FIZA PATHAN'S TEACHING PORTFOLIO FOR PGCITE
https://fizapathansteachingportfolioforpgcite.com

----------------------------------------

‘SQUIGGLY GOES TO SCHOOL’ BY DEEPA
AGARWAL: BOOK REVIEW

Date: 2025-06-22
Author: Fiza Pathan
Format: Braille-Ready Text (BRF)
Website: fizapathansteachingportfolioforpgcite.com

----------------------------------------

0.9×


Title of the Book: Squiggly Goes to
School


Author: Deepa Agarwal


Publisher: Frank Educational Aids Pvt.
Ltd.


Publication Year: 1996 (Reprint 2001)


Kindle Edition ASIN: B08FLCR8QW


Pages: 14 pages


ISBN: 9788173790430


Age Group: PYP (Grades 1 & 2)


Genre: 20 th Century Contemporary Indian
Animal Stories


IBDP & IGCSE Subjects Covered: English &
Reading


Review Written By: Fiza Pathan


Introduction


This book was one of my favorites while
I was a kid studying in the primary
section at Bombay Scottish School ICSE,
Mahim. I got it way back in 1996, the
year it was first published, and I could
never get enough of it. Of course, I did
not buy the book myself; probably my
younger maternal uncle, Blaise, or my
mother had purchased it for me to
improve my reading skills and to instill
in me the habit of reading.


What I am getting at is that my family
members did not know that I already had
a formidably incredible capacity and
capability to read almost anything and
everything in printed form. In the year
1996, I was in the 2nd grade. By the
following year, in the 3rd grade, I
would graduate to reading unabridged
classics like Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’,
Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, Charles
Dicken’s ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Tales of
Mystery and Terror’ by Edgar Allan Poe,
‘Little Women’ by Louisa May Alcott,
‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson
Burnett, ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell,
‘The Jungle Book’ by Rudyard Kipling,
‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre
Dumas, The Complete Short Stories of O.
Henry, The Collected Works of Hubert
Crackanthorpe, ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert
Louis Stevenson, ‘The Red Badge of
Courage’ by Stephen Crane, ‘The Time
Machine’ by H.G. Wells, ‘Around the
World In 80 Days’ by Jules Verne and
much more. All of these, mind you, only
in the unabridged form or the original
form intended for adults.


As you can see, the list indicates that
I was not exactly what a 3rd grade
student in primary school should have
been. Probably when I managed to finish
reading this PYP book titled ‘Squiggly
Goes to School’ by Indian contemporary
writer Deepa Agarwal in less than half
an hour fluently back in the year 1996,
that should have indicated to my large
maternal and much-preoccupied family
about my incredible verbal-linguistic
skills. Instead, the family only
realized that I had finished the book a
week later, and my workaholic mother
started grumbling about how I was
wasting time reading when I should be
concentrating on my studies, especially
Math, my perpetual bête noire. Probably,
if they had paid a bit of attention to
my extraordinary Verbal-Linguistic
Intelligence under the IB and IGCSE
topic of Howard Gardener’s Multiple
Intelligences Theory, I would not have
grown up into middle age thinking that I
was below average in studies because I
never could understand Math.


Perhaps I would have then taken the
chance and gotten an IQ Test done for
myself when the opportunity arose, both
in school and in my first year at my
favorite St. Andrew’s College, Bandra
West. Then, I probably would have
realized that my IQ score was 133 and
that it did not matter whether I was not
very good at Math and physics; that was
certainly not the end of the world. The
fact is, it was only recently that I
took an IQ test for the first time in 36
years, and I scored 133, landing in the
Highly Gifted Category, just below
Einstein’s IQ range (145 to 150 and
above).


This is what Perplexity AI has to say
about an IQ Score of 133:


An IQ score of 133 places an individual
well above the average range and falls
into the "Very Superior" or "Gifted"
category, depending on the
classification system used.


On the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
(WAIS), a score of 130 and above is
classified as "Very Superior".


