Grace & Her
Adventures
A spirited little girl. A world full of wonders. Stories that shape young hearts.
Meet Grace — curious, courageous, and endlessly full of wonder. In every book in this series, Grace sets off on a new adventure across continents, cultures, and discoveries — bringing geography, diversity, friendship, and life's greatest lessons to life for young readers aged 4–11.
One Little Girl. The Whole Wide World. A Million Things to Discover.
The Growing Up with Grace series is built around one of the most universally beloved figures in children's literature: the curious, spirited, unstoppable little girl who sees the world not as it is, but as it could be. Grace is that girl. And with each book in this series, she takes your child somewhere extraordinary — to the iconic landmarks of Europe, the ancient wonders of Asia, the vibrant cultures of Africa, the breathtaking wild of the Americas, and far beyond — weaving geography, history, friendship, and the most important values a child can carry into every page of every adventure.
Written by the mother-daughter duo of Nandini A. Iyengar and Anushya Iyengar, the series brings a rare double gift to each story: the wisdom and craft of an experienced author with a lifetime of storytelling, and the authentic perspective of a young co-author who knows exactly what makes a child's heart race with excitement and wonder.
"Every great adventure begins with a curious heart. Grace's adventures begin at the door — and end at the edges of the world." — Nandini & Anushya Iyengar
These are not just storybooks. They are passports. Every title in the series gives young readers a vivid, joyful, beautifully told journey into a part of the world they may never have imagined — and sends them back from that journey with new ideas, new vocabulary, new heroes, and a new, expansive sense of what their own life might hold.
Begin the Adventure →Six Gifts in Every Adventure
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A World-Class Geography Lesson — Hidden in a StoryEvery continent, every landmark, every culture visited in Grace's journeys is richly and accurately described — making learning feel as natural as play.
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A Role Model Who Looks Like CourageGrace is not fearless. She is brave — and that is so much better. She feels scared, feels uncertain, and goes anyway. That is the model every child needs.
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The Beauty of Cultural DiversityFrom the foods people eat to the languages they speak to the ways they celebrate and mourn — Grace meets every culture with curiosity and joy, modelling exactly the attitude we want in our children.
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Friendship, Kindness & BelongingEverywhere Grace goes, she makes friends. And in making friends, she teaches readers that connection is possible anywhere — that human warmth crosses every border.
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Resilience When Things Go WrongAdventures never go exactly to plan — and neither does life. Grace shows children what it looks like to adapt, persist, and find the magic even in the unexpected.
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A Love of Reading That Lasts a LifetimePaced for momentum, written for wonder, and built to make every child feel that the next page — and the next book — is the best one yet.
Every Book a New Adventure. Every Page a New Discovery.
Each title in the series takes Grace — and your child — somewhere extraordinary. A different continent. A different culture. The same irresistible spirit of curiosity and courage.
Grace Explores the World
A Little Girl's Big Adventures Across Continents. Grace takes young readers on an unforgettable journey — from the Eiffel Tower to the Great Wall, from the savannas of Africa to the icy wilderness of Antarctica — filled with magical discoveries, cultural treasures, and life lessons that inspire and delight.
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Grace in Japan
Follow Grace as she embarks on a quest through the enchanting landscapes and vibrant traditions of Japan. From the bustling streets of Tokyo to the serene beauty of Kyoto’s temples, Grace uncovers the wonders of this fascinating country. Along the way, she learns about origami, tries delicious sushi, marvels at cherry blossoms, and even experiences a traditional tea ceremony.
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Grace Fun Filled Day at the Mall
Follow Grace as she explores the mall, where every corner holds a new surprise—from the bustling toy shop to the aroma of fresh-baked cookies at the food court. Through her eyes, readers will experience the excitement, joy, and curiosity of a day packed with laughter, discovery, and heartwarming moments.
Order on AmazonNot all those who wander are lost — especially when they are four years old and full of questions.
Growing Up with GraceA curious child is a world-changing child. All they need is the right story to begin.
Nandini A. IyengarThe world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
Saint AugustineTwelve Amazing Places Grace Takes Your Child
From the tallest towers to the deepest oceans, from ancient wonders to modern marvels — Grace's adventures span every corner of an extraordinary planet.
The Eiffel Tower, Paris
Grace discovers the City of Light — its art, its food, its romance, and the engineering marvel that has towered over Paris since 1889.
The Great Wall of China
Over 13,000 miles of ancient stone — Grace learns about the emperors, the workers, and the incredible history embedded in every brick.
