Book
For The Class Of 2010
Al Raines
UNDERCOVER UTOPIA, Pp 116 (with FREE music CD), Rs 72/-

For The Class Of 2010 by Al Raines, is a handbook for the intellectual 21st century teenager. If you are a radical thinker, love listening to REM, are spiritual, rather than religious, then buy this book.

The author has a teenage daughter Vedica who’ll be in Class X in 2010. The book is meant for Vedica’s peer group.

Like Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, For the Class of 2010 is a book of short subjective essays discussing various topics. There are youth-related topics like youth icons, peer pressure, parents, friends, love, challenges, adversity as well as not-so-seemingly youth related topics like populism, poverty, spirituality, sins, religion, law, social contract, taxes and karma.

The author doesn’t care to be politically correct. He is rather of the opinion, ’you can kick the butt of all the relativists and their “oh so liberal this is my point of view, you are entitled to yours crap”’. Though the author’s very strong viewpoints on various issues may not go down well with all readers, it is interesting to read opinions which aren’t pseudo-objective or with the sitting-on-the-fence attitude.

Very few books for the youth have dared to say that children may need to rebel against parents. The book warns children not to blindly obey parents. If parents come in the way of their children creating, making or learning something, the author feels that children have all the right to rebel. Let not a youngster take up engineering when he wants to paint or sing songs just because his father wants him to be an engineer.

For the Class of 2010 puts forward a radical method of ascertaining the depth and the real meaning of friendship. It encourages the youth to think about what their friends would say of them at their funeral and vice versa. If they can’t think of a funeral speech of much substance, the person was never really a friend.

For the Class of 2010 has a musical treat for you. I-Tune, the anthem of For The Class Of 2010, encourages youngsters to discover their inner music. Enclosed is a CD with the book’s anthem set to lively rock music.