On the Stanford–Binet scale, a score
between 130 and 144 is considered
"Gifted or very advanced".


Other systems, such as the
Woodcock-Johnson, also label scores
above 131 as "Very Superior. "


In terms of population percentile, an IQ
of 133 puts someone in roughly the top
2% of test takers, meaning they score
higher than about 98% of the population.
This level of intelligence is associated
with advanced reasoning,
problem-solving, and pattern recognition
skills, and individuals in this range
often excel academically and
professionally in intellectually
demanding fields.


In summary, an IQ score of 133 is
considered "Very Superior" or "Gifted"
and represents exceptionally high
cognitive ability compared to the
general population .


If only I had seen this when I was a
child at school, I would not have grown
up being introverted, reclusive, shy,
perpetually ashamed of my lack of
spatial skills about hypothetical
questions in Mathematics, Physics, and
Chemistry and would have probably by now
been much more than just a professional
high-school teacher, international
author of 24 books,
multiple-award-winning writer and
journalist, a compulsive blogger of free
educational content, a director of my
own niche publishing company, a budding
professional Catholic Theologian and now
a soon to be professional IB and IGCSE
trained teacher. I could have done much
more if someone had taken more careful
notice of the way I did things. In
hindsight, I now realize that the signs
were more than just evident when I was
reading this 1996 illustrated PYP or
Primary Years Program book titled
‘Squiggly Goes to School’ based on the
life of a laid-back primary school worm
called Squiggly who loved to oversleep
way past his morning alarm for school
and used to always be up to some
mischief or the other until his
misadventures in naughtiness would
backfire upon himself.


In another year after dear old Squiggly,
the lazy school-going and playful worm,
I would graduate to the classic vampire
of Gothic fiction, Count Dracula. I
would never need to read my classics or
any books from the 3rd grade in the
abridged form or in a form adapted for
‘younger readers’ or ‘juvenile readers’.
Such books bored me, and I only
preferred reading, enjoying, and
savoring unabridged classics in their
original form. At that time, I was also
preparing for the Sacrament of Holy
Communion, so I would read and re-read
the Holy Bible from cover to cover. I
finished with an abridged copy of the
Bible, which I still possess today,
gifted to me by my 3rd grade class
teacher, Mrs. Leena Ignatius, from
Bombay Scottish School, Mahim. I then
began reading the King James Version at
school and later the Good News Bible,
which belonged to my elder maternal
uncle, David Martis (known as David
Uncle), back at home. I fancied the King
James Bible back then more; it sounded
quite serious and strict to me, and I
was sadly unaware that I was not meant
to read that particular copy of the
Bible per se.


But returning to the topic at hand, it
would have been better if I had been
recognized for who I was as a person and
student, with my own set of unusual
capabilities, rather than being always
ordered to fit into a mold that defined
other logical and mathematically
inclined students in my school at
Scottish. It was like I was a fish being
only perpetually tested on my ability to
climb a tree all the time – every time.
That was not fair at all, and it is
certainly not fair for any other student
following the IGCSE and IB curriculum.
Where the IB and IGCSE curriculum is
concerned, we follow the idea given to
us by Dr. Howard Gardner of the Multiple
Intelligences fame, who indicated to the
world that a student does not learn in
only one particular way but technically
in 9 ways going up to sometimes 11 ways,
which he defined as the 11 Different
Types of Multiple Intelligences. He
taught us that every child is unique and
learns differently, possessing a
distinct set of skills and
intelligences. Therefore, every child is
intelligent and should never be typecast
into stereotypical categories selected
by so-called well-meaning but highly
narrow-minded adults.


Through the PYP book penned by
multiple-award-winning author and poet
Deepa Agarwal of the ‘Caravan to Tibet’
fame, I will, in this book review and
analysis, analyze the book through the
lens of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
as evaluated and applied in the IB and
IGCSE curriculum and way of teaching
International Students of the IB Board.


