Windermere Prep senior pens children's book on diversity

While flipping through the pages of the children’s book “School is Fun When We are One,” Dr. Phillips’ Dev Sakhuja saw his friends and family on the pages. 

He saw a page where his grandmother was meditating and praying with his brother.

On another page, his friends were celebrating their respective cultural holidays such as Lunar New Year, Eid and Festa Junina. 

“Since my childhood, I’ve always had friends from all over the world, and it’s always been important to me to make sure everyone feels included,” Sakhuja said.

Sakhuja used his personal cultural experiences of growing up in a home with Burmese grandparents, a mother born in India and a father born in the United States to write “School is Fun When We are One” to demonstrate the importance of diversity. 

A diverse life

Courtesy photo

Growing up in a cultural and religiously diverse family and with friends of various cultural and religious backgrounds has helped widen Sakhuja’s view of the world, he said. 

“It kind of changed my perspective on the way I see things and how I communicate with people — how I can be inclusive,” Sakhuja said. “(Diversity) is super important, because especially living in Florida, there’s people from all over the world, and being able to communicate with everyone is such a big strength you can have. It’s the ability to see so much more than just your religions and your cultural background but actually experience different things from different backgrounds.”

Sakhuja’s mother, Chandni Sakhuja, said she and her husband didn’t realize how much he was influenced by their family’s diversity until they started doing college tours. On the first tour, Dev Sakhuja asked his mom if they could look at the demographics of the student enrollment because he wanted to attend a diverse college. 

“You don’t realize how much your kids get influenced by these things,” Chandni Sakhuja said. “Just listening to that for a second, it was scary because this is a great school, and I’m like wait, he’s not going to go here if he gets in just because it’s not diverse enough? But then when you really think about it, I’m proud of him. He’s really thinking so much more deeply than I ever did.”

At home, Sakhuja was surrounded by people speaking different languages. He had to learn to balance between the religious and cultural differences. For example, his grandparents would go to mandirs because they are Burmese, while his mother would go to temple because she is Sikh. 

In the book, there is an illustration of his grandmother meditating and praying with his 13-year-old brother, Krish Sakhuja. Although he also prayed with his grandmother as a child, Dev Sakhuja said he didn’t want to include himself in the book. 

He learned from his family and friends about different cultural celebrations such as Eid, an Islamic holiday, as well as Diwali and Holi, which Hindus celebrate. 

Sakhuja said learning about various cultures has given him the ability to connect more with people. 

“Through all these different experiences growing up, it’s been so much easier to make friends with all these people from different backgrounds, because I’ve been able to relate to them and converse with them about things that typically someone from another religion (or culture) can’t always do,” he said. 

When Dev Sakhuja found out Krish Sakhuja had to do a cultural awareness project for school that involved bringing in food to represent a country, it sparked an idea for Dev Sakhuja’s book. 

Children’s book in the making

Dev Sakhuja wanted to use his book to share how diversity is a strength. 

Dev Sakhuja decided to use the cultural awareness celebration Krish Sakhuja was assigned in real life as the perfect plot line to bring together the students in his book to share and embrace their cultural differences. 

He decided his audience would be elementary students because it’s at that age they would be introduced for the first time to people outside their backgrounds. He wanted his book to encourage students to connect with those who are different from them. 

The children’s book first started as a manuscript for lower school children as a school project, but after reading it aloud to his classmates for the first time, Sakhuja said it didn’t feel like the right format and that he could do more with it. 

He wanted to bring more life and color to his words. The idea to make it a children’s book came to mind. 

Dev Sakhuja went home and read every children’s book available in his house. He noticed rhyming words was a popular aspect of children’s books. 

“Trying to spread a message to children while trying to make it rhyme was very difficult because I kept trying to use words that I would use but they aren’t something someone in first grade or second grade would understand,” said Dev Sakhuja, a high school senior. 

Dev Sakhuja had to juggle perfecting his book while participating in a full-time summer internship and then preparing to write college admissions essays once school began. But the book was a priority for him, and it always was at the forefront of his mind. 

He said he wouldn’t have been able to balance everything without the support of his mom and dad. 

Dev Sakhuja said he loved being able to include people in his life who have inspired him in his book. He had his brother, grandmother, friends and others illustrated in the book as characters. 

“It’s really cool because when I asked them if I could include them, they thought it was awesome,” he said. 

Story time

Since publishing his book, which is available on Amazon, Dev Sakhuja has visited elementary classrooms to read his book to students. 

He said the teachers raved about his book. He hopes each student walked away from the reading knowing that having a different cultural background is “not something you should be ashamed of,” but rather, they should learn about one another’s backgrounds and make the most of it. 

Dev Sakhuja will spend the next two months visiting classrooms to read his book. 

He decided to take a chance and send his books to city of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings. Dev Sakhuja was disappointed when he missed a call from Demings, who left a voicemail complimenting him on his book. 

“I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” Dev Sakhuja said of the message. “I was so sad that I missed the call, but when I heard the message, I was shocked because I just kind of took a shot in the dark sending them a book and hoping I would hear back from them.”