The Emperor – Live the Dream By Ram Joshi | Inspirational Book Review

Here at Thinkerviews, we are fans of edutainment – books that educate without being heavy. Life is a continual battle for most of us and require us to adapt and change all through our journeys, how then do you prepare your children for this complex journey?

The best way to teach children the principles by which life should be lived is through stories – especially allegorical tales. As Indians have successfully done it for millennia – stories of Hitopadesha and Panchtantra utilise animals and birds to teach children important lessons of life.

And not only children, in today’s world, adults also need rejuvenation at times. And so recently, when we connected with author Ram Joshi, we had a chance to read The Emperor – Live the Dream , which is an inspirational book.

Here are quick links to some books in this genre we got a chance to read recently.

• Finding The Magic in You by Shivam
• Embrace Your Fear By Sara Khan | Book Review
• Don’t Startup By Karthik Kumar | Book Review
• Walks Through Life: Stories By Santhosh K. Komarraju | Book Review
• Chanakya’s 7 Secrets Of Leadership By Radhakrishnan Pillai | Book Review
• The Ineligible Millionaire by Tarun Varshney | Book Review
• Make Your Own Luck By Bob Miglani & Rehan Yar Khan | Book Review
• Everest Ki Beti | Inspiring Journey Of Arunima Sinha | Book Review
• Moment of signal by Sreedhar Bevara | Book Review

Thank you Mr. Joshi for providing us with a review copy of this book, published in 2020, by Nation Press, and here are our thoughts and unbiased review of the same.

Book Cover:

The book cover to this story of the Emperor shows us a penguin standing tall with a mark on his chest while the ocean churns at his feet and the mountains gleam with sunshine at his back. It is a beautiful image and will remind you of the nature and documentary shows featuring penguins and life in Antarctica, this majestic part of the earth, which remains covered under ice for half the year.

The image is a good choice as this is the first hint that the book features a penguin as its central characters and these cute creatures have universal appeal to people around the world, especially children.

The Plot:

Winter is about to loosen its grip on Antarctica and as the Sun comes back, life comes back. A baby penguin is born and named Emperor by his loving mother. Known to his friends as Em, he survives the first few dangerous months and then becomes one of the many penguins living in this part of the world per the nature’s rhythm and schedules.

Em, however, harbours a secret wish deep within him. He wants to climb the mountains, and explore the world beyond them, and he wants to FLY…

But there is always a reason to put this off, he is learning to live, he is taking life as it comes, he is surviving, he is having fun with friends…Years go by, until the tragic loss of his friends jolts him awake and he realises how fragile life can be. He is one of the lucky ones to have survived for so many years, but there are no guarantees when it comes to the future.

From this place of grief, he starts a journey towards the mountain.

But his path is filled with adversities – not only he will have to survive the frozen Antarctic winter with no regular food, there are also predators to be faced and fought.

Will he survive his journey? Will he ever fulfil his dreams of flying?

Views And Reviews:

You may know that the species of penguins called the Emperor Penguins are amongst the tallest, largest penguins and it is quite apt as the title of the book and the name of the penguin featured here. Em here also has to conquer not only the outside world, but his internal fears and stay true to his dreams. He needs just as much courage as an Emperor would.

If you have seen documentaries and films featuring penguins, you would know that although they are very endearing creatures, flying is not their forte. They live on land and sea and seem to survive in the harshest conditions on planet Earth. There are number of animated films around where the Penguin chicks want to fly e.g., Happy Feet.

So a Penguin harbouring a dream of flying is a good metaphor for almost everyone with a seemingly impossible dream. Em is even more like us as he is also someone who finds it hard to concentrate on working hard for his dreams. He starts working towards the big plans, and then he gets distracted by short-term pleasures.

Entertainment and aspiration – he craved to do both. But he found himself doing nothing.

And then there are his elders around him who advise him how Penguins have behaved over generations and how he needs to learn to get food and keep himself safe from the predators. There is always a reason to put off his goals:

In the moment when his willpower was at the lowest, his rational mind made the decision that made the most sense to others.

So he gets stuck into a routine of getting through the day, finding food, chatting with friends – as we all do. And sometimes what we cannot achieve is expressed through illogical thoughts:

Wouldn’t it be great if all of our dreams came true just with our wishes, without doing anything about it?

We all know that it takes hard work and dedication and yet sometimes we blame our circumstances or think that we could have fulfilled all our dreams if we had better circumstances and so on. We start to focus on external factors and facilities rather than building our internal strength. And sometimes only a shock can get us out of our rut and our comfortable life. And we realise that we need to live every day as if it is our last day. That’s when we take charge:

Em learned that he could consciously decide how to respond in any situation instead of his emotions reacting on his behalf. He should not let the outer world or circumstances control his inner self.

But another important lesson to learn is that we don’t have to climb the whole mountain in one go. We may have big dreams but we can achieve them through taking small steps. Once we divide our goals into small, realistic steps, we have a much better chance at success:

All I need to take care of is climbing one milestone at a time. And once I get there, that would be my new ground to climb another.

For at every milestone opens up a new world full of possibilities and ready to be explored.

The book is written in simple language and can be enjoyed by young and old readers. There are a few errors here and there of proofreading and typographical nature, but nothing to take away from the experience of reading, e.g.:

Page 12:
It took a long, but finally he reached his destination.
This should be:
It took long or It took a long time, but finally he reached his destination.

Summary:

If you are looking for a story that talks about fulfilling your dreams and overcome all the obstacles on the way, then this little book is worth your time….

To all the crazy ones who do not have wings but have the dream to fly, I want to tell you that it is possible.

The first step is always to start…..

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 7.5 out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy – The Emperor By Ram Joshi – Paperback – Amazon India
• Buy – The Emperor By Ram Joshi – Kindle Ebook – Amazon India
• Buy – The Emperor By Ram Joshi – Paperback – Amazon US
• Buy – The Emperor By Ram Joshi – Kindle Ebook – Amazon US

Over To You:

If you already have read the book do share your remarks and thoughts via comments below. Does this review help you in making your decision to buy or read the book? Do not forget to share this article with your friends over various social networks via Twitter, Facebook and others. And yes, you may like to subscribe to our RSS feeds and follow us on various Social networks to get latest updates for the site to land right in your mail box.