Summary


Squiggly the Worm was a primary school
student studying underground amid an
American grassland back in the 1990s.
His bedroom was always a mess, but it
was styled in the typical 1990s school
kid way. He would always oversleep
beyond the ringing of his school alarm
clock and, therefore, would always be
late for school. One day, his teacher,
Ms. Rat, decided that enough was enough
and that the tardy and callous Squiggly
had to be taught a lesson in manners and
punctuality. This was when I was growing
up when teachers still had the right to
correct and advise students through
harmless corrective measures. In today’s
day and age, such a teacher would be
immediately dismissed from her job. Ms.
Rat declared to Squiggly that he was yet
again late for school and her class,
which she would no longer tolerate.
Therefore, he would have to spend the
rest of the school day in the corridor
as a corrective measure to ensure that
he would at last realize the seriousness
of his misdemeanor. Squiggly was
disappointed in being asked to leave the
class and spend the rest of his time in
the school corridor, but then he thought
of a bright idea to entertain himself
(at least for him). Although the year
1996 predates the advent of ChatGPT,
WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, and
others, this particular method of
entertaining oneself to avoid boredom
remains a common practice in schools
worldwide. This activity is simply
called ‘tearing pages from one’s
precious books and making paper planes
to irritate passers-by with' in a
nutshell. Squiggly tore page after page
of one of his school textbooks and made
hundreds of paper planes to play with
until he had ripped his whole textbook
empty. When he realized his book was now
devoid of any pages and that it happened
to be one of his homeroom teacher's, Ms.
Rat’s most important subject, he became
as white as a sheet with the
realization. In his panic, he escaped to
the ground surface of the American
grassland through an underground tunnel
to escape the vengeful spirit of his
furry teacher. In the bargain, he felt
extremely hot and started to sweat due
to the intense heat of the sun. After
all, he was a worm, and worms only
emerged from the underground tunnels of
their subterranean home when the rains
began to fall upon the Earth. As he
sweated his way along the dry ground
path, Chik-Chik, the baby Sparrow who
had just learned how to fly and hunt his
meals, spotted Squiggly. Chik-Chik was
diving in to catch Squiggly, which he
easily did, but the shrewd and smart
alec Squiggly outsmarted Chik-Chik by
compelling Chik-Chik to speak, thus,
opening the latter’s beak from which
Squiggly fell out at once. He then
scuttled hastily back underground before
Chik-Chik realized what Squiggly had
made him do and returned to the safety
of his family home and his messy 1990s
bedroom, wherein contained his
basketball, school backpack, his story
books on a tiny bookshelf, his radio,
his school awards, his school notebooks,
posters of his drawings, his cricket
bat, school papers scattered all about,
etc. He was unremorseful about the
happenings of the day but was
nevertheless glad that he arrived safely
at home.


Analysis


Taking Howard Gardner’s Multiple
Intelligences into consideration, we
notice a few things from this
adventurous contemporary Indian animal
story set in an otherwise very American
grassland as interpreted by the
illustrator of this book.


Kinesthetic Intelligence


We notice that Squiggly’s teacher, Ms.
Rat, tended to teach her students using
the simple blackboard and chalk method,
thereby always catering to only those
students who had very prominent
Verbal-Linguistic skills of
Intelligence, Logical-Mathematical
skills of Intelligence, and Spatial or
Visual Skills of Intelligence. She
followed the traditional teaching
classroom environment, which Howard
Gardner specifically critiqued for its
lack of imagination, its limited
elucidation of capabilities, and its
highly stereotyped and static
atmosphere.


Probably, this was the reason why
Squiggly the Worm was not interested in
his studies at all because this style of
teaching and studying did not appeal to
or match his own way of learning and
studying, which utilized his unique set
of multiple intelligences. From the plot
of the story, the characterization, and
the illustrations of various scenes, one
can gain insight into the personality of
the worm Squiggly and, in a way,
identify his multiple intelligences and
how he would approach his studies if
given a chance.