The Maasai Mara Safari
Lions, elephants, wildebeest, and the great migration — Grace experiences the most spectacular wildlife event on Earth and the people who have lived alongside it for centuries.
Machu Picchu & the Inca Empire
High in the Andes, Grace discovers the lost city of the Incas — learning about an ancient civilisation whose engineering, astronomy, and agriculture still astonish the world.
The Taj Mahal & Beyond
Grace comes home — to India's extraordinary diversity of languages, cuisines, festivals, and the iconic monument to eternal love that draws millions of visitors every year.
The Grand Canyon & Niagara Falls
Nature's most dramatic stages — Grace stands at the edge of the world's most magnificent natural wonders and asks the question every child asks: how did this happen?
The Great Barrier Reef
The largest living structure on Earth — Grace dives into the most biodiverse marine ecosystem in the world and discovers why protecting it matters to every human being on the planet.
Mount Fuji & Tokyo
Ancient tradition and ultra-modern innovation side by side — Japan gives Grace one of her most fascinating cultural contrasts, from samurai history to bullet trains to cherry blossoms.
The Pyramids of Giza
Four thousand years old and still the most recognisable structures on Earth — Grace explores the ancient wonders of Egypt and the civilisation that built them with astonishing precision and purpose.
The Acropolis & Ancient Athens
The birthplace of democracy, philosophy, and the Olympic Games — Grace walks where Socrates walked and discovers why the ideas born in ancient Greece still shape the modern world.
The Last Continent
The coldest, windiest, most remote place on Earth — and one of the most important. Grace's polar adventure teaches young readers about climate, ecology, and the fragile beauty of our planet's final frontier.
The Amazon Rainforest
The lungs of the Earth — Grace enters the world's largest tropical rainforest and discovers the extraordinary biodiversity, the indigenous communities, and the urgent importance of the green cathedral that sustains all life.
Nine Big Ideas Every Grace Book Teaches
Every adventure Grace goes on teaches something real — something that stays with a child long after the last page is turned and the book is placed on the shelf.
World Geography
Continents, countries, capitals, landmarks, and ecosystems — presented through story so that knowledge becomes memory and memory becomes wonder.
Cultural Diversity
The extraordinary range of human cultures — foods, languages, festivals, traditions, art forms — celebrated with the open-hearted curiosity that is Grace's most defining quality.
The Natural World
Wildlife, ecosystems, biomes, and the magnificent diversity of life on Earth — introduced through Grace's encounters with the animals and landscapes of every continent.
History & Heritage
Ancient civilisations, historical landmarks, and the human stories behind the wonders of the world — making history feel alive, personal, and endlessly fascinating.
Courage & Resilience
Every adventure challenges Grace. Every challenge teaches readers that difficulty is not the end of the story — it is, almost always, the best part of it.
Friendship & Empathy
Grace makes friends everywhere she goes — modelling the empathetic openness that allows a child to connect with anyone, anywhere, from any background.
Environmental Awareness
From the Amazon to Antarctica, Grace's adventures consistently introduce young readers to the importance of environmental stewardship and the beauty of a planet worth protecting.
Curiosity as a Superpower
The single most important message of the entire series — that asking questions, wondering why, and never being satisfied with "I don't know" is the foundation of every great life.
Indian Heritage & Pride
When Grace visits India, young Indian readers see their own culture through the widest, most appreciative eyes — learning to feel pride and wonder for the extraordinary heritage that is theirs.
Eight Reasons Grace Belongs in Every Bookshelf & Classroom
This series was created with a single, unwavering commitment: that every book must be as genuinely exciting to read as it is genuinely valuable to have read. Neither element is negotiable.
Written by a Mother-Daughter Duo
Nandini A. Iyengar brings 20+ years of authorial experience and a deep love of storytelling. Anushya Iyengar brings the authentic perspective of a young co-author. Together they create books that work — because they are tested on the exact audience they are written for.
Educational Without Ever Feeling Preachy
Every geography lesson, history fact, and cultural insight is woven so naturally into the story that children absorb it without noticing. The best education always wears the clothes of entertainment.
Captivating Illustrations
Beautiful, vivid visuals bring Grace's world to life on every page — sparking imagination, reinforcing the geographical and cultural content, and giving young readers a visual companion to every adventure.
Celebrates Diversity Joyfully
Grace encounters every culture not as "other" but as fascinating, beautiful, and worth knowing. This books model the cosmopolitan openness that the next generation will need to thrive in a diverse world.
