'd still want to look after our planet."
   Joy and Renu agreed.
   The moment Paatti opened the door, Sona declared, "I'm going to look after planet Earth, and I'm going to ask everyone to help."
   "Excellent," said Paatti. "I'm sure we can all help."

Sona woke up on Saturday morning to a very quiet house.
   "Where is everyone?" she asked.
   "Maybe they have gone away on vacation," said Elephant.
   Sona tiptoed over to see Minmini, who was sleeping in her cradle. Surely her family wouldn't leave Sona, Minmini, and Elephant and go on vacation.
   Besides, it was December and the season of music. Amma sang at concerts. Paatti and the President took turns looking after Minmini. Sona helped too. She came up with silly songs that made Minmini smile and giggle.
   Sona went downstairs. Paatti was in the garden.
   "What is Paatti doing?" asked Elephant.
   "She is creating a kolam. She uses rice flour to draw designs of all sorts of things, like flowers, pots, and mangoes."
   "Why can't she draw on paper?" asked Elephant. Elephants didn't know about kolams.
   "Kolams are drawn on the ground inside or outside our home," said Sona.
   Every morning Sona woke up to the sound of Paatti's broom sweeping the street outside their gate. Then Paatti washed the area with water and drew a kolam. Some days she created large designs and some days she drew small ones. During festivals, she made special kolams for the particular celebration.
   Sona watched Paatti mark out a square of dots. Then she drew squiggles around the dots to make a squiggly pattern.
   "If I had to walk along the lines of a kolam, I'd get dizzy," said Elephant.
   "Never walk on a kolam--you'd smudge it," said Sona.
   Paatti stood up. "What do you think?" she asked.
   "It's beautiful!" said Sona. "But why are you drawing it here and not in front of the house?"
   "Because I'm practicing for the annual kolam competition," said Paatti. "Don't you remember? I drew a lamp kolam for last year's competition."
   Sona nodded. "Sort of," she said.
   Paatti had filled the ground with kolam designs. Her white dots and squiggles made beautiful patterns on the brown soil.
   "Don't step on them," said Paatti. "I'll pick one of these to draw on the morning of the competition."
   Thatha came into the garden. "I see you're getting ready for the competition," he said. "Sona, did I tell you I'm the chief judge this year?"
   "So, will you give first prize to Paatti?" asked Sona.
   "Not necessarily," said Thatha. "Judges have to be impartial to be fair."
   Thatha was also part of the dawn choir group called the Pasuram Party.
The group sang songs written by Saint Andal, a poet who had lived hundreds of years ago. Some of the members started out at five in the morning.
   They gathered the others as they walked from house to house until they reached the local temple. Paatti explained that the dawn choir was the judging panel for the kolam competition.
   "It's a neighborhood competition," said Paatti, "so everyone knows someone on the judging panel."
   "And it's for fun," said Thatha.
   "But I take it very seriously," said Paatti.
   Thatha chuckled. "Sona and you are exactly the same. You take everything seriously!"
   "That's not a bad thing!" protested Paatti.
   "Paatti," said Sona, "will you show me how to draw a kolam?"
   "Of course," said Paatti. She pinched a bit of rice flour between her finger and thumb and drew on the ground.
   Then Sona had a try. She loved drawing with pencils, pens, and paintbrushes. But drawing
with rice flour was not as easy.
   "Practice makes perfect," said Paatti.
   "Keep trying."
   Elephant watched as Sona got better and better. "Practice makes perfect," he whispered.

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Excerpted from Sona Sharma, Looking after Planet Earth by Chitra Soundar
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