From the number of basketballs, toy
blocks, cricket bats, and male dolls in
his messy room, one realizes that
Squiggly was a student who seemed to
have a lot of interest in activities
that kept him moving all the time and
about the place. He seemed to be very
good, especially with his hands (or
rather his tail, which acted like a
single strong hand per se) and not
particularly his legs – that is obvious
because worms don’t have legs (just a
propelling extended tail region but that
is mainly to give the worm a push
forward while the strong muscles all
over the rest of the body make the worm
move forwards and backward)! But an
implicit indication of the same would be
in connection to the fact that the
sports goods in the messy and
disorganized room were all related to
the sportsperson using his ‘hands’ and
majorly his ‘upper torso’ for playing
the game along with the lower half of
the body; the primary focus is but on
the proficiency of the sportsperson’s
hands, example: for cricket, basketball,
volleyball, etc.


This indicates that Squiggly would have
fared better in a learning environment
where he could experience most of his
learning through various activities,
games, movements, hands-on activities,
tasks, building assignments, etc. This
was because it was evident that Squiggly
the Worm was highly overactive and liked
doing things with his hands, or in this
context, his single tail or extended
part. This is evident in his pulling out
sheets of paper from his teacher’s
textbook and making multiple paper
planes out of them without a care for
the consequences. Therefore, Squiggly
clearly demonstrates that he is a
kinesthetic learner with Kinesthetic
Intelligence, which falls under the
Interactive Category of Multiple
Intelligences.


He is very athletic for a worm, and
though Chik-Chik caught him to eat for
his dinner, through his stealthy
cunning, Squiggly managed to escape
Chik-Chik’s clutches and scoot quickly
back to his underground and safe world.
This is another obvious sign of a
student with Kinesthetic Intelligence.
Probably when Ms. Rat was teaching her
students the concept or new word of cat,
she could have done so by asking the
students to imitate the sound a cat
makes or to imitate the way a cat acts
when it is hungry, angry, or fearful in
a group activity or even if she asked an
athletic student like Squiggly to make a
clay model of a cat or a chart depicting
the various elements related to the
animal called a cat with pictures,
content, etc., cut out by the PYP
homeroom teacher or the assistant
teacher and done with the aforementioned
in a group activity. It would have
certainly been better for the highly
active Squiggly than merely drawing a
chalk image of a cat on the blackboard
and writing down the word ‘CAT’ in
capital letters upon the same.


In the latter, she focused only on
learners who were skilled in
Verbal-Linguistic Elements or had a
Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence. She was
otherwise also only concentrating on
those learners who had
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence and
Visual-Spatial Intelligence, as depicted
by the drawing on the blackboard and the
fact that every other child in the class
recognized that the animal on the board
was a cat.


However, the point is that a student is
not merely defined by one kind of
Intelligence Learning Skill but is
comprised of several Multiple
Intelligences, all unique to them.
Squiggly the Worm, too, has quite a bit
of his own form of verbal-linguistic
intelligence, which will be analyzed as
follows:


Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence


If one observes Squiggly’s 1990s-themed
bedroom, one notices a sizeable
bookshelf opposite his bed stacked with
books galore, though not in order and
quite in a state of chaos. There were
schoolbooks and storybooks on the floor
of his room, and school papers were
scattered all about, making his room
seem like a bomb site. However, this
gives the reader insight into the
illustrator's perspective, showing that
Squiggly enjoyed reading. He read not
only his schoolbooks but also plenty of
storybooks and nonfiction titles, which
in the 1990s would be termed
encyclopedias.


So it is not that he did not have
superior or at least more than average
reading, studying, writing, speaking,
listening, and language art skills; it
is just that because of his more
over-active side to himself or because
of his powerful Kinesthetic Intelligence
or capabilities, he tended to not do so
well in a traditional schoolroom
setting. Usually, Verbal-Linguistic
Learners are ideal for a traditional
classroom setting like the ones found
during the 1990s; they are generally
termed as the ‘model students’ by
prejudiced and ill-informed teachers who
only perceive mathematical and
linguistic intelligence to be the prime
indicators of a student who is worthy of
taking note of in the class.