Perfect for Bedtime, Classrooms & Travel
Paced beautifully for read-aloud sessions at bedtime, ideal for classroom geography units, and the perfect companion for family travel — wherever you are going, Grace has probably been there too.
Proudly Indian, Genuinely Global
Written by Indian authors, rooted in Indian values of curiosity and respect for all cultures, and reaching out to the whole world at the same time. This is exactly the perspective young Indian readers need.
The Most Memorable Gift a Child Can Receive
A Grace book is not just a present — it is a passport. Long after the toy is forgotten, the story travels. Birthdays, holidays, school milestones — there is never a wrong occasion for Grace.
Builds the Habit of Wondering
More than facts or skills, the series builds the most valuable habit a child can develop: the habit of curiosity. The child who wonders is the child who searches. The child who searches is the child who discovers.
The Science of Adventure: What Exploration Stories Do to a Child's Brain
Adventure stories are among the oldest and most powerful forms of human narrative. From the earliest cave paintings of hunters and journeys to the great epics of every ancient civilisation, stories of exploration and discovery have always held a special place in the human imagination — because they mirror something essential about the human experience itself. We are, by nature, a species of explorers. Our greatest achievements have come from individuals willing to venture beyond the known edges of their world — geographically, intellectually, and spiritually. The stories we tell our children about exploration are not just entertainment. They are an invitation to join that tradition.
Modern neuroscience gives us rich insight into exactly what adventure stories do to a developing brain. When a child reads or hears a story about exploration, the same neural regions activate as would during actual physical movement through space. The brain, in other words, treats the story as a real experience — and this has profound developmental consequences. Spatial reasoning, geographic awareness, and the capacity to imagine oneself in unfamiliar environments are all strengthened by repeated encounters with adventure narratives. Children who read widely across diverse settings demonstrably develop a more expansive and accurate mental map of the world than those who do not.
Beyond the cognitive benefits, adventure stories perform a crucial emotional function in child development. Every adventure story, at its core, is a story about a character who enters an unknown situation, faces challenges they did not anticipate, and finds within themselves — through courage, resourcefulness, and often through the help of new friends — the capacity to emerge transformed. This arc is not merely satisfying as narrative. It is, for a child reader, a rehearsal. By living the arc vicariously through Grace, a young reader is rehearsing the emotional experience of facing the unfamiliar with courage — and that rehearsal builds real resilience, real confidence, and a real orientation toward the new that will serve them in every novel situation their actual life presents.
The cultural dimension of the Grace series adds another layer of developmental benefit. Research in cross-cultural psychology consistently shows that children who are exposed early and repeatedly to diverse cultures — through travel, through personal contact, or through well-crafted multicultural literature — develop significantly higher levels of empathy, social flexibility, and cognitive complexity than those raised in a culturally homogeneous environment. The Grace books give every child access to that exposure — regardless of whether their family has the means or opportunity to travel — and they do it in a way that makes cultural diversity not a lesson to be absorbed but an adventure to be desired.
Grace's Journey — and Your Child's
The series is designed to grow with your child — from the first picture-led read-alouds to fully independent chapter book adventures. Here is how the journey unfolds.
Ages 4–6 — First Adventures: Read-Aloud Magic
The earliest books in the series are designed for shared reading — generous illustrations, simple vocabulary, and short chapters that make every bedtime a journey. This is where the love of Grace begins: in the lap of a parent, with a book between you and a story unfolding that neither of you wants to end.
Ages 6–8 — Growing Readers: Bridging to Independence
As reading confidence grows, the series grows with it. Books at this level feature longer chapters, richer vocabulary, and more complex adventures — still richly illustrated, but increasingly text-led. Children begin to read Grace independently, returning to favourite chapters and beginning to see themselves in her adventures.
Ages 8–10 — Confident Readers: Full Chapter Book Adventures
The full chapter book series — where Grace's adventures become fully immersive, multi-chapter journeys through entire continents. At this level, the books begin to function as genuine geography and cultural education companions, introducing complex ideas about history, ecology, and human diversity within story structures that remain gripping and age-appropriate.
Ages 10–11 — Advanced Readers: The Whole World Awaits
The most ambitious titles in the series — for readers who are ready to engage with the deeper themes of cultural complexity, environmental challenge, and what it means to be a global citizen. These books bridge the Grace series and the teenage fiction collection, ensuring a natural, joyful progression for young readers who have grown up with Grace and are ready for their next great literary adventure.
