Maya always wins her races. Until the day she doesn't.
When Maya comes third on Sports Day, her mind fills with stories — excuses, blame, any worry that spiral through the night. That evening, her grandmother holds two glasses of water from the clay pot. One is clear and still. The other is cloudy.
Same water. Same pot. But only one shows what is true.
A gentle bedtime story for children aged 5–10 about learning to see the difference between what actually happened and the stories we tell ourselves about it — and why that difference changes everything.
The Lantern Stories is a series of bedtime books for ages 5–10, where each story introduces one mental model through a child, a wise elder, and an everyday moment that opens into something deeper.
Write your review for this book (optional)
Review Deleted
Your review has been deleted and won’t appear on the book anymore.
Akshay Swaroop Bhatnagar
Akshay Swaroop Bhatnagar is a father of two daughters, and like most parents, he found himself searching for stories that did more than entertain — stories that quietly taught his children how to think, how to feel, and how to see the world more clearly.
A longtime student of mental models, Akshay spent years looking for bedtime books that brought these ideas to life for young readers. When he couldn't find quite the right ones, he wrote them himself.
Maya and the Two Glasses is the first book in The Lantern Stories series — a collection of bedtime tales for children aged 5–10, each one centered on a single idea that helps children understand themselves and the world around them a little better.
Akshay lives in India.