I can, in a way, see that Squiggly would
probably have, in the end, taken up a
job where he had to write, speak,
converse, and read a lot but where he
also had to run around a lot (if worms
run around, that is!). I could not see
him as a potential paperback writer, but
instead, he would have made an excellent
journalist or an onsite news reporter. I
envision him being brilliant in creative
fields related to advertising, public
speaking, linguistics, travel blogging,
and so on, anything where verbal
linguistics can intersect with
kinesthetic intelligence.


We see his excellent and witty use of
verbal-linguistic skills in the way he
outsmarted Chik-Chik by compelling the
young bird to open its beak. He did this
by exclaiming that Chik-Chik’s beak was
too sharp. The vain young bird tried to
immediately negate Squiggly by shouting
the word ‘never’ at him several times
emphatically, but obviously in the
bargain, letting Squiggly go free and
out of the clutches of his beak. The
excellent use of his speaking and verbal
skills is evident in this case, as it
gives us an opportunity to witness his
very colorful imagination, which could
easily do a lot of magic with the
written word.


Initially, in his Primary School Years
at any IB or IGCSE school (PYP),
Squiggly would have learned more through
the skills of his kinesthetic
intelligence. However, later, from the
IGCSE or IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) or
A-Levels onwards, I can picture him
settling into a more verbal-linguistic
format for learning. It could even have
happened as early as the MYP before the
Secondary Checkpoint Exam, and what more
does a sincere IB and IGCSE teacher need
than seeing their pupil evolve
intelligently through the many different
ways they learn?


Notice also in Squiggly’s room, a radio
sits on top of the bookshelf, not a
Television, the famous, eternal ‘idiot
box’ of the 1990s kid until the arrival
of the desktop computer, which made the
1990s even more magical! This indicates
further that he was more of a listener
than a visual learner. I’m sure more
than 1990s Pop Music or Michael Jackson,
Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC music
numbers, Squiggly would have been
listening to a lot of sports
commentaries day in and day out,
especially cricket game commentaries or
test match commentaries by some of his
favorite sports commentators in the
business. Listening is a key
Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence learning
skill that is essential to truly being
called a student who has the ‘gift of
the gab’ and ‘has a way with his words’.


Visual-Spatial Intelligence


This is not prominent in the life of
Squiggly, neither in the plot of the
text nor in the illustrations of this
PYP book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to
School’ by famous Indian author of
repute and ace poet Deepa Agarwal.
However, the fact that Squiggly liked to
draw and paint pictures and paste these
pictures as posters on his typical 1990s
bedroom walls shows that he was artistic
in a way and also enjoyed seeing what he
was learning rather than merely
memorizing a particular topic or
concept. He, therefore, can learn
visually, but it will have to be
something done more dramatically to
elicit some response from him. Thus, a
student like Squiggly would be happy to
learn from a drama group session,
probably depicting a particular scene in
a literature lesson, or he would like to
observe the costumes his colleagues were
wearing representing the various periods
in European history or the different
fashion trends observed over the decades
of the 20th and early 21st century by
children, pre-teens, and teenagers.


He would learn more by seeing something
visually and engaging in an activity
that kept him active and moving, rather
than just sitting at the easel and
painting for hours. He is more of a
drama person, a person who would love
theatre, costume parties at school,
history, geography, or Individuals in
Societies fashion shows, actually doing
or solving puzzles on the ICT board in
class, doing giant crosswords on the
same where he had to move around a lot,
use markers to mark out places on a huge
map put up in the class, etc. This makes
him ideal to be called a Visual-Spatial
Learner. He likes eye-catching things,
but they need to be moving, and he
should be on the move as well. That is
the only contention.


Book Review


The book titled ‘Squiggly Goes to
School’ by Indian author and poet Deepa
Agarwal, an M.A. in English literature
from the University of Allahabad and who
taught English in a Delhi University
college for a while until she took up
freelance journalism and eventually made
a name in the genre of children's
literature, is a marvelous and
adventurous PYP or Primary Years story
book.


As I mentioned earlier in this book
analysis, I was taken with this book
back in 1996, when I was in the 2nd
grade, and finished it in a single
evening. This is because I adored the
illustrations of Squiggly, his teacher’s
classroom, the 1990s-styled bedroom of
Squiggly, and a lot else. I also
remember finding the story themed upon
school life to be totally up my alley,
and the lack of a moral at the end of
the tale was at first a shocker to me,
but then it became a revelation to
indicate to me that not every story
needs to have a moral or a sense of
moralizing attached to it. I believe
Deepa Agarwal wrote this PYP or Primary
School storybook to highlight the dictum
‘art for art’s sake,’ which sometimes
seems quite lacking in the world in
which we find ourselves today.


This matter is taken up in detail in TOK
or Theory of Knowledge Classes at the
IBDP level under the topic of ‘Art’, and
an initial storybook or PYP novel like
‘Squiggly Goes to School’ can set the
ball rolling for this kind of train of
thought early in the life of a PYP IB or
IGCSE student. Such a student can learn
and gain a lot from this book by Deepa
Agarwal.


The book can also enhance a PYP
learner’s reading, listening, writing,
and speaking skills and can be easily
used as a classroom library resource, a
bookshelf read, or a leisure reading
book. Additionally, it should be kept in
the PYP school library to develop
students' story writing skills,
particularly in narrative and
descriptive writing, which are further
developed in the MYP of an IB and IGCSE
school. However, this book can aid in
laying the groundwork for such crucial
writing, which is often tested in the
Primary Checkpoint Exam (English) taken
in the 5th grade, as well as the
Secondary Checkpoint Exam (English),
usually in the 7th grade.


Persuasive writing becomes a focus from
9th grade onwards, culminating in the
IGCSE exams in the 10th grade and then
finally at the IBDP level. However, in
the initial years, story writing in
narrative and descriptive forms is
essential, and a colorful and vibrant
book like ‘Squiggly Goes to School’ can
be an excellent teaching tool for an
English PYP teacher or a Reading or
Library Teacher in the PYP section.


The book is adventurous, colorful,
fascinating, shocking, and evocative,
making it a highly engrossing read. I am
stating these facts from the perspective
of my 7-year-old self. As a middle-aged
adult thinking in hindsight, I would
also now say that the book can be a
great developer of verbal-linguistic
skills and intelligence, and the student
will learn a lot of new words from this
book, be able to improve their oratorial
skills, learn how to develop their
narrative writing and oral skills, etc.
Even a learner with a high level of
Spatial/Visual Intelligence will find
the illustrations in the book to be
vivid, fascinating, beautifully done,
and melt-in-the-mouth gorgeous.


When I read this book back in 1996, I
never could have realized that it was
penned and published in India; it seemed
professionally done and beautiful to the
eye, making it a pleasure to observe and
relish. The 1990s bedroom of Squiggly,
his schoolroom, and his adventure with
Chik-Chik all seemed remarkably done,
giving it a distinctly Western feel. It
just proves that even children as old as
7 years of age are conditioned with a
lot of stereotypes as they are growing
up, which are then dissolved with a good
IB or IGCSE education, especially
through the subjects of UOI (Unit of
Inquiry) at the PYP level, Individuals
and Societies at the MYP level and then
TOK or Theory of Knowledge at the IBDP
level.


The illustrations can also encourage
some Spatial/Visual Learners to develop
their artistic capabilities and style by
using a particular IB English teaching
strategy called the Split Screen
Strategy. This is a strategy where a
student, especially in the MYP at the
6th-grade level, can narrate a simple
story in a slide or clip format, similar
to a picture book, with one side of the
book depicting the scene being narrated
or described in a pictorial form. In
contrast, the other side contains the
narration or content. ‘Squiggly Goes to
School’ by Deepa Agarwal, winner of the
N.C.E.R.T. National Award for Children’s
Literature and participant in several
literary festivals, including the
prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival,
Sahitya Akademi Festival of Letters and
the Times LitFest can truly aid the MYP
and of course, the PYP student to excel
in this English story writing strategy.


The narration was well-edited and
crafted. The plot was out of the
ordinary, especially without a moral
typical of the time during the 20th
century, and the character of naughty
Squiggly was a delight to read and
ponder over.


Conclusion


In this section, I want to conclude this
book analysis with a brief word about
the Multiple Intelligences that Squiggly
the Worm did not possess. For one, he
was not musically inclined at all as
there was no musical instrument in his
bedroom, nor a single poster of a music
icon or popular musician of the 1990s on
the walls of his bedroom. There is no
indication that he listened to a lot of
music on his 1990s radio. Still, as
analyzed in the book, there is every
indication that he was a great listener
of sports commentaries rather than
anything else. So, he did not have any
musical intelligence or skills per se.


He also was undoubtedly not an
existentialist and did not reflect on
any of his actions at all. He appears to
be a carefree and careless individual
who does not analyze or reflect on the
consequences of his actions, especially
his misdeeds. This is evident from the
way he carelessly tore pages from his
teacher’s textbook to make several paper
planes while also not reflecting upon
the fact that he could have been killed
that day because of emerging from the
underground school, and that he was not
precisely the ideal philosopher and
moralist. He, therefore, could never
have any semblance of Existential
Intelligence at all. Let us also not
forget that he did not even think he was
doing anything wrong or illegal by
coming to school so late every day.


This would automatically indicate that,
to a certain extent, he never possessed
Intrapersonal Intelligence either. From
the later books, where his animal
friends appear, we are aware that he was
a misfit. Still, he liked the company
and interacting with his friends, albeit
in a more self-centered and selfish
manner, which would not enable us to
define him as having Interpersonal
Intelligence. This is because the latter
individuals are highly people-oriented
and work cooperatively in groups, most
of the time for the betterment of
others. This is not so in this worm’s
case, who was the personification of the
‘I, me, myself’ dictum.


Squiggly, therefore, according to the
theory of Multiple Intelligences by Dr.
Howard Gardner, was a Kinesthetic,
Verbal-Linguistic, and Spatial-Visual
Leaner by far and large. From the
nihilism evident in the last part of the
text by Deepa Agarwal, we also realize
that Squiggly is unlikely to change
anytime soon.


‘Squiggly Goes to School’ is perfect for
PYP readers eager to improve their
reading and writing skills and can be
excellent for gifting as well. It was a
Frank Educational Aids Private Limited
edition book, where Deepa Agarwal
created several lovely juvenile fiction
books featuring animal characters that
played central roles. Other books in
this series are:


1. Cheeko and the School Bag


2. Lippo Goes to a Party


3. Flippi the Flying Pup


4. Squiggly Goes for a Picnic


All of Deepa Agarwal's 1990s illustrated
animal story books are now available on
Amazon India in Kindle format. Get your
copy of this book today for your PYP
learner!


Special Note


If you are interested in more book
reviews, indie author interviews, book
analyses, short story analyses, poems,
essays, essay analyses, and other
bookish content, check out my blog,
insaneowl.com , and
fizapathansteachingportfolioforpgcite.com
. If you are interested in purchasing my
books, you can visit the products page
on my blog or check them on Amazon .
There's a lot of great stuff to buy!
Happy reading to you always!


©2025 Fiza Pathan


----------------------------------------
END OF DOCUMENT
Fiza Pathan Publishing (OPC) Pvt Ltd
Freedom With Pluralism, Mumbai, India
Copyright 2026 Fiza Pathan. All Rights Reserved.