Why We Created Grace — A Mother and Daughter's Story
Every book series begins with a moment — a conversation, a question, an image that refuses to go away. The Growing Up with Grace series began with exactly this: a little girl, sitting at a kitchen table, looking at a map of the world, and asking: "Mum, have you been everywhere?" And when the answer was "not quite everywhere — but Grace has been," the look on that child's face was the entire reason this series exists.
Grace is, in the most honest sense, every little girl — and every little boy — who has ever looked at a map and felt the pull of what might be on the other side of it. She is curious without being precocious, brave without being reckless, kind without being saccharine. She makes mistakes. She gets lost. She feels scared. And she goes anyway, because the alternative — staying where you already are, knowing only what you already know — is simply not how Grace is built. It is not, we believe, how any curious child is built. They need only the invitation.
Writing this series as a mother and daughter has been one of the greatest joys of our creative lives. Nandini brings the craft and the long view — twenty years of knowing how stories work, what makes a young reader turn the page, what makes a parent read it twice. Anushya brings the essential thing that no amount of craft can manufacture: the honest voice of a young reader telling another young reader what is true, what is exciting, what is worth knowing about the world. Together, we have tried to create books that we would want to read ourselves. Books that make the world feel large and magical and full of welcome. Books that make a child want to know more — about the world outside their window and the world inside their own extraordinary heart.
Grace in the Classroom — A Teacher's Companion
The Growing Up with Grace series has found a particularly warm welcome in classrooms across India — and increasingly, in classrooms internationally. The reasons are not difficult to understand. Geography teachers find in each book a ready-made, highly engaging supplementary resource that makes abstract map-learning feel like real adventure. English teachers find richly written texts that introduce diverse vocabulary, narrative structure, and the complex emotional landscapes that the best children's literature always contains. Social studies teachers find, in Grace's encounters with different cultures, a natural opening for conversations about diversity, global citizenship, and the kind of empathy that no worksheet can generate.
Each book in the series naturally lends itself to classroom extension activities — from creating travel diaries in Grace's voice to researching the real landmarks she visits, from mapping her journeys to cooking the foods she encounters, from learning greetings in the languages she hears to creating artwork inspired by the landscapes she describes. The books are, in this sense, not just literature but curriculum catalysts — sparks that can set an entire unit of inquiry alight. For teachers interested in cross-curricular reading programmes, discussion guides, or school visit arrangements, please contact us through Talent Canvas or LinkedIn.
Who Will Love Grace & Her Adventures?
From the very first read-aloud to the most independent young adventurer — these books find their way into the hearts of every child who has ever looked at the horizon and wondered what's on the other side.
- Children aged 4–11 with a love of adventure and discovery
- Young readers curious about geography, cultures, and the natural world
- Parents looking for educational bedtime reading that children love
- Grandparents seeking the perfect gift for a curious grandchild
- Primary school teachers building multicultural reading programmes
- School librarians curating diverse, educational children's collections
- Families who travel and want their children to read about the places they visit
- Families who cannot travel and want to bring the world to their children
- Children who love animals, nature, and the wonders of the planet
- Anyone who believes a curious child is the world's greatest treasure
Frequently Asked Questions
Nandini A. Iyengar
& Anushya Iyengar
Author · Storyteller · Publisher & Young Co-Author
Nandini A. Iyengar is a postgraduate in English Literature and Business Management, the bestselling author of over 180 books, and the founder of Sampoornam Publishers and Talent Canvas. Recognised among India's Top 50 Most Influential Authors of 2025, she is passionate about the power of story to shape the human character — and has spent two decades writing books that do exactly that, for readers of every age.
Anushya Iyengar is Nandini's daughter and co-author — a young writer whose authentic perspective as a member of the series' target audience makes her an invaluable creative partner. The mother-daughter collaboration at the heart of the Growing Up with Grace series is what gives it its particular warmth, energy, and genuine appeal: a seasoned author's craft combined with a young reader's honest voice.
Together, they write with a shared conviction: that every child deserves stories that make the world feel large, welcoming, and full of adventure. The Grace series is their love letter to the curious children of the world — and to every parent, grandparent, and teacher who believes that the right story, at the right moment, can change everything.
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Whether you are searching for children's adventure books India, books about world travel for kids, geography books for children, multicultural children's books, books for curious kids 4-11, chapter books for girls, children's books about diversity, educational storybooks for children, bedtime adventure stories, Indian children's fiction series, books about continents for kids, children's books world cultures, or the best children's books India 2025 — the Growing Up with Grace series is the most joyful, richly illustrated, educationally purposeful, and genuinely exciting collection available for young